No glasses. No hearing aids. I find the toilet and go as quickly as I can. I just want to get into my warm bed again. It's too early to be up.
As I fumble my way back, the front door flings open and the retreat leader, Lauren, startles me with, "Emergency! Quick!"
"What? What emergency? Is there a fire?"
I'm panicking till she starts to laugh.
"Not an emergency. A beauty emergency!"
"A what?"
"A beauty emergency. Grab your jacket and come see it. Quick!"
Okay, now I'm awake and I understand. There is something that I have to look at right away.
I trip over my suitcase as I grab my glasses, my down coat, and my rubbery sandals. I step outside.
Though it is May, this B & B's yard, on the shore of Lake Winnipeg, is frosty. Lauren leads me out to the edge and there it is. Beyond the grey boulders, the beige sand, the scraggly tree branches, and the cracked, crumbling ice, is a sky that blazes.
Smoky paprika, jack-o-lantern orange, baby-chick yellow, with a tiny sliver of the sun peeking above the water.
We wander out to the dock where the ice is snap-crackle-popping like a massive bowl of Rice Krispies. Birds are tweeting each other to get up and look. My rubber Birkenstocks become as hard as the frozen rocks below. Though I am wearing flannel pyjamas under my parka, I shiver.
Wow.
Wow.
Wow.
We snap photos. Record videos. Futile attempts at capture.
We grab fuzzy blankets and mugs of hot coffee. Curled up on Adirondack chairs, we watch. Within minutes, the sun lifts, expands, rules the sky. Pale blue appears as the day begins. By 6:00 a.m., the show's over.
We head back to the house to stoke the woodstove and wait for the other writers to rise.
Conni Cartlidge
December 2025
Note: There were four of us at this writing retreat, all working on different projects. We learned about beauty emergencies from the book "Dear Writer" by Maggie Smith. She says a "beauty emergency is what we call something that stops you in your tracks, Something you have to look at right away, before it's gone."
