Mesa Refuge History

The Mesa Refuge was created in 1997 by Working Assets co-founder Peter Barnes, who acquired and donated the property to the Tides Foundation. Since then it has provided shelter and inspiration to over 500 established and emerging writers, including Michael Pollan, Terry Tempest Williams, George Lakoff, Frances Moore Lappé, Natalie Goldberg, Jerry Mander, Lewis Hyde, Rebecca Solnit, Van Jones and many others. Books about ecology, democracy, justice and hope have been birthed here.

A note from Peter Barnes

I started the Mesa Refuge because, as a young writer, I came to appreciate two things:
(1) the need of writers for uninterrupted time to think as well as write, and
(2) the particular magic of the Point Reyes area, with its wild and human-shaped beauty.

I wrote my first book while living on a ranch near Point Reyes in 1969. Later, I spent time at retreats in upstate New York, Bozeman, Montana, and Bellagio, Italy. Each of these experiences confirmed for me what the poet, Mary Oliver, has so beautifully said:

"No one has yet made a list of places where the extraordinary may happen. Still, there are indications. It likes the out-of-doors. It likes the concentrating mind. It likes solitude. It isn’t that it would disparage comforts, or the set routines of the world, but that its concern is directed to another place. Its concern is the edge, and the making of form out of the formlessness that is beyond the edge."

Today, these words adorn a wall at the Mesa Refuge. And I have seen time and again how true they are — how two or four weeks of ‘writing at the edge’ can be transformational for emerging writers, and rejuvenating for established ones.

For many years, I carried within me the intent to start a retreat like the Mesa Refuge. Finally, after retiring from Working Assets in 1995, that intent was able to manifest.

I first purchased a home that had been the studio of the renowned painter Sam Francis. Six months later, the adjoining property — which had been Francis’ residence — came on the market. It had beautiful gardens and breathtaking vistas. I knew at once that it was meant to be the retreat I had envisioned.

I cannot fully explain why the Mesa Refuge works, but hundreds of writers who have stayed there can testify that it does. There is absolutely no doubt that it spurs creativity of a rare kind. It is equally clear that the world needs more such creativity.

In this sense, the Mesa Refuge’s real product isn’t books — it is hope for a livable world. It is such hope that ultimately stirs action and change. As Rebecca Solnit, a former Mesa resident, has written:

"Sometimes one person inspires a movement, or her words do decades later; sometimes a few passionate people change the world; sometimes they start a mass movement and millions do; sometime those millions are stirred by the same outrage or the same ideal, and change comes upon us like a change in the weather. All that these transformations have in common is that they begin in the imagination, in hope."