About Lodestar
A founder-led project built in the field
Lodestar brings together outdoor exploration, field documentation, science, sound, and storytelling to create meaningful connections to Canadian landscapes.
Founder
Jason Nickerson
I am an avid hiker, trail runner, cyclist, and explorer. I have also spent much of my professional life working in humanitarian emergencies in some of the world's most difficult and, at times, remote places.
Lodestar grew from those experiences and from a persistent problem: some of the most meaningful parts of being somewhere that is unique and off-the-beaten-path are often the hardest to communicate after returning home. How can you fully describe what it feels like to stand atop Ishpatina Ridge, Ontario's highest point, or arrive at the summit of Mt. Carleton just as the sun rises and the fog breaks, or watch the sunset from Beni in Central African Republic?
I created the project to work across disciplines: collecting wild yeast, recording landscapes, documenting routes, testing ideas, and building releases that carry a clear relationship to where they began.
What Lodestar is
A project first. A brand because the work needs a home.
Lodestar operates as a commercial project, but the commercial product is not the starting point. The starting point is a place, a question, an emotion to be captured, or a field experiment worth pursuing.
The company structure provides the discipline required to make the work reliable, useful, and available. The project structure protects the curiosity and honesty that make it distinctive.
A note on evidence
The story should never outrun the facts
For every release, the goal is to explain where the fieldwork happened, what was collected or recorded, how it was handled, what was learned, and what the finished release can - and cannot - represent.
The result can still be emotionally and sensationally evocative. It should also be precise. Where I can, I try and explain and share the science behind the products I'm creating, whether that's in the form of a recipe, the types of wild yeast that are included in my sourdough starters, or the methods for capturing the sounds of the forest or aerial photography from a kite. My goal is to create things that are shareable, evocative, and that can be recreated by others.