Carol Ohmart Behan thinks of herself first as a countrywoman. She was born and grew up in the Mohawk Valley of Upstate New York. Here she spent her childhood happily immersed in the natural beauties of her family's country home, absorbing its subtle and often magical inspirations, borne along by the slow, steady turn of the seasons.

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During college in the turbulent last years of the1960s her environmental and antiwar activism instilled a strong sense of public service. This led to "a few decades worth" of public school teaching, primarily high school English. During this time she helped raise a family, served as RE director at her UU church, did a stint as a school board member and was active in several other community groups in the Upper Unadilla Valley. Along the way she nurtured her writing life primarily through her journals and mentoring the creative writers among her students. She credits a synchronistic meeting at a 1990 teachers' conference with the Young Adult novelist, Robert Cormier, as the catalyst to taking herself seriously as a writer. He signed her program that day, "Write that novel for me." Ten years and two "practice novels" later she left fulltime teaching to pursue her life's passion, writing. Point of Departure, published by Trafford Publishers in April 2002, is the result. Her teaching continues through workshops and retreats (descriptions on the workshop page). In 2001 she began working with Dr. Lauren Artress in her program, Veriditas: The World-Wide Labyrinth Project, based at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. From this collaboration she has developed programs centered on the labyrinth and its applications to creativity and personal development.

At Glastonbury Tor October 2004

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