Aire de Poustinia

Usually, when we talk about the good life, we post-moderns mean our best life—one that’s carefree and comfortable, where we pursue vitality and create an experience that we can share with followers and generate tons of double taps. It’s a LUXE life, but that’s not exactly what we mean when we talk about the good life here.

Here, we use it more like a blend of the ancient Greek concept of eutrapelia—a life in harmony, where deep work and lighthearted playfulness coincide, and Cicero’s notion that the good life requires contemplation and that it’s essentially a team sport. Some modern philosophers have called this leisure.

There are big differences between eutrapelia and our post-modern best life, but we think there is at least one touch point where the two can meet and dialogue, and that’s beauty.

We need more open spaces in our congested lives

A couple of weeks ago, we visited a place where LUXE meets leisure—a beautifully uncommon resort at the edge of Las Bardeñas Reales, Europe’s largest hot desert, in the Navarre region of Spain.

It was spectacularly beautiful and the place had such a beautiful story—dreamed up during conversations around the fire by sisters who wanted to create a place where people could make beautiful memories, established over several years and named for the cool winds that sweep across Las Bardeñas.

They offer guided tours of the desert, picnics, massages, gourmet dinners, an outdoor pool, and rooms in cubes overlooking Las Bardeñas or bubbles that open to the horizon and the sky.

We stopped here with our youngest son, Leo, on our way to see our oldest daughter, Lynnie, graduate from college.

We’d been curious about it for a couple of years and were looking for a way to break up the many hours we’d spent on a plane from New York to Barcelona and the train ride to Pamplona.

It was enchanting.

This isn’t a paid partnership, by the way 🤣

We took a dip, then barbequed chistorra sausages and had a cocktail before an absolutely glorious, locally sourced dinner. It rained once the sun had set, but the cloudy night sky illuminated by rays of moonlight trying to get through made it feel like you were in them.

But what drew us to the Hotel Aire de Bardeñas was the open spaces—we need open spaces in our congested lives.

We were also curious about what this place had to offer and its desert setting because we’ve been thinking seriously about doing something similar with our farm. Creating a space where people can break away from the busyness of modern life and rest—except in a garden; a poustinia garden.

Poustinia is the Slavic word for desert. In ancient times, people in North Africa and the Middle East literally went into the desert to cut out all distractions and live as hermits. Not many people go to the desert anymore. Not everyone can afford to cut out all the distractions so radically. But Catherine Dougherty popularized the idea of the poustinia retreat—doing this for a short time regularly, with a book about 25 years ago.

Last May when we opened our farm over Mother’s Day weekend for people to come out and cut flowers with us, we had no idea how affecting this would be until we were watching all of the families cutting together: four generations of women in one; sisters and their brother in another; a young woman who’s been wheelchair-bound for years cutting with her parents and siblings; and even a few solo women who just wanted to spend an hour or two in the flowers.

One of them told us she’d be here all the time if she could.

Another told us she felt like her family got to spend the afternoon in a secret garden.

The encounter with beauty, whether alone or with the people they love, affected each of them; they added a memory to many experiences of the good life.

So, we started thinking about how to bring people back more and how to deepen the experience of beauty; a farm stay, B&B cottages, glamping or some combination of all three—a place for people to come and rest and enjoy the good life in a quiet, beautiful spot, right here in Tioga County.

It’s fitting, funny, ironic, a sign? that we said yes to this in an actual desert.

We have much to do to become the kind of flower farm we want to be when we grow up, beginning with a business plan, finding land close to our farm, the approvals and permits, and building; about the only thing we already have figured out is where to source our own hyper-local food!!

We’re excited to share more as our own camp-fire conversations and dreams about The Sparrows’ Nest begin to take shape.