From the North, from the East, from the South, from the West

It's 12:20am and I am sitting in the dining area on the second floor of the Ashram main hall. I have a cup of chamomile tea and a piece of apple pie, and faintly from downstairs I can hear the mellow strains of Feist. Almost everyone, I think, by now is in or near their beds, at the end of our opening evening for the retreat, one which was energizing, inspiring, and invigorating, and overall a giant piece of affirmation that this was exactly the right thing to do. Several people have said to me how happy they are to be here, that they are excited by the content, by the delivery, and by the spirit of everyone who has come to the table in a spirit of sharing and discovery. One of the greatest things for me has simply been to settle into the guidance of our facilitator, Mike Balkwill, who has, since the moment we began planning this retreat together, consistently reassured, calmed, and inspired me to keep the faith and find solutions to whatever roadblock or mini-crisis popped up.

Mike is the father of my good friend Dan, which is how he got involved in this process in the first place. Dan and I met almost 4 years ago, at the founding summit of the CYCC in Toronto. Immediately I felt a special vibe from Dan - groundedness, positivity, open-mindedness, up-frontedness (sorry for all the adverbing, it's late). Dan and I haven't had the chance to work much together over the years, but we've stayed in touch and the result was that when I wrote a short essay asking questions about the state of the youth climate movement in Canada and outlining some ideas for building it, Dan passed it along to his dad, who then got in touch to think about turning those ideas into plans.

I could provide a brief bio of Mike here, but why not just surf over to the page on him on this very website? Even after just a few short hours of facilitation tonight, I could not be more sure that Mike was the man for the job. A blend of really fun icebreakers, insightful activities, straight talk on the goals of the weekend, and education on the history of strategy kept the energy high, the attention focused and the minds sharp. Personally I felt like a racehorse chomping at the bit to dive in and figure out all the stuff we want to know - and we came up with a healthy list. Eryn Wheatley, from Greenpeace's Toronto office, made the observation that our goals are ambitious - but I was heartened to feel everyone agree and our determination to realize them. I think everyone also feels like we couldn't have a better person than Mike to keep us on track.

We are also benefiting immensely from our setting. The Ashram is beautiful in every way, from the warmth of the people, to the elegant design, to the environmental consciousness reflected in things like signs for minimizing consumption and wood heating. I am excited for the talk the Art of Living will give us tomorrow evening, on spirituality and activism and their approach to climate change.

More to come. Namaste,
Cameron

p.s. Comments are very, very welcome!

p.p.s The title for this post came from an activity we did called the Celtic wheel, where we explored the qualities of each cardinal direction and connected them with ourselves and each other. It was powerful and grounding and something which will stay with me for a long time. I'll work on getting a copy of the information up in our resources section!