Retreat to Rasayana Cove
48 hours in the Florida Woods
7/18/20265 min read
An hour east of Sarasota, the roads turn empty and quiet, cutting through farmland and a whole lot of nothing. I arrived at Rasayana Cove at 3:00 PM. The retreat sits at the very end of a dead-end road. You turn off the rural highway, drive north for a mile, and the pavement stops. To the right is Solomon’s Castle (a story for another day); to the left, past a few classic Florida cracker homes on a dusty, unpaved road, is the entrance.
As I drove past a faded sign from 1994 confirming I was on the right path, a fancy car suddenly appeared, heading straight toward me on the single-lane road—an impromptu game of chicken. Assuming it was the owner, I slowed to a crawl, expecting a rolled-down window and a quick chat. Instead, the dark tinted glass stayed firmly up, and we rolled past each other in silence.
Moments later, a pickup truck blocked my path in front of a raised cabin. I got out and saw Dinesh, the owner, sitting on the porch.
“I’ll come down to you,” he called out. We shook hands.
“What do you do?” he asked.
“I am a meditation teacher.”
He offered a slight smirk. “You can’t make a living doing that.”
I pivoted to my day job: “I work with special needs kids in an elementary school.”
Dinesh nodded, then dropped the bad news. He’d hosted a dinner party the night before, and some guests had stayed in my cabin. They weren't very respectful, ran down the solar battery, and now he had to replace it and grab me some fresh supplies.
Gee, I thought, you couldn't have handled this before my 3:00 PM check-in?
But almost immediately, the irritation softened. This is where reflective determinism always rescues me. I looked at Dinesh—isolated out here on this vast property, dealing with the aftermath of thoughtless guests, trying to manage a rustic retreat. When you pause to see the causal chain behind someone's behavior—their history, their immediate stressors, the simple physics of their day—the judgment fades. The reflective space opens up, and blame is replaced by a quiet, practical compassion. He was just doing the best he could with the variables he had.
“I’ll get the battery,” he said, “and you can follow me down.”
---
A half-mile drive into the woods brought us to my small cabin. The whole point of my 48-hour retreat was silence and solitude. I’d mentioned this when booking, and Dinesh had acknowledged it, but the human need for connection is a powerful cause in its own right. He wanted to talk.
He launched into stories of studying Ayurveda with famous gurus in India, the history of the retreat, and the memoir he was writing. Then he asked, "Have you been to India?"
"No," I said. But then my ego, fully conditioned and seeking its own validation, kicked in. "But I did live in a yoga ashram in Massachusetts for three years."
That unleashed a flood of talk about Kripalu, Amrit Desai, and enlightenment. I kept my responses as brief as possible, hoping he’d take the hint. He showed me the outhouse and the outdoor shower. He’d promised solar power for the fans, but one was barely spinning and the other was apparently "too powerful" to run during the day. It was easily 90 degrees inside.
"I just have to install the battery and I'll be on my way," Dinesh said. "Oh, and if you don't mind, I'm going to drill a hook to hang the hose. And hey, if you ever want to bring your meditation students here..."
Yikes, I thought. An impromptu leads club meeting.
Again, rather than letting resentment build, I recognized the simple determinism of the moment. He’s a lonely guy on a massive slice of wilderness; of course he wants to connect, swap stories, and talk business.
"I'm going to go explore," I said, giving him space to work.
---
I ambled around the vast, sun-baked property. When I returned, Dinesh was gone. Finally, the solitude began.
My plan was a pure, off-the-mat "Stage 3" Kripalu experience—zero rigid structure, just moving with whatever I felt drawn to do in each moment. I made the bed, unpacked, ate some smoked salmon, and took a book to the wrap-around porch of the larger, vacant cabin.
A afternoon nap ended abruptly with a mosquito buzzing in my ear. I quickly suited up in my long-sleeve bug gear and set out for a dusk walk. In the fading light, two deer suddenly materialized. They froze, sized me up with a long, silent stare, and then galloped away—gracefully leaping over a barbed-wire fence. A wise friend once told me that seeing deer is highly auspicious.
Back at the cabin, dinner was a classic 1993 Kripalu throwback: bread, marshmallow fluff, peanut butter, figs, and Gatorade, eaten in total, quiet mindfulness. I did some stream-of-consciousness writing and went to bed. Sleep came in fits and starts; the cabin was stifling without the fan, but freezing with it.
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Tuesday morning began with meditation, followed by a walk along the river. This time, I spotted four deer. Same beautiful sequence: the freeze, the stare, the graceful gallop. I saw large birds, rabbits, and raccoons. Back home in Sarasota, I find raccoons to be a nuisance. But out here, stripped of the suburban context, I saw them for what they are: innocent creatures just playing out their evolutionary programming. No malice, no blame.
I walked past a small pond and heard a massive splash. A gator. I took that as my cue to head back.
By afternoon, the Florida heat was oppressive—climbing to 96 degrees. I retreated to the shower room for a cold rinse. Under the freezing stream, the heat broke, and I was suddenly flooded with intense, positive memories. It was a genuine peak experience, a momentary state of blissful, out-of-body super-consciousness.
Cooled down and centered, I spent the afternoon reading A Brief History of Time and a text on consciousness. But the heat was relentless, and by 3:00 PM, a highly deterministic thought arose: The World Cup semifinal is on.
I looked up local sports bars and found a Beef O’Brady’s in Wauchula, about 30 minutes away. The drive there was pure pleasure—cruising the empty, sunlit mid-Florida roads at a leisurely pace while listening to comedy podcasts. Wauchula itself, however, has not been treated kindly by history, and this particular Beef O'Brady's had definitely seen better days. Corporate would not have been pleased. But there was a screen, cold air conditioning, and no crowd. I watched the match in peace.
The drive back flew by. I took a final evening walk, had dinner, caught up on the news, did some writing, and watched an episode of The Vow on my phone before falling into a deep, restful sleep.
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This morning, I woke up, walked the paths, greeted my deer friends once more, and meditated. Now, I’m sitting on a plastic chair at a small folding table, looking out the window at a quiet meadow framed by trees, listening to the birds.
There are bugs on the deck, in the cabin, and in the outhouse, but they haven't bothered me.
This 48-hour experiment confirmed a few things:
1. I definitely wouldn’t enjoy a rigid, 7-day silent Vipassana retreat.
2. I love being in the woods (full-time glamping would be the dream).
3. I genuinely enjoy my own company and the quiet space of absolute solitude.
Time to pack up, clean the cabin, eat a quick lunch, and hit the road. I've got a 2:00 PM pick-up basketball game at LA Fitness on the way home, and my legs are ready to run.
Om Namah Shivaya.
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