You are invited to attend a retreat at the author's lakeside cottage -- but -- it doesn't require your physical presence -- just the presence of your mind and imagination. Beneath the Stars & Trees will help you withdraw from life's disractions and retreat to a place within where you can see clearly the mucltitude of complex factors that make up daily life. This book is an invitation to straighten out all the mental and emotional clutter that tears you away from the person you really are -- or want to be -- complete with guidelines on how to 'work' with the inner you. "...a woodland retreat, not only into nature, but into the very heart of our being..." -- Brad Steiger Jan Kolb is the author of four previous books: Compassion for All Creatures Journal of Love The Enchantment of Writing, and Higher Ground all published by Blue Dolphin Jan's Woodland Retreat is a place teeming with animal and human life, and yet peaceful and serene. -- Mark Sardella, Wakefield Daily, March 2002 Janice Kolb along with her husband Bob are the parents of six grown children and have nineteen grandchildren. Their life has revolved around raising a loving family with religious values. In addition to raising their family, Janice developed a letter writing and audio tape ministry that gives encouragement and spiritual support to those who need it all over the United States. Other inspirational works published by Janice Kolb include: Journal of Love, Compassion for All Creatures, Higher Ground, The Enchantment of Writing, the Pine Cone Journal, and Silent Violence. In a cooperative effort, Janice wrote the book, Whispered Notes, with her husband Bob. Highway to Higher Ground There are places of the heart, places of the soul, and not having such a place even if it be only in the imagination, is enough to make the difference between living fully or dying within. When I was a child my Mother always spoke of wanting to live in a white cottage with blue shutters surrounded by a white picket fence. I do not know if she longed for her dream cottage to be in the suburbs or in the country. Often on a Sunday afternoon when I was a little girl, my parents and I would take a drive to other areas outside the city of Philadelphia, but she never found the home of her dreams. If she did find it she never spoke of it. I do not believe she could ever have made this drastic move. She was entrenched in their city row home on Third Street, and there lifestyle there. Both my parents had been raised in the inner city, and when they married and moved to this home five years before my birth, I am certain they felt as if they were living in the suburbs. ! And in a sense for most of their lives there they were, until the problems of the city began to touch these outskirts. My mother's cottage with blue sutters lived in her heart. When I married as a young girl I left this home of my childhood in the purlieu of Philadelphia to live eventually in suburbia, though not far from where I grew up. It was there Bob and I reared our six children. But once I had discovered life by a lake in the woods, my heart remained in that woods until I could eventually call it my permanent "home," as my heart had previously done twenty-one years earlier. It is in this beautiful locality in New Hampshire that we have lived since January 1996 and vacationed since 1975. As did my Mother, I carried a cottage in my heart - my cottage. Only my dream became a reality, and my cottage is woodland green. In this cottage hours go by without the need to speak. My joy is so complete. My heart is so at peace. This cottage and woods were so essential to our souls that ever since we purchased the cottage we were drawn to it again and again. We would even drive the 420 miles to spend a weekend here to become rejuvenated. Leaving Pennsylvania during the night of a Thursday we would arrive sometime Friday morning. By Sunday noon we had to drive back to Pennsylvania, but we had been touched and changed and could not wait until our next trip north. Bob would even make phone calls from his office at the end of a hard day to our empty cottage, just so he could hear the phone ring and connect, and be here in imagination. It was a form of healing to him. After living here permanently these past four years I can write in deepest truth that enchantment is ever present; the wonder, the awe, the joy - and this is at last, our only and forever home. We rejoice at this daily. People say they can feel the difference when after almost a mile ride through the woods they arrive at the top of our hill, drive down, and are on our property. No matter what the season it is another world. My friend Joanne has called it "Land of Enchantment," and oh, I agree. There is not a time that I drive down the hill, alone or with Bob, that my heart does not dance, and I am in awe that this is our home. Daytime, nighttime, the magic is there! And I am grateful. Each season its unique beauty and mysteries awaiting to be dis