Today we’d like to introduce you to Dara Prothro.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
Zoetic Forest and Zoetic River were created so that people in Central Texas could experience the benefits of silent retreat without needing to leave their region, spend thousands of dollars, or wait for the rare moment when life allows a distant retreat. Most of us need to step out of noise and distraction to remember our original nature, but access to true silent retreat has often been limited—geographically, financially, or culturally. We wanted to build places close enough to reach in a single drive, yet distinct enough that crossing onto the land already feels like stepping through a doorway. At Zoetic, silence is not treated as an idea but as an environment: forest, river, sky, animals, stillness, and carefully shaped spaces that invite the mind to settle and attention to return. Both properties were created to make contemplative practice more available, more natural, and accessible to everyone from every walk of life.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
It has not been a smooth road in the conventional sense, but nothing feels misplaced when seen from where we stand now. There were delays, wrong turns, moments when doors closed, plans changed shape, people came and went, and the work asked more of us than we expected. Yet each difficulty seemed to carry its own hidden instruction, redirecting the path in ways we could not have designed at the time. What looked like obstruction often became structure. What felt uncertain often revealed itself later as necessary. In that sense, everything has gone exactly as it needed to go for us to arrive here—this land, these spaces, this form, this moment—each part shaped by what resisted us as much as by what opened.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
Professionally, a silent retreat center asks for two lives to be lived at once: one inward, one relentlessly practical. On one side there is silence, presence, care for atmosphere, the subtle work of protecting something invisible so that people can arrive and truly settle. On the other side there are buildings, permits, repairs, schedules, meals, finances, staff, animals, cleaning, timing, and a hundred daily decisions that must be made well for silence to remain intact. Much of the work happens behind what guests never see. The deeper challenge has been learning how to build structures strong enough to hold stillness without letting the structure itself become the center. A retreat center may appear quiet, but beneath that quiet is constant movement, attention, adjustment, and the ongoing discipline of serving something larger than convenience.
Risk taking is a topic that people have widely differing views on – we’d love to hear your thoughts.
I am, by nature, a significant risk taker. Nearly every meaningful decision I have made has involved stepping toward something before there was certainty—often before there was proof it would work, before the path was visible, before anyone could reasonably call it secure. I do not experience risk as something separate from building; to begin anything alive, especially something unusual, you have to accept that there are no guarantees. Land, people, money, timing, vision—every part of a project like this asks you to move while many variables remain unresolved. What matters to me is not avoiding consequence, but being willing to stand inside whatever consequence comes, whether the choice unfolds beautifully or forces a complete rethinking.
With Zoetic, that has been true from the beginning. The entire project has been an experiment—one that continues every day. There is excitement in that for me. Part of the vitality of it is that anything can shift at any time, and I often do not know exactly what comes next until the next thing reveals itself. I am not waiting for a fixed formula to appear; I am learning from the project while living inside it, adjusting in real time, allowing each success, mistake, delay, and surprise to become part of what the work is teaching.
Pricing:
- We intentionally keep our pricing broad enough to meet a wide range of budgets, because access to retreat should not belong only to one economic category.
- Both Zoetic properties offer private accommodations, which is uncommon in many retreat settings where shared rooms are standard. Privacy is part of the experience we consider essential to deep inward work.
- Zoetic Forest is a large ranch-style property with substantial indoor and outdoor space, designed more like a secluded private home than a conventional retreat facility, which allows guests to experience a high level of comfort while still remaining in silence
- • Zoetic River offers newly built private suites and a more elevated luxury setting; the rooms are intentionally designed to feel refined, quiet, and high-end while remaining accessible compared with what comparable private retreat accommodations often cost elsewhere
- For anyone who cannot afford even our lower pricing tiers, we regularly make space through scholarships, sliding support, or full-cost waivers when people reach out directly. Financial limitation alone is not something we want to be the reason a sincere person cannot come
Contact Info:
- Website: https://zoeticriver.com/zoeticforest.com
- Instagram: zoetic.river.retreat/ zoetic.forest
