Deborah dreamt about finding a country place where she could teach, create and live, dreamt about it for many years before the right land and home fell into her lap in 1999.

Just north of Missoula, Montana, only 20 minutes from town, Athanor Arts - A Haven for the Creative Spirit came into being in 2001.

A 30-foot diameter round canvas structure, called a yurt, nestles in trees next to a meadow and provides an expansive workshop space, along with smaller studios devoted to clay and stained glass. A pond, wondrous woodland and occasional wildlife provide an atmosphere which makes it easier for anyone to reclaim the passion in life and to experience creative expression.

The retreat is available to rent for small intimate gatherings and workshops. Please call or email Deborah to inquire. For overnight retreats, she collaborates with the Russian Olive Bed and Breakfast nearby ( no website as yet. ) and Heart View Retreat Center in Arlee.

The word, Athanor, by the way, was chosen after many days looking in books for the right name. Deborah found it first in the Women's Dictionary of Symbols and Sacred Objects: Athanor is described as "the alchemist's furnace, a mystic vessel of creation variously regarded as the womb of matter, . . .or the dwelling place of the Anima Mundi.

Like all mystic vessels, it served as a metaphoric uterus as well as a piece of laboratory equipment. The regenerative process that was supposed to take place within the athanor was written Solve et Coagula: dissolve the present, reconstitute the future. . ."

Wanting to be sure the word wasn't considered new age jargon, Deborah turned to her parents' crumbling dictionary - The Oxford Universal Dictionary - to see if it was a real word, an old word. There athanor is described as "a digesting furnace used by the alchemists, in which a constant heat was maintained by means of a self-feeding apparatus."

The word has been in use since 1471. Old enough. . . And what better word to express Deborah's desire to facilitate each person's ability to remember their own inner wisdom, to self-nurture and self-empower.