Hey friends, it's Anne. So I have this persistent fantasy in which I turn off the news,

toss my phone, burn my to-do list, and devote some serious time to remembering or discovering

who I am without all those things.

And maybe you can relate.

There is so much that clamors and competes for our attention every day.

It can be overwhelming.

This time, onto the best of our knowledge,

we talk with people who have really embraced the idea of getting away from

it all. Our topic, retreat from the day-to-day life. Keep listening.

From WPR.

It's to the best of our knowledge. I'm Anne Strange Champs. In 1990, writer Pico Iyer's family

lost everything in a wildfire. This was devastating. But it was in the wake of that wildfire

that Pico Iyer found his way to a refuge and a practice that has

sustained him for decades.

So my family and I lived in the hills of California,

and one day I went upstairs in my family home,

and I saw that it was encircled by 70-foot flames.

It was the worst fire in Californian history at the time.

Three hours later, it had burnt down our home

and everything in it. For many months after that I was sleeping on a friend's floor downtown.

And at one point another friend came there and he saw me and he said, come on, Pico, you can do better than this.

He told me that he took his students because he was a high school teacher every spring to a retreat house,

...