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DISPATCH FROM PEN NORTHWEST
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I first heard of the Dutch Henry Homestead in 1996, when I read about it in Poets & Writers magazine, and I was instantly enchanted by the description of it. I wanted to apply but couldn’t. My then-wife was in graduate school, and I needed to earn the bread. Deep down, though, I knew I’d go there one day. For ten years that brief description of the program and the place crept through my thoughts, usually when I was stressed out by my teaching job or by life on the congested fringes of New York City. Even then it was a place of peace for me.
When I was selected for the residency, my marriage was ending and there was a restlessness inside me, a need to get away and hunker down and figure out who I was and what I wrote and why. In the year between accepting the residency and beginning it, I battled self-doubt and fear. There were many nights I lay awake with visions of disaster: cougar attacks, broken legs, wildfires. But I was determined and the timing was right. I got a sabbatical, moved my things into storage, sold my house, loaded my dog into the car and pointed my headlights west, toward the Dutch Henry Homestead, all my fears and heartbreak stretching out like shadows behind me.
There’s an initiation all residents go through in their own way and with their own heart. It involves a willingness to engage with solitude and nature and the work of words and hands. Making kindling. Planting a garden. Writing a poem. These tasks are not dissimilar. In an ideal life every gesture could be crafted. At Dutch Henry I became a better writer, no doubt. But I also became a better cook, stargazer, fisherman. And I became more comfortable in the company of myself and others. In his Letters to a Young Poet Rainer Maria Rilke talks of the rewards and difficulties of solitude. One sentence in particular resonates when I look back on my time at Dutch Henry: “To walk inside yourself and meet no one for hours—that is what you must be able to attain.”
—Gary J. Whitehead, 2005 Resident
>> Read Gary's blog from his residency
The
Margery Davis Boyden Wilderness Writing Residency is a unique opportunity for a
writer or pair of writers seeking a lengthy spell of unparalleled solitude for
work and personal refreshment. In exchange for an hour a day of routine
caretaking, the resident receives use of a remote, small but comfortable house
in the Rogue River backcountry of southwestern Oregon and the support of a
$2,500 stipend. The residency runs from the beginning of April through the end
of October, entrance and exit dates varying with weather conditions. With proper
planning, the resident may extend the residency through the winter if he or she
chooses. The program, which originated in 1992, is administered by PEN
Northwest, the Northwest branch of PEN American Center, in cooperation with
Frank and Bradley Boyden, program founders and owners of the property.
The house stands on 92 acres of meadow and forest, known as Dutch Henry
Homestead, in the canyon the Rogue River has formed for itself through the
steep, forested terrain of the Klamath Mountains. The homestead is surrounded by
public land managed as wilderness by the Bureau of Land Management. There are no
neighbors. Wildlife—deer, black bears, wild turkeys, bobcats, the occasional
cougar—abounds, as does silence. The Rogue, a fishable and federally protected
wild and scenic river, is 25 minutes away by trail. A large fenced garden area
with grape vines and fruit trees is available for the resident's use. The
climate is mild and wet in the spring, hot and dry in the summer, just right in
the fall.
>> More information
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