Ever since I was a little girl growing up in Connecticut, I was always outside more than I was inside. My brothers and I lived outside, whether it was playing stickball or football or building snowmen and igloos, we were out until our parents called us home for dinner, and often we went back out again when we were finished eating. There were forested areas all around us, from empty lots in the neighborhood to parks and vast open areas that we drove to when we were old enough.  My older brother and I and some of our friends would pick roads we had never been down before and when we found an interesting piece of forest, we would pull the car over and get out to explore. 

I remember being fascinated by giant boulders in the middle of nowhere, as if they had just been dropped there from outer space!  And the incredible mosses that grew everywhere were amazing and beautiful.  Such incredible colors we would see, from leaves to mosses to fungi, frogs and toads and lizards.  And the colors in the fall, oh the colors in the fall.  The walkway to our house would be filled with chrysanthemums that mimicked the incredible colors of the changing leaves!   And did I mention the colors in the spring, when the walkway would be lined with every color tulip you can imagine, and then some?

As a young adult in my early 20’s, I moved to South Florida and fell in love with the Everglades. I decided to go back to college and get a degree in Biology, with an emphasis in Botany and Ecology.  I have been working in this field for over 30 years and the changes I have seen in the environment around me are deeply disturbing.  And it is not just the environment that has changed, it is us as a nation.  We have forgotten how important the health of the environment is to our own well-being.  We have forgotten that plants not only give us the food we eat, but they give us the oxygen we breathe. Yes, they are that important. So why are we poisoning them and ourselves? We need to again see the value in nature, in huge flocks of birds migrating across hundreds of miles.

            This is what the Peaceful Pathway is all about, getting back in touch with nature, which, in turn, will get us back in touch                  with ourselves, with our own true nature.  We need to relearn how to nurture ourselves, others and the planet. And we                 need to do this gently, one step at a time. Won’t you join me on this journey, a peaceful pathway leading to a peaceful                     planet? Our journey is long overdue.