Hollyhock

I stayed a week at Isla Cortes, one of the most beautiful island I ever seen in the north, off the coast of British Columbia, Canada.

I flought there from Seattle in a small seaplane: the trip lasted two and a half hours flying over rainforests, virgin beachs full of white dead trees, remote islands appearing in the middle of fog, with wild horses running after the noise of our plane, sailboats gently rolling on the North West pacific ocean.

The names on the map sound very familiar to me, like the Malaspina strait, named by an Italian explorer whose descendents are my neighbours in my native village in Tuscany.

Two stops for passing the Canadian border and leaving two passengers in exotic places like Nanaimo, sacred sound of local Indian tribes reminiscence and there we land, at Mansons Fields, where friends pick up and drive us through the local, endless rainforest, boarding lakes with snowy peaks in the horizon and eagles fishing.

Our destination was Hollyhock, a traning center opened 30 years ago as a sanctuary for studying innovations on nature conservation, renewable energies, social and environmental activism, mankind progress and future shaping.

Hollyhock is named by the Island flower in the picture and is located over the most sacred beach of the territory, where local indian tribes were organizing meetings, parties, holy ceremonies and peace traits.

In this beach marriages were celebrated and the presence of love is constant there.

On the night of July 26th we swimmed in the calm, shallow waters and I felt like an angel: it was the first day of the new Mayan year (where the earth, the sun, the moon and Sirius are aligned) and fluorescences created by special planctons illuminated the dark waters, as we moved around.

My hands, arms and legs had an aura of light while swimming under a sky full of stars and peace in my hearth.

Wolves were chanting to the half moon not far from the beach and the only think I was missing was my family and all my friends and students to share together a moment of so intense beauty.

Every year in the last 26, Hollyhock is the scenario of the «Summer gathering», a private meeting where you can only be invited by someone of the inner circle. I was there to present my new passion, ThinkidsProject, a non profit for introducing entrepreneurship into elementary and secondary schools all over the world.

I found a lot of support there and we started working on two ideas: collaborating with PYEglobal.org and creating a Thinkids camp at the shore of Atitlan, a sacred Mayan lake close to San Pedro, Guatemala, ended with a Tedxkids: this will help a lot the local mayan community, fighting to improve their kids education and local entrepreneurship. Our kids will join the camp as well, learning a lot from their mayan peers.

Every day the gathering started at 6am with an hour of meditation, followed by an hour and a half of yoga.

Breakfast was served at 8:30 while the «academic» program started at 9:30 and consisted of 4 conferences, salted with artistic performances.

Afternoons had two sessions of workshops, freely organized by participants, using Hollyhock facilities, the beach, a private house or even the jacuzzy at night, giving an idea about the free spirit lingering in the air.

Food was fully organic and mainly vegetarian, with the exception of the tasty salmons, locally fished, and an oyster barbecue on thursday night, which preceded the final night party.

I prefer to respect the private nature of the event, a kind of meeting among friends who are considered change makers and «terra-ists» and I will not disclose publicly the content of messages I heared there.

What I can say is I shared the gathering with some 80 people, basically shamans (people who open up spaces, curing your spirit through words, chants and rituals), storytellers, rainmakers, a purple astrologyst «dancing with wolfs», a Mayan king, an artist who is dedicating his poetry to fight against one-use-only-plastic-tools and save albatross, the mushroom king, musicians, poets, scientists, social entrepreneurs, expert fund raisers, 2 kids, generous nature lovers, volunteers, missionaries, activists, diverse and unique human beings and Manuel Maqueda who is all the above things together.