Suzanne Stewart
Staff Writer
For two weekends this spring, the Yew Mountain Center in Hillsboro, hosted United States veterans for the Creative Appalachian Mountain Opportunities event.
The weekends were a way to give back to veterans two-fold – to give them a relaxing respite and to expose them to art classes provided by local artisans.
Yew Mountain Center Director Erica Marks said the weekends were funded by the mid-American Arts Alliance program called Creative Forces.
“It’s targeted for veterans and the idea is to offer therapeutic or just arts experiences,” she said. “They have some goals to help reconnect to community, help reconnect them to family.”
Marks was inspired to try the new program after realizing there were a lot of veterans participating in events at the center.
“We had programs involving forest farming and we just happened to be serving a lot of veterans in our population here and this seemed like a good way to bring those elements together,” she said.
The two retreats featured two local artists each, who spent the weekend sharing their creativity and teaching attendees their specific art or craft.
“We worked with Brenda Harman, of BrenWood Forge and Broom; Melondy Phillips, who did leatherwork; Alison Safrit, who did pottery on the wheel; and Stan Cook, who did woodturning,” Marks said. “We kind of envisioned it as an arts and nature retreat because of our location. We offer the outdoor component of it, too, like nature walks, fishing, canoeing on the pond.”
Another element of the retreats was going out into the community. The groups each went to the Hillsboro Public House for dinner one of the nights and enjoyed live music, a good meal and meeting members of the community.
“We had one veteran say it was so nice to go out and really feel like they could be part of civilization again or part of the community,” Marks said. “That was really touching to hear.
“It’s such a small town and they felt they were being welcomed, and it felt they knew each other,” she continued. “It was neat to get off the mountain for that one evening and then come back.”
The retreats attracted veterans from all around the country and the response was so positive that Marks is hoping to make the retreats an annual event.
“We would like to expand and develop this program because it felt like it went really well and it was impactful,” she said. “The evaluations were really favorable, and all the veterans said, yes, we should do it again and they would love to help us. I was encouraged by that.”
