Although I am not a Louisville native (I came here for school and decided to stay), the city has both become my home and inspired me. I have spent time in local coffee shops with monikers like Quills, Heine Brothers, Highland Coffee, and the Java Brewing Co. keeping Louisville weird and crafting scenes to fill my screenplays. I must confess, I once took a meeting in a Starbucks, but I would have much preferred the warmth and quirkiness of a local joint. Though I do love my metro “grind houses”, some times the constant motion of Louisville living becomes to much for my already overburdened brain.
It's at these times when I need that essential man (and woman, I'm sure) need. No, not that need. I'm talking about solitude, like the kind Thoreau wrote about. Even though Emerson called solitude the “safeguard of mediocrity” I wouldn't be surprised if he wrote that line while looking out of a window in his summer cottage. No, Emerson was an advocate for, “a life of activity without bustle, a life of both power and repose” (Richardson and Moser 493). And, since I'm an Ohio boy, I retreat back to my homeland to enjoy my repose. Not to the rolling farmland and stunted brick buildings of my hometown in Northwestern Ohio, but to Southeastern Ohio's wild, unkempt Appalachian foothills—to my family's cabin.
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Our rustic lodge, aptly dubbed “The Cabin”, sits on an east facing hill, overlooking a babbling creek (or crick) and another, densely forested hill. There's no electricity, no running water (except the aforementioned creek (or crick)), no cell phone signal, and most importantly no people. Though, nowadays I bring a generator along to power up my computer, as I prefer to type rather than write—okay, I'll occasionally plug in a box fan or space heater, but only occasionally—this lack of amenities helps me to re-center myself and clear the clutter from mind. I also always take a camera and try to look at nature from a different perspective. My respites at The Cabin are a spiritual experience.
It also shifts the accountability back where it belongs, squarely on my shoulders. Here I have no excuses for being unproductive, no interruptions, no social obligations, no nothing, just me and the blank page.
I realize not everyone has the luxury to venture off for some isolated destination. But for those people there are still times when coffee shops just don't cut it. Fortunately for Louisvillians, we have our Olmstead Park system, with lush settings that seem more like a page out of an Allan W. Eckert book than a park in a major urban center.
But where do you go when you need a break? What location both inspires and centers you?
Leave a comment, let us know.
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