At Home On Earth

SIMPLE / SMART / SUSTAINABLE / STORIES

Alec Ross, one of Bluedot’s favorite writers (that’s him on the left), came to us in early summer with a pitch: Would we be interested in a story and some video about him paddling from Kingston, Ontario, to Ottawa along the Rideau Canal? We, of course, answered with an enthusiastic yes, and the result is this compelling travelogue in which Alec paddles more than 160 miles, shelters from thunderstorms, and hangs on while locks fill with water and lift him up. “The canalman motions me to enter the lock,” he writes, “and I paddle in. In seconds, I’m at the bottom of a tall chamber that resembles a swimming pool with sides made of giant stone blocks. It’s like entering the mount of some giant beast.”

Give your home a fresh dose of green this festive season with our Homegrown for the Holidays Giveaway! We've partnered with Modern Sprout to offer one lucky winner over $600 in beautiful, sustainable indoor gardening tools and accessories — perfect for cozy winter days and year-round plant joy. Whether you're a seasoned plant parent or just getting started, this is your chance to grow something good.

“The human spirit has a primal allegiance to wildness, to really live, to snatch the fruit and suck it, to spill the juice. We may think we are domesticated but we are not.”

– Jay Griffiths, author of Wild: An Elemental Journey (on Amazon and Thriftbooks)

Griffiths, a British writer, offers this advice for staying in touch with our wild selves: “Through language, through sensuality, through instinct, through all that is vivid, all that has spirit, everything through which life lives most ferociously and most sweetly. Lorca called it el duende, the spirit from the earth itself that charges art with power, and I believe that the indigenous human being within us all can feel that.”

• Climate Quick Tip: A (Rain) Barrel of Beauty

• Dear Dot: Why Are There So Many Stars? 

• Walking Along Toronto’s Humber River

• Going on an Adventure with the Okee Dokee Brothers

• Destination: Asheville, North Carolina

• An Herb Garden in Pretty Jars

• Seek out Dark Skies and Quiet Parks

• Human-Powered Travel: Paddling the Rideau Canal

• Why You Should Stay on the Trail

• Become a Bluedot Member, Get a Great Gift Pack

• Baking With Leftover Halloween Candy

• Camp Cooking: How-To

Make sustainable living simple with the Bluedot Living’s Green Home Deluxe Kit — a $170+ value collection of our editors’ favorite Earth-friendly products, free with your membership. You’ll also enjoy exclusive member savings, inspiring community connections, and more planet-positive perks.

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Baking With Leftover Halloween Candy

A Conversation With Joe Mailander of the Okee Dokee Brothers

Lifelong friends Joe Mailander and Justin Lansing, otherwise known as the Okee Dokee Brothers, paddled a canoe from the headwaters of the Mississippi River to the St. Louis Gateway Arch in 2011, writing the songs for Can You Canoe? along the way. The first entry in their Adventure Album Series, it won the Grammy Award for Best Children’s Album in 2013. Since then, the duo has released five more albums, all celebrating the outdoors. Bluedot contributor Christopher Lysik sat down with Joe to talk about the group’s origins and mission of connecting kids to nature through music.

Dear Dot: What Causes So Many Stars?

Dear Dot,

I was on an island off the northeast coast of the U.S. in late October and, one night, I noticed that the night sky looked different. I don’t remember ever seeing so many stars, and I’m someone who tends to look skyward a lot. Are stars brighter at that time of year? Was there some celestial event? Did I imagine it? 

–Dorothy

Dear Dorothy,

Many years ago, Dot sat mesmerized in an audience as Elizabeth Lindsey, a National Geographic fellow, enchanted us with stories of her ancestors, Pacific Island wayfinders who navigated the ocean in tiny boats by “reading” stars and waves, millennia before Western explorers. 

Indeed, writes Roberto Trotto, author of Starborn: How the Stars Made Us and Who We Would Be Without Them, in a story for TIME Magazine, it was the study of stars and other celestial bodies that helped usher in the Scientific Revolution in the 17th century, and “consequently, the advanced technology our lives depend on today — from electronic devices hinging on electromagnetism to planes relying on aerodynamics.” Beyond its role kindling our technological advances, night skies remind us that we are simultaneously small and yet bound up in the world’s beauty and history and sweep of time. We are, ourselves, in the words of Carl Sagan, “the local embodiment of a consciousness grown to self-awareness, we are star stuff pondering the stars.” Phil Plait is a kindred star-loving spirit. Phil is an astronomer and science writer (you can find him at his Bad Astronomy newsletter, on Scientific American, and also on Bluesky). And Phil wanted to know where you were when you noticed this spectacular night sky …

What did our celestial-curious friend discover? Read on. 

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What You Can Do: Seek Out Dark Skies and Quiet Parks

Folks who cherish our wild world have been hard at work preserving it for everyone to savor. Love the night sky? Visit a Dark Sky Preserve, areas that have little light pollution, allowing us to relish the constellations. Seeking silence? Quiet Parks International has been quietly designating parks around the world to ensure they remain protected from noise pollution, such as this conservation area at California’s Anza Borrego State Park.

The Keep-This Handbook

Camping doesn’t have to mean relying on prepackaged meals and sacrificing flavor at mealtime. Bluedot contributor and chef Justin McChesney-Wachs gives us his best camp cooking tips to reduce waste (and stress), plus three easy recipes that build on each other. Save this for your next weekend outdoors!

Stop and Taste the Wild Fennel

Reconnecting with nature somehow makes my problems feel both insignificant and divinely constructed — one of life’s most comforting contradictions. So when my mom had a tough week, I took her to my favorite hiking trail along the coast of the Palos Verdes Peninsula. As we walked, I pointed out an invasive wild fennel plant that was growing by the trail. I told her to break off a piece and chew the stem. She did, however hesitantly, and was rewarded with the sweet flavor of nature’s licorice. On one of the more difficult hills, I reminded her to look back while we stopped to catch our breath, so we could take in the ocean view and appreciate how far we’d climbed. Once we got back to the car, she seemed visibly lighter, her stress now diminished and deepened by Mother Nature’s funhouse perspective. 

Whether you are able to find respite in nature right in your backyard, hidden in the middle of the city, or on a trail, spending time outdoors can be a powerful emotional regulator — something we can all use, especially now.

Enjoy the weekend, find comfort in nature, and we’ll see you next week.

– Emily Cain (and Robin Jones, Jamie Kageleiry, and Leslie Garrett)

Editors

Write us at editor@bluedotliving.com

Leslie Garrett has been covering climate stories for close to two decades.  She makes her home in Canada, west of Toronto. She’s still figuring out her favorite spot but it’s definitely near the water.

Jamie Kageleiry, a longtime magazine and newspaper editor from Martha’s Vineyard, says her favorite spot on earth is out on a kayak there, looking at birds.

Robin Jones is a Southern California native who served as an editor at Westways magazine for more than a decade. She lives in Long Beach and teaches journalism at Cal State Long Beach.

Emily Cain is a recent graduate of Cal State Long Beach, where she wrote and edited for the university’s award-winning magazine, DIG.

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