With initial questions that were born while fishing on the rivers as a boy, Skeet wondered about how and why we have come to live in the world as degraded as it is.  Sir Sandford Fleming College, where he received a diploma in Ecosystem Management(2002), provided Skeet with the firm understanding of our current state of ecological health. By learning the many languages of science, Skeet gathered the skills and tools needed to create a career out of addressing the need for restoring the natural world.  Most important to his studies were the various integral and interdisciplinary approaches to modern restoration ecology that were being revolutionized.  What stood out to Skeet was the need for local, ecological community stewardship and the severe lack of vision and cultural leadership within the cultural community as a whole.

     The ability to raise awareness of local ecological stewardship combined with his great love for forested habitat and preservation what is left of the North Eastern Woodlands led Skeet to become an accredited (MNR) Managed Forest Plan Approver(2003) with the Managed Forest Tax Incentive Program (MFTIP).  Skeet enables people to be sound stewards of their land by combining interdisciplinary skills and mentoring them in the sustainable and practical use of their habitat.

     The majority of people in this world are tourists, strangers to the very plants, trees and wild things that surround them everyday– the common things.  The question of how to grow awareness in people– before the very resources that sustain them run out– became the driving force in Skeet’s life.  The quest to answer this question brought Skeet to meet Tom Brown Jr. and to attend his Tracking, Nature Awareness and Wilderness Survival School, in New Jersey, USA(2003).  Skeet found the practical application of land stewardship through the ancient skills of cultures who lived close to the land.  Learning to preserve these known recipes for living within the carrying capacity of the local ecosystem became a life long journey of learning through experience; the more you experience the less these so-called natural things are looked at as mere resources but rather sacred members of the songline of life.

     Tom’s Vision of preserving the “ancient skills” evolved out of the teachings from his mentor Stalking Wolf, a Lipan Apache elder.  Tom, who was mentored for ten years by Stalking Wolf, trained in the ancient skills of tracking, awareness, wilderness survival and the ways of the spirit.  It is through the passionate application of these skills that true awareness arises in people, in a way that continually produces universal results.  The teaching methods, known to so many as “the way of the coyote,” refers to a teaching or mentoring style which is fundamental to all earth-based cultures.  To evoke an answer from a student, a mentor will ask questions, leading the student ever closer to their destination, yet allowing them to find their own way down the path.