Teacher Week at the Westlake Mountain Retreat

Welcome to the Spot Writers. Today’s story comes to us from Val Muller, author of the kidlit Corgi Capers mystery series. The prompt is: write a story in which an element (earth, air, water, fire) plays a major role (either literally or metaphorically).

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Teacher Week at the Westlake Mountain Retreat

by Val Muller

 

Teddy’s eyes glowed in the fire, his “counsellor” badge glowing in the flames. “Think of it. Picture it. What is it that vexes you?”

Megan glanced at around the circle of light. The woods were dark now, and the fire accentuated everyone’s faces in sharp angles and shadows. A mourning dove called from a tree. As Meg watched the other adults mulling around the circle of stone and soot, she tried to place them in various stages of mid-life crises. Most looked stressed. Some, embarrassed. A few looked as if they had stepped off the edge of the world and entered a mindless utopia that dismissed the realities of life. She wondered if any of their mental states were healthier than hers.

Before she knew it, another young twenty-something counsellor stepped into the fire’s circle of light, nodding at Teddy. It was Ron, the counsellor who had checked Megan in. It was supposed to be teacher week at the mountain retreat, and as teachers, Meg and Kris had gotten their tickets for half price, but it looked like they were the only teachers there. Rushed dinner conversations—sloppy joes eaten around a fire—suggested that many here were from the corporate world or other professions. Were all the other teachers too burned out to care?  

“I know it can be kinda scary to share,” Ron said. “I’ll go first. I had a vexation once. When I graduated high school, I thought, whoa, man, what gives? I’ve been trained to go from class to class, to do what teachers say, to get As or Bs or whatever, and now I’m thrown into the real world, and what now?”

All eyes shifted to Ron in the fiery light. Meg exchanged a look with Kris.

“So, what vexed me? I’ll tell you what. It was chains, man. Chains. I was chained to a bell schedule, chained to report cards, chained to the system, man. And what did I need?” He looked around the campfire for an answer, but all eyes seemed hesitant, the way students are on the first day of school. Everyone too scared to answer.

“I needed to break those chains, man! And what did I do? I came to this place, applied for the job, got the job, and in the week of prep before the campers got here, I took up an axe and chopped wood. I chopped and chopped. Each piece of wood, I imagined a link in the chain. Schedules, gone. Teachers—” Here, he looked guiltily at Megan and Kris, no doubt remembering their conversation earlier about their profession. “The bad ones, I mean, gone. Chop, chop. Straight A expectations, gone too. Chains were my problem. Chopping solved it.” He looked around the campfire. “The wise have said—picture your vexation, then picture a way to thwart it. That’s what we’re here for this week. Normally we work with kids, but this week of the year is always one of my favorites. I love working with adults, helping them return to the mindset of childhood. Returning to infinite possibilities.”

“But to get there,” Teddy said, “you have to figure out what vexes you.”  

Heads nodded around the campfire. Indeed, that’s how the retreat was advertised. A reset. A restoration. Everything from the brochure to the atmosphere put out 1980s sleepaway camp vibes. The sense of nostalgia and even the nods to the classic horror films of Meg and Kris’s childhoods made the place both familiar and strange. They were assigned to cabins of four, and the next week was filled with teambuilding activities—canoeing, crafts, campfires, cooking.

A man with a worn fishing hat stepped into the circle. He hadn’t said much at dinner, but Megan pegged him as a former corporate executive who’d cracked. He raised his hands to the fire. “What I see is my life as a powerful wind, a hurricane I had no control over. It felt good at first, my hair blowing around, the excitement of it all. But it came from all sides, all directions. It vexed me. I lost control.”

“And what do you need to do to escape that wind, man?” Ron asked.

“I need to be still. I need my soul to be still.”

Teddy clapped his hands. “Fantastic! I’ll tell you what. You and me, a night hike up to the peak. A night under the stars. There’s nothing so still to put your soul at peace.” Then Teddy looked around the fire. “Who else is vexed by unending wind?”

To Megan’s surprise, Kris nodded. She raised her hand. “Me! Me! The last two and a half years has been rough for this teacher. Constant policy changes, kids with emotional crises, it’s like a constant hurricane. Not a moment to be still.”

Without a word, Kris joined Teddy and the Exec. Megan opened her mouth, but what was she going to say? She felt betrayed. She and Kris agreed to go on this retreat together, and now Kris was abandoning her. But Megan wasn’t about to spend a night out in the open under the stars. She much preferred the safety of the cabin, no matter how rickety.

The discussion continued, with several more of the campers articulating the vexations of their lives: floods, hurricanes, pressure. Soon only a handful were left. Ron turned to Megan. “What vexes you? You’re a teacher. Are you vexed by stormy winds like your friend?”

Megan stared into the fire. “No.” The flames licked the wood. Campfires had always calmed her as a child, but this one was different. Even in the chill of night, this fire made her brow sweat. The light seemed too bright, almost, an assault on the night. “The last three years have been the worst of my career, I’ll admit,” she said. “But it wasn’t like a strong wind. A strong wind—well, you can go inside to escape that. Mine was like a fire. Like an out-of-control fire. Maybe it started small, but it kept being fed.” She thought to the last few years. The unexpected closure at the end of the school year. The mask mandates. Grades counted. No, they didn’t count. Learning was optional. No, it was required. Students could come back in person. No, they could learn from home. Teachers had to come in to school and teach on a computer. No, to students in the classroom. Both. At once. Take attendance. No, attendance doesn’t count. We can’t hold students accountable. We have to be rigorous. Teachers are heroes. Teachers are the worst.

“It’s like being tied to a stake,” she said. “Like a witch. Watching them light the fire under you. Watching it burn, smelling the smoke, knowing it’ll come for you next. There’s sheer terror and even a sense of hope that once the flames burn over you, there will at least be an end to it. Every time something seemed to stabilize, someone threw another log onto the fire. Give everyone grace except for us. We were the dumping zone. The heat. It’s too hot to handle.”

Megan looked down. She was shaking.

“Ahhh,” Ron said, smiling. “Fire. That’s one of my favorite vexations to quench. And there’s nothing better at quenching than night swimming!”

He clapped his hands, and three other members of the camp joined him. Megan found herself following as well. They all shed their clothes at the shoreline. A part of Megan, somewhere in the back of her mind, realized this was the start of so many cheesy horror movies. It was the rising action of a badly-plotted tale. And yet here she was.

The water in the lake was chilly, and it shocked her. She felt like a teenager, screaming into the night with the others. Then she took a deep breath and stayed under the water impossibly long, long enough that all the flames around her quenched. The moon above danced behind the curtain of water. She emerged, her lungs filling with the cool of night, the moonlight revealing her skin glowing and cleansed, and in the chilled mountain air, not even a whiff of smoke.

 

The Spot Writers—Our Members:

Val Muller: http://www.valmuller.com/blog/

Catherine A. MacKenzie: https://writingwicket.wordpress.com/wicker-chitter/

Phil Yeats: https://alankemisterauthor.wordpress.com

Chiara De Giorgi: https://chiaradegiorgi.blogspot.com/