Nia Weeks and her daughter Cameron sat in the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport last month, awaiting their flight to San Francisco, where they were set to spend a week on an expense-free retreat in West Marin.
Wracked with nerves, Ms. Weeks, a civil rights lawyer and advocate for Black women and families in Louisiana, debated not getting on the flight. Even with scheduled time off, taking a whole week meant not being there for clients who sometimes needed assistance around the clock.
“I was so spent and just anxious about the idea of having to sit out from work for a week—overwhelmed by the totality of what we’re living in right now and the expectation of people in work like me to step up at all times. But when we landed in San Francisco, it was like this whole weight came off. It was beautiful,” she said.
Ms. Weeks and her daughter stayed with Steve Costa, an Inverness resident who has teamed up with a nonprofit in Oakland to provide West Marin getaways to those who would not otherwise have the time or the money. Mr. Costa founded the Point Reyes Sanctuary in 2019, offering free retreats in second homes and side units for activists and organizers. The program comes with mindfulness workshops and a food stipend.
“The totality of nature that Inverness has to offer—we felt like it was home and it was family,” Ms. Weeks told the Light. “The serenity of creating a space that is peaceful and full of joy—that is actually the desire I have for the people I love and that is the essence of what we’re fighting for.”
The Point Reyes Sanctuary is sponsored by the Windcall Institute, a nonprofit that has held retreats for hundreds of community organizers across the country since 1989. Mr. Costa said the local program is a way for second homeowners to share the coast’s special beauty and think deeply about the responsibilities of owning a second home. Beyond his partnership with Windcall, he hopes the sanctuary program will gradually reach people in other lines of work who have trouble getting a break, such as health care workers.
“There are tens of thousands of Airbnbs in urban areas around nature areas,” Mr. Costa said. “I’d like to see a movement of folks who own vacation rentals asking themselves, ‘What’s the responsibility of second homeowners?’”
Milwaukee resident Lisa Jones had seen the Great Lakes, and she’d seen the Mississippi River. But she had never seen the ocean before she arrived in West Marin in March.
Ms. Jones has worked in social justice and community organizing in Milwaukee for over a decade, most recently as the executive director for Milwaukee Inner-City Congregations Allied for Hope. When she saw the opportunity to apply for a retreat at no cost, she applied.
This spring, she spent a week at Inverness resident Phil Jonik’s cottage. Working in grassroots activism, breaks are few and far between, Ms. Jones said. And when they do come, she still has to deal with the intersectional issues that come with being a Black woman in a predominately white city. So when she was selected for the program, she wanted to go somewhere far from home.
“I had never been in a nature setting quite like that before,” she said. “To go out to Point Reyes is to get away from the day-to-day grind. We’re in chaotic times. If you have a stressful position like I do, [Windcall] allows you to just stop and slow down and smell the roses.”
Ms. Jones was one of 43 people who have come to West Marin through the Point Reyes Sanctuary to stay at one of about 10 houses.
Mr. Costa, who grew up in the 1960s in an affluent suburb of Oakland but went to high school in Fruitvale, a historically crime-ridden area of the city, said he has long been hyper-aware of socioeconomic divides. He later worked in immigrant neighborhoods in Rhode Island before moving back to Oakland, where he had jobs in the nonprofit sector. But it wasn’t until the 1990s that he and his wife, Kate Levinson, came to appreciate the profound solace that can be found in West Marin—by way of an unspeakable accident.
In 1989, they lost their 16-year-old daughter in a car crash.
At the memorial service, Inverness residents Tom and Barbara Sargent approached the couple to offer her home as a healing sanctuary. For the next three years, they visited Ms. Sargent’s home, finding strength in serenity. They eventually purchased their own home in town.
“I attribute that time as one of the primary healing sources of the trauma that we had suffered,” Mr. Costa said.
The couple’s time in West Marin allowed them to meet the friends who now offer their homes to the sanctuary. They owned Point Reyes Books for nearly 15 years, hosting countless author events and readings and donating half a million dollars to local nonprofits from the proceeds. Mr. Costa said those events were made possible by Inverness resident Suzanne d’Coney, who connected homeowners willing to offer their second homes to traveling authors as an incentive to visit Point Reyes.
Several years ago, after selling the bookstore, Mr. Costa said he began noticing how burnout was taking a toll on community organizers. This was the impetus for founding the Point Reyes Sanctuary.
“He approached me and I immediately started working with him on writing and drafting proposals,” said Helen Cohen, who has lent her Point Reyes Station home for the retreats. “It felt like a really important thing for [my husband] and me to share this resource and refuge in this beautiful place. So that was always our intention, especially it being a second home.”
Launching the project required both funding and staff, prompting Mr. Costa and d’Coney to approach the Windcall Institute to propose a partnership. Ms. d’Coney has assumed the role of resident liaison, greeting retreatants in West Marin and helping to guide their experience. As the calendar writer for the Light, she knows what’s happening around town.
“I try to steer them toward meditative activities, whether they need a good burger or a good acupuncturist,” she said. “And between the Light and living here for 51 years, I have a lot to offer them—just not a night at the Western.”
Viviana Rennella, Windcall’s executive director, said the Point Reyes Sanctuary was born at the perfect time, as tensions for community organizers reached a crescendo across the country after the murder of George Floyd and amid the pandemic.
“There were a lot of traumas that people were experiencing at the time,” she said. “The original Windcall was held at a ranch in Montana, and so the pandemic gave us time to think about what we could do to provide some retreat spaces in our backyard rather than in other states. The retreats around Tomales Bay, they’ve just been very popular, and people have an amazing time.”
This year, Windcall will celebrate its 35th year providing a place of sanctuary for those who work in and for their communities. Ms. Rennella said that thanks to the overwhelmingly positive feedback she has received for the Point Reyes Sanctuary, she’s hoping to reach more homeowners in West Marin who are willing to offer retreats.
For information about getting involved in the Point Reyes Sanctuary, email Steve Costa at [email protected].