“Just make your world the world,” Mr. Smiley said as he walked along a new 6.2-mile nature trail on the inn’s crazy golf course. “If you make small daily changes, like reducing waste and plastic, you’ll feel good.”
Deep River, Ontario
“I think the climate crisis can make people feel so paralyzed, like it’s almost too little, too late,” said Shannon MacLaggan, who created Anupaya Cabin Co. with her husband, Pete, as a shelter in the desert and an incubator for climate action. in 2021. “There are huge internal concepts about how to deal with global warming, but this is something tangible and actionable.”
The 12-acre property (nightly rates from $232), along the upper Ottawa River, features a lodge, private beach and eight renovated cabins, each with a kitchen, grill, fireplace and terrace views of the Laurentian Mountains. Anupaya invites every guest—the city’s youth groups get a 50 percent discount on rooms—to join the environmental movement in any way they can.
That might mean participating in cleanups through the hotel’s One Pound Promise initiative (60,000 pounds of trash has been collected so far), foraging workshops, planting fruit trees and berry bushes, or learning to grow and harvest food in the garden, where guests often find pulling invasive plants and picking salad ingredients. Visitors can also work on trail management projects with local nonprofit Friends of Rivière du Moine or do trail maintenance at the nearby Four Seasons Conservancy. “The reason we started Anupaya is to remind people how much a part of nature we all are,” Ms MacLaggan said. “If you love something, you feel a sense of responsibility towards it.”
Anupaya is introducing more formal volunteering opportunities in 2024. Running from May to November, the Sustainable Saturdays initiative will offer free two-hour educational sessions on composting, creating a medicinal garden, raising chickens and more.
