The outside is calling you.

Not to get all Jack London on you, but this is a great time of year to listen to the call of the wild and shun one of humanity’s greatest inventions, the roof. In celebration of both spring and Earth Month (here are a few reading suggestions for the latter), let’s take a stroll into the EcoSalon archives in search of anything that might pry us off our computers and gadgets – just for a while.

Think Facebook isn’t a big time-sink in your life? Try adding it up. The average U.S. Facebook user logged a rather horrifying seven hours and 46 minutes per month as of August 2011, and that figure has probably risen since then. Imagine if you spent all of that time on something that makes you feel genuinely happy, grounded and relaxed. Here are 20 suggestions, from letter-writing to exploring your neighborhood.

20 Things To Do Instead Of Being On Facebook

The technology that so many people rely on to do their jobs has undoubtedly made us more efficient and, for that reason, it’s likely not going anywhere. That means many people will never have jobs that require using their hands for much more than typing and clicking. But that doesn’t change the fact that human beings were designed to create more than just tweets and word documents.

7 Ways T0 Get Your Hands Dirty

Take up urban foraging. Who doesn’t like free food? Learn about wild, regional edible plants or befriend a neighbor with an overloaded fruit tree going to waste. Augment your diet with fresh, free foods!

Broke? 20 Fun Things To Do Without Spending A Dime

Hundreds of sick pelicans have fallen to the ground from Mexico to Oregon, smashing into cars, boats and beaches, and experts are baffled. Authorities have ruled out domoic acid poisoning, which has affected wildlife before. It’s nothing short of a mystery. Surviving pelicans have been found in yards and on roads, disoriented and weak. So far, experts think the cause could be anything from unknown poison contamination to exposure to the toxic run-off from the recent Southern California fires to malnutrition due to evaporating fish stocks.

Though the exact cause is a mystery, it’s almost certainly due to human impact. And, it’s only the most recent case in a slew of disturbing mass animal deaths around the world.

Pelicans Are Falling Out The Sky (And Other Mysterious Mass Animal Deaths)

Gardening is hot, hot, hot. And why not? Planting a few seeds on your deck or in your backyard yields delicious, organic results – and money savings, too. Besides, April is National Gardening Month! You know the basics of how to start your own vegetable garden, but where do you go from here? Here are some crops that even the least green thumbed among you can tackle, and tips on how to make them flourish.

The 10 Easiest Vegetables To Grow At Home

If you’re taking a stroll through the English landscape…Andy Goldsworthy wants to stop you in your tracks.

He’s a British sculptor, photographer and committed environmentalist, and he likes arranging things. He turns random piles of stones into gravity-defying structures and scattered leaves into dazzling gradiated rainbows. He tracks lines and curves upon the ground where none should exist, stacks ice in the unlikeliest of places, and puts patterns and colors into the landscape that would make any onlooker rub their eyes. And the true magic of his work is that for a second – just for a second – you believe it’s the work of nature. What would your first thought be if you encountered these in the wild?

Andy Goldsworthy’s Amazing Works Of Art

Images: photosteve101, sir mervs, sun dazed, Ron Dressel and paolobrandao.

The post From the Vault: The Call of the Great Outdoors appeared first on EcoSalon.

A letter (of love?) from Jack London to fellow writer Anna Strunsky.

Who better to write the world’s most memorable love letters than the world’s most famous writers? In turning to author and journalist Jack London, we are faced with a question – where does close friendship end and love begin?

Dear Anna,

April 3, 1901

Did I say that the human might be filed in categories? Well, and if I did, let me qualify — not all humans. You elude me. I cannot place you, cannot grasp you. I may boast that of nine out of ten, under given circumstances, I can forecast their action; that of nine out of ten, by their word or action, I may feel the pulse of their hearts. But of the tenth I despair. It is beyond me. You are that tenth.

Were ever two souls, with dumb lips, more incongruously matched! We may feel in common — surely, we oftimes do — and when we do not feel in common, yet do we understand; and yet we have no common tongue. Spoken words do not come to us. We are unintelligible. God must laugh at the mummery.

The one gleam of sanity through it all is that we are both large temperamentally, large enough to often understand. True, we often understand but in vague glimmering ways, by dim perceptions, like ghosts, which, while we doubt, haunt us with their truth. And still, I, for one, dare not believe; for you are that tenth which I may not forecast.

Am I unintelligible now? I do not know. I imagine so. I cannot find the common tongue.

Large temperamentally — that is it. It is the one thing that brings us at all in touch. We have, flashed through us, you and I, each a bit of universal, and so we draw together. And yet we are so different.

I smile at you when you grow enthusiastic? It is a forgivable smile — nay, almost an envious smile. I have lived twenty-five years of repression. I learned not to be enthusiastic. It is a hard lesson to forget. I begin to forget, but it is so little. At the best, before I die, I cannot hope to forget all or most. I can exult, now that I am learning, in little things, in other things; but of my things, and secret things doubly mine, I cannot, I cannot. Do I make myself intelligible? Do you hear my voice? I fear not. There are poseurs. I am the most successful of them all.

Jack

Is this the voice of an eloquent man overcome with passion? Clearly. What kind of passion? Good question. At the time of writing, London was a willing participant in a loveless marriage to his first wife, Bessie Madern – a union designed to create stability and children. It would falter, and a divorce would follow in 1904. Through this marriage ran the close friendship he shared with Strunsky. Both writers were fascinated with the nature of love, and would collaborate on The Kempton-Wace Letters (1903), a fictionalised exploration of two philosophies of love with Strunsky taking the romantic view, London the scientific.

So is this a letter exploring a friendship and foreshadowing a piece of academic enquiry – or is it the work of a man who can’t contain his romantic feelings? We may never know.

Images: Wikimedia Commons & JackLondons.net.

The post The Love Letters Project #9: Jack London and Anna Strunsky appeared first on EcoSalon.