Ann Kolb Nature Center is a 20 acre coastal mangrove area located at West Lake Park, about 20 miles north of Miami in Hollywood, FL. This pristine tropical wonderland is where I come to meditate, write and forget about the urbane ills of the city. Usually, I walk the boardwalk and end up at a cozy nook overlooking expansice West Lake, a tributary lake off from the Intercoastal Waterway from the Atlantic Ocean. Here, I can partner with the birds, butterflies, fish and the beauty of God’s nature. Also, I know that the birds and butterflies will not answer as I talk to them, only allowing me to listen to their chirping and fluttering of silent wings, respectfully. For me, this personal sancutary is not a selfish pursuit, but an essential one with deep psychological significance. It’s a serves a practical purpose -- a quiet existence that allows me to write, with space large enough to offer my mind a chance to reverberate sans the ills of a cluttered one. It’s my private place, a bit of defensible territory that I can control...it represents and express my own sense of who I am.

Some of my friends that are writers often tell me that the best times that they have to write is in the dead of night, or in the wee hours of the mornings when all is asleep. That’s good if it works for them, but sometime there will be a need to just secure that one place where inhibitions and home settings will not be interruptive. At some point people will awake from their sleep and the hour will come when the whole household will erupt in their daily emanations. Even with that, you know that modern technology with all of the bells and whistles will be coming from all sides -- the cell phones, the Internet, instant messaging, the house phone ringing off the hook, not to mention the other daily functions if you happen to be a dutiful wife with a husband depending on breakfast in the mornings, or supper at night; or kids clamoring for their space with you. So there’s all the reasons why the need for an opportunity to pull back an have your own thoughts, to kind of hear yourself think is important. Keep in mind that there’s an introverted side of all of us, and introspective, if not restorative part of our personality that yearns for some ‘me’ time. For myself, and perhaps many of you reading this, the aspect of inner-happiness is how we access energy so that our writing will have clarity and the storytelling will be off the chain!  It’s akin to how important you may feel meditation is to your process. I meditate all the time...I talk to God for Him to guide me in my journalistic venues and how I shape my essays. I also refer it to as my fertile void. Once I enter the void, I start to see things from a different and higher plane. It’s my way of zoning out, just concentrating on nature, the birds and the quietude of still waters. I love to watch nature and I tend to slow down to the rhythm of it. Try if you will, the alluring backdrop of a sunrise or a sunset and I’m sure it will mesmerize you, and it won’t be hard for you to let indelible ink flow to supplement any page-turning delight.  

In closing, endeavor to enjoy that you’d claim as your own...a space where it would be established somewhere along your journey for all things literary to personify pointing to the great paradoxical value of a personal haven. It would be your destination that’s not a goal, but rather an endless beginning. When I subsequently read your work, I want to feel that you wrote it within the confines that allowed you space to write uninhibited and untethered. Know that good things come from a quiet place. Study, prayer, music, transformation, worship, communion -- you name it, it’s a transcendal piece where the soul is at ease. I feel that the words peace and quiet are all but synonymous, often spoken in the same breath and great for good prose. A quiet place is the think tank of the soul -- spawning grounds for truth and beauty. My quiet place has no physical borders or limits to perception. I can commonly hear for miles and listen even further. A quiet place for you should afford a sanctuary for your soul, where the difference between right and wrong becomes more readily apparent. It’s also that place to feel the love that connects all things, large and small, human or not; a place where the presence of a tree, a river, a lake or the clear azure sky can be felt. My dear friends, a quiet place is a place to open up all your senses and come alive -- find yours!