Last month, my writing bestie, Liz Flaherty, and I went on our biannual retreat. Even though we talk every day on gChat, these retreats are our shared personal moments of Zen. We’ve been going on retreat together every late winter and early fall for at least ten years. The late winter is usually four nights, 5 days in a place that offers decent restaurants, a few shops, and quiet places to set up to write. Think boutique hotels and state park inns. We’ve actually been going to the same boutique hotel in the hills of southern Indiana for several years, but this year, we tried a new adventure.
We chose the hills of southern Indiana again, but this trip, we booked four nights at an inn in New Harmony, Indiana. Neither of us had ever been there before, so we were taking a chance, but the website looked good and the history looked downright fascinating.
New Harmony is the site of two early American Utopian communities formed when “out West” was the frontier in what is now the Midwest United States. George Rapp, who began the Harmony Society settled on the banks of the Wabash River in 1814. The Harmonists, a religious sect, believed that Jesus was coming back very soon, so they lived their lives in striving for perfection in everything they did. They formed a community together, building over 150 log structures and creating the town of Harmony. They were entirely self-sufficient, although they did trade goods with towns along the Wabash, Ohio, and Mississippi Rivers, including places as far away as New Orleans and Pittsburgh.
In 1824, Rapp sold the community to Robert Owen, who had enough money to simply buy the whole town. Owen was more of a secularist, focused on social equality and education, as well as nature rather than perfection. The people who settled in New Harmony were progressive thinkers, scholars, even early feminists who all lived together communally. New Harmony was bastion of social progress out on the frontier. They founded one of the nation’s first co-ed public schools, they had trade schools, and they studied nature, in particular geology. The experiment thrived in some ways, but also failed due to internal conflicts, lack of strong leadership, and a lack of skilled labor and production.
The town is now a National Historic Landmark, and although it is no longer a “Utopia,” they’ve done a great job at preserving the stories of the utopias and ideals that both Rapp and Owen tried to create. The whole town just reeks of history, and Liz and I found something new to explore each afternoon after we got done writing for the day. It’s different from other small tourist towns in that it doesn’t cater to shoppers, it caters to lovers of history. The town is quite walkable. As a matter of fact, we saw more golf carts than cars.
The thing we noticed most about our stay in New Harmony was how incredibly peaceful the town was—the quiet, which could’ve been disconcerting, was actually extraordinary. We wandered–oh, how we wandered! All through an old hilly cemetery, through the spectacular cathedral labyrinth, past home after restored home, and into a lovely old church that remains open twenty-four hours. The beautiful magnolia trees, the spring flowers, the friendly folks we met while walking, the labyrinths and museums, even the restaurants exuded the harmony and peace that was the cornerstone of the town in the early nineteenth century.
This place was the frontier, the West in 1814, but it wasn’t the Wild West. It wasn’t cowboys and cattle drives and saloons and ranches. Rather it was one group of people’s vision of what paradise could be.
What’s your vision of paradise? Mine varies—sometimes it’s a house in a small town on Lake Michigan that is easy walking distance to the lake where I can walk the beach whenever I want. Other times it’s a small cottage in Provence, living among the lavender fields and vineyards. But my paradise always includes Husband, my kids, my friends, and books!
FYI: Make It Real, book 2 in my Walkers of River’s Edge series is still on sale for just 99 cents, but only for a few more days! If you haven’t been to River’s Edge yet, now’s your chance. More sweet, small town romance in beautiful southern Indiana!