40th Anniversary Memories

I attended the second retreat held at YWCA Camp Onanda in April 1982. In the following years I attended as many retreats there as I could. I was in a transition phase of life at the time, having left a promising job in order to focus more on sitting, and retreats, a phase that ended with joining staff, meeting and marrying my husband Wayne Coger and spending more than 35 years closely associated with the Center and its founder, Toni Packer.

Camp Onanda and those early retreats were revelatory for me. Memories come of the sounds penetrating the sitting area that was set up in the Camp’s dining hall—neighboring cows lowing, the caretaker’s lawnmower roaring, a kitchen fan whirring, and, in the early autumn, the clicking of cicadas in the trees. Then there was Toni’s voice, giving short, eloquent encouragement talks, bringing us back to the present moment.

The accommodations were basic, with many of us staying in a barracks-like space of a row of bunkbeds. (Does anyone remember that the original plan for Springwater Center’s dorm rooms called for bunkbeds to be installed? Can you picture 8 people staying in room 10?)

The Onanda kitchen was great—a huge space, plentiful room to work with a big cold room and commercial stove and equipment. It too may have inspired some features of the Center’s kitchen today. Equipment was sparse in the first retreats. Tea, quite memorably, was served from a big soup pot with a ladle.

Early on, during the Onanda work periods, the staff were undertaking a fabulous project of sewing sitting mats and cushions. A memory comes of Joyce Landau smiling and easily carrying three of the heavy mats that she had made. The mats we sit on today were made by the staff those many years ago, though they now have blue covers rather than the original brown. 

My memory of the staff of those days is of young energetic people working very hard to keep retreats happening, while also operating the Center from a rented house in Rochester, searching for country land to build on and then building the Springwater facility. Quantities of food and equipment had to be transported from the rented house on Mt. Hope Avenue in Rochester to Onanda. I remember Sally Fox once telling me that it took staff four days of work to set up the first retreat at Onanda, including, to be sure, placing a dark brown cloth over the Coca-Cola vending machine at the end of the dining room/sitting hall. But by the last retreat at the Camp, the routines had jelled to the point that it took only six hours.

Toni could be found holding meetings in various locations at the Camp. A friend observed that it was sure to be the warmest place in the winter and the coolest in summer. She slept and ate in a cabin located across a rocky stream, with an attendant bringing her meals. In later years, she dropped many of the perquisites that were a holdover from the Zen tradition. One day, taking a walk before an early autumn retreat began, I caught sight of her sitting, alone and looking out to the lake by the rocks of the dried up stream. Somehow I sensed she was dealing with great difficulties unknown to me and I backed away. 

The location of the lineup of attendees wishing to meet with Toni varied. One retreat it ranged along the bunkbeds, in another it was in a small rustic cabin where mice ran up the wall at night. In one warm weather retreat, for the meeting group to reach the waiting line, it required a spirited leap off the porch of the dining hall building, followed by a race across the lawn where, in my memory, we lined up outdoors under the trees. In this retreat I had caught a glimpse of something. Getting up to move ahead in line I tripped and tumbled over—a whirl of trees and sky. Only after meeting with Toni did it dawn on me that no one had been there, no one had fallen, a whirl of trees and sky and that was all.

Onanda is still there—it’s now a park of the Town of Canandaigua. Visit it if you can and enjoy the lake and hiking trails on the hill looming up across the road. For me, its natural environment and bare-bones facilities were a cradle for all that came afterward.