The MAEEC program has become my village, and the students have become my family.  The professors, my mentors much akin to me, and the laboratory of 260 hectares of marvelous beauty is willing me to do more, be more and educate more.

Today was a wonderful day of exploration and appreciative inquiry as we stepped across the multitude of tide pools at Botanical Beach, near Sooke BC.  I feel blessed that we, our cohort, got to spend the day with Dr. Rick Kool.

Rick Kool is a professor at Royal Roads University among many other things. He is one of the main reasons that I chose to take this program, and feel privileged to have had coffee with him in Victoria a few months before applying to the program.

One of my fondest memories of Rick was when I told him my idea for a thesis and he said something along the lines of “That is a great thesis, and I encourage you to be open to other options as well.”  In that moment I was pretty firm about what it was that I wanted to study.  But since that moment, I have had many revelations as I expand my knowledge and network at the Royal Roads University.

I am now inspired by the work of people like Elin Kelsey, who is another new role model… She wrote a book that I can’t wait to share with the world called “You are Stardust.”

We sat in the forest and cried at how moved we are with not only her work, but how the way this program moves people to be moved.  We are the Choir, as Cara Pike (a recent presenter) suggested, and we are going to do something with what we are learning here.

I feel like this is a Royal Road that I am riding down.  A royal road of academia, fellowship, stewardship and influence, and my journey as a cyclist is a metaphor for that journey.  Riding the Royal Road is coming soon!  I think I signed up for something big here, and the whole world gets to hear about it!

Jennifer Ellen Good, the author of TELEVISION and the Earth… Not a Love Story has a provocative way of enticing us to think in a critical way about our perception and how we are influenced by television.  It always seems like an oximoron that we talk about TV and media, whilst sitting on the pebbles lining a tiny brook in the deep woods of the Royal Roads campus forest.  What a privilege to have my brain stretched by such a thoughtful woman!

One more week with this wonderful world of paradise.  I feel like I am in the lab of the Celestine Prophecy where the scientists are studying how happiness can make a plant grow. Although a fiction novel, this novel was one of the main reasons that I quit searching for healing from outside myself, and learned that I can be healed by nature.

In this learning I crave to know more and share more of what I have learned about the magic of nature, no matter how “Taboo” the words healing and magic may seem.

Stay tuned for more writing on this particular topic, because it will be due soon!