An Invitation to Retreat in the Adirondacks

Space in the retreat is limited, but space at the retreat will be abundant

I was four years old the first time I slept outside. The walls of the tent were burnt orange canvas and our sleeping bags were dark olive green, remnants of other family members time in the military. I remember lying there awake, the sounds of night alerting me to nocturnal life, the scent of soil and trees and campfire remnants clinging to my footie pajamas.

Throughout high-school my best friend and I worked at a wilderness camp in the Poconos of Pennsylvania. In my early adulthood I transitioned into the program director of a wilderness camp in northern New York. Throughout college I worked as a ropes course facilitator, a lifeguard, an equine instructor, and more at various camps. Camp has always been my first home.

Whenever someone asked me as a young adult what I wanted to do when I grew up, “I want to run a wilderness camp,” was my standard answer. As I aged, the answer remained relatively unchanged except it morphed into a retreat center in the wilderness. My heart will always be with those little ones at summer camp, but I think my true desire is to walk with others who are searching for liminal spaces in their faith and life.

Nate and I have been dreaming this dream together for years, but buying a retreat center in the woods is not in our budget (Though if you know of a benefactor, we would love to start a conversation!). Sometime last spring we began talking about the possibility of renting out a place that could sleep 30ish guests for a long weekend and trial running a retreat. Could we do it?

Well, we are doing it! We signed a contract a few months back, gambling a chunk of our savings on the off chance that about 30 people would gamble with us. Are you one of them?

The Third Way retreat will be happening on the banks of Saranac Lake in the Adirondacks on October 3-6, 2024. All the details are here and registration will open soon (so make sure you sign up to be one of the first to hear when it opens).

What does The Third Way mean? As we began to consider holding this retreat less than a month before the 2024 election, we knew we had to consider that. Everything in us just wants to provide a space where no one is thinking about or talking about the upheaval in America politics and the church over the last decade +, but how much better, we wondered, to provide a peaceful space where individuals who are torn on these things can truly come together? We’re especially interested attracting Gen-X and Millennial Christians because we see this exhaustion especially apparent in these groups.

Space in the retreat is limited, but space at the retreat will be abundant.

We’re leaving some elements of this retreat up to your imagination for various reasons, or in the words said every weekend at one of our favorite places, “We have an agenda, but we don’t have an agenda for you.” But trust us when we say that you will eat good food, have good conversations, listen to good people, and find goodness in your fellow image-bearers.

Join us and around thirty other individuals who care about art and beauty, politics and theology, life and the environment, poetry and the collective care of souls in a world that demands black and white. Space in the retreat is limited, but space at the retreat will be abundant, and we hope you find that true should you choose to join us.

Have you preordered my latest book? The Understory: An Invitation to Rootedness and Resilience from the Forest Floor?

Also available A Curious Faith: The Questions God Asks, We Ask, and Wish Someone Would Ask Us

Handle With Care: How Jesus Redeems the Power of Touch in Life and Ministry

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