Retreat From AIDS : Spirituality: Thirty HIV patients find weeklong refuge from loneliness and pressure associated with the disease.

In the deep shade of a tree-filled canyon, along a stream still running from spring rains, Toni Campbell found refuge. Nestled in the sage-covered hills a dozen miles east of here, she was free for a time from the loneliness and pressure of being a woman and mother with AIDS.

“You know, what’s funny is, we really don’t have to talk about AIDS here,” she said. “Everybody has HIV or AIDS, so it’s not something we have to explain.”

Campbell, from Anaheim, is one of 30 women and men infected with the AIDS virus who return to their homes today after spending the week at the Lazy W Ranch off Ortega Highway.

Orange County’s Methodist churches sponsored the retreat, called “Strength for the Journey,” to give people with AIDS just that. Similar retreats have been held in San Diego and Los Angeles in recent years, but officials with local AIDS organizations say they know of no other such weeklong getaways offered in Orange County. Yet, no one questioned the need.

“It’s so important for them to have a place to come and relax and unwind and play,” said Katherine Gara, pastor of Spurgeon United Methodist Church in Santa Ana.

Gara began coordinating the retreat last year after coming to Orange County from San Diego, where she led the rejuvenating escapes for five years. She does not have the disease, but she felt drawn to help its victims after her own two-year battle with a life-threatening virus that mystified doctors as it came and went.

“Out of that illness, I felt a real kinship with people with AIDS,” she said.

But she works hard to win the trust of people with AIDS, who are often leery of organized religions that have looked judgmentally upon those with the disease.

“This is a group of people, from the beginning, that the church has really failed,” she said. “A lot of them are spiritually hungry but they’re very distrustful of organized religion.”

That’s why there was little mention of religion in the camp this past week. Gara will don her clerical vestments to lead a closing prayer service this morning, but the focus of the retreat was on helping participants unburden their stress and pain and loneliness, not on proselytizing.

And that was comforting to many campers, who came to the ranch on Monday with a lot of apprehension.

“I wanted to catch the next car out of here,” admitted a man from Laguna Beach, who asked that his name not be used.

But a week of body massages, group therapy sessions, meditation workshops, cucumber facials and talks about natural medications in the hushed, peaceful setting of rustic cabins changed his mind. After a few days he shed the low-grade headaches, tense shoulders and digestive problems he has endured since finding out he was HIV-positive in 1989.

And, he said, the cost was right. Some of the campers paid $125 to attend, while others came on scholarships financed by area churches.

“Not only are you out in nature, but you have a place where you can be honest about your HIV status,” he said. “Because, usually, it’s a thing you hide. In the eyes of a lot of people it’s as close to leprosy as you can get.”

The moment that drew them together, he and his fellow campers said, was the memorial campfire Wednesday night. There they wrote on slips of paper the names of friends, lovers and family members who had died--either of AIDS or other causes--and placed them in the fire.

In the protection of the darkness and the warmth of the fire, the group of professionals, musicians, salesmen, parents, costume designers and others finally began to open up. Whether they were in their 40s and visibly weakened from years of staving off the disease, or in their 20s appearing healthy while coming to grips with news that the virus was in their blood, they shared their stories.

Most of the campers had one thing in common: They are gay men.

But then there were others, like Susan Tibbetts.

Two months ago, Tibbetts, 35, moved to Laguna Beach from Clinton, Me.--population 2,200-- to start her life over again. For the last two years she had been speaking out about AIDS in her community, providing a living example to civic groups and school children that the disease doesn’t discriminate between heterosexual, married women like herself and homosexual males.

Tibbetts acquired the disease about 10 years ago from a heroin-using former husband who fed his addiction with hypodermic needles. Feeling chronically ill two years ago, her fears were realized when a doctor finally relented to her demands and tested her for AIDS.

But her desire to speak out about the disease led her second husband to ask for a divorce.

“I was tired of living a lie,” she said.

Tibbetts said she came to the retreat feeling alone. That changed when she met the other campers, especially Toni Campbell.

Though they had known each other just a few days, they sat at a picnic table trading stories about the hardships they’ve shared. They promised to keep in touch.

Campbell, who contracted the disease through unprotected sex, is a single mother of children aged 8, 7 and 5. Tibbetts has three stepchildren.

“I came here to find spirituality, inner strength and to dump some garbage,” Campbell said. “I think I’ve done that.”

Tibbetts said she felt free again.

“It’s really helped me get in touch with my inner child,” she said.

“I mean, there’s the brook right there,” she said motioning to the stream where a man sat, writing in his journal. “And there’s the swings.”

“I don’t know how long it had been since I was on a swing,” she said, her eyes welling with tears. “It’s just a wonderful thing.”