Writing Retreat/Writing Forward

What does it mean to retreat? Oxford dictionaries define it as to "withdraw from enemy forces as a result of their superior power or after a defeat."

So I am asking myself, as I sit here in southern Vermont at the In Situ Polyculture Commons for a week with a half-dozen artists from near and far, as they work on wild-crafted sculpture, printmaking, bookbinding, and music -- am I defeated? Am I withdrawing from enemy forces as a result of their superior power?

Some days it feels like that.

In recent months, a lot of days have felt like that.

I'm staring at a field of goldenrod -- a beautiful, showy autumn wildflower which is often described as an "effective colonizer": goldenrod uses a combination of rhizome root systems, seed dispersal,, a tall dense growth habit, and a plant version of chemical warfare (much like black walnut trees, they release chemicals that inhibit germination and grown in other plants). to take over fields to the exclusion of everything else.

In the middle of this field I'm staring at is a small patch of white aster, like the eye of a storm. Did the asters retreat to this isolated, untenable, indefensible position? Or did they simply hold their ground, the last remnant to remain as the golden spires move inward. I would bet good money that if I come back in a couple years, that patch of asters will be gone. Nothing can withstand the well-armed force of goldenrod. In the plant world as in the human world, might-makes-right and those who are better armed, be it with weapons, power, money, which all amount to about the same thing, will prevail.

What would it look like to be in a position of writing forward rather than writing retreat? If I am surrounded on all sides, can I write my way into a different future? It's easy to say "so leave -- find another field" but the asters and I both know that pulling up roots and finding a place to grow that is not already fully occupied physically and ecologically is doomed to be an unsatisfactory exercise. And it requires a lot of resources and outside assistance (those asters cannot transplant themselves).

No, I think the asters have it right. The only thing any of us can do, today and always, is bloom where we find ourselves rooted. Bloom for all you're worth there in your lonely patch of earth while everything around you falls away. Bloom and know that your blooms have value--be forward in your blooming. Bloom loud and long and strong, down to the last stem.