I know I’m not alone in feeling more creative and inspired when I get away. New places, new experiences make people see things differently. To think, feel and dream more. To quiet down and listen. Take me to a cabin in the woods, and after a couple days, my slower, more reflective self kicks in. Poetry, knitting, cooking, writing, building stuff with my kids from sticks. It’s the reason writers buy shacks in remote coastal towns, and artists create colonies in the country.

Most writers, painters, knitters, builders, bakers and craft-makers I know can’t afford their own creative refuges. So they seek quiet and solace and beauty where they can find it. Recently, I’ve been inspired by all the different types of creative retreats and residencies, art camps and travel workshops, from the extravagant SquamItalia to the humble and rustic, but no less impressive, Cabin-Time. So begins a new series: creative retreats.

Cabin-Time–“a roaming creative residency to remote places”–spent their third residency on the beautifully wild and rugged Rabbit Island, a remote 91-acre island off Michigan’s Keweenaw Peninsula in Lake Superior. In addition to chopping wood, setting up camp and cooking meals over the fire, they managed to find time to make all kinds of site-specific art, like a series of vinyl-cut prints that represent the last harvest of blueberries or the perfectly simple weather rock. Photos below, plus this awesome 12-minute mini documentary.