![]() Keeping a nature journal helps me organize information and line up my questions. I learned about the geology of the Grand Canyon by mapping the layers I could see from the Kaibab Trail. How many petals are on that flower? Do they grow in a spiral? I learned basic bird anatomy - median coverts, greater coverts, primary coverts, anyone? - by drawing birds from field guides and pictures. It’s taught me to slow down and really look at the things. Still, even with my lack of artistic skill, adding drawing and sketching to my journal practice has vastly improved my skills of observation. After a few weeks I managed this one good sketch of a bohemian waxwing, plus a large discard pile of lumpy-looking sparrows and warblers! © Justine E. But a few years ago I decided to try my hand at birds, using The Laws Guide to Drawing Birds. I usually stick to drawing landscapes and plants because, well, they don’t move. She is braver than I am though and agreed to let me share one of her bird drawings. Justine Hausheer, another CGS writer who was kind enough to share some of her own journal entries, also likes drawing maps and landscapes for the same reason I do. If the water was too murky, the diving board was closed. Definitely not to scale, but it’s more about remembering the details: the water snake we saw on the trail and how the lifeguards at the swimming hole used a Secchi disc to measure water turbidity. I like to record maps of hikes we’ve done, like this one from Robert H. Sometimes I’ll spend time on a more detailed entry. ![]() “Don’t mention the vultures.” Learning, Memory & Observation “Please, Mom,” he said, as we walked down the hall. So late, I had to do the walk of shame into the office and explain to the disapproving school secretary that his tardiness was entirely my fault. Nothing in the picture would help me remember how my absorption with watching the vultures meant my fourth grader was late for school that morning. Vultures in the Horaltic pose (taken from car window on a cold December morning) © Cara Byington I didn’t have a red pen handy for the head.) I also took a picture with my phone to get the specifics, but the picture doesn’t tell the whole story. Like this vulture (trust me, that’s a turkey vulture. Sometimes it’s just a quick sketch dashed off in the margins. I don’t really remember when I first started adding sketches and maps to my journals. Though re-reading some of those entries is a pre-adolescent cringefest.) It had a bright blue cover with a rainbow on it. (I bought my first journal at a Waldenbooks in Virginia Beach. I’ve kept a journal regularly since I was 12. You may never draw as beautifully as Clare Walker Leslie or John Muir Laws, whose nature journals are exquisite, or be as technically accurate as a scientist recording field notes for rigorous studies, but you don’t have to be. Wildflower Watching as a Source of Solace and Diversion.Honestly, learning everything else - about drawing, sketching and painting, perspective, birds, plants, mammals, reptiles, geology, the list of things you can learn is endless - is the point and the fun of keeping a nature journal, or adding nature observations to an existing journaling practice, in the first place. To keep a nature journal, you don’t have to be anything but curious. You don’t have to be an expert naturalist or birder or scientist. And squeals.Ĭlearly, you don’t have to be a good artist - or any kind of artist, really - to reap the many rewards of keeping a nature journal. And then the third grade girls discovered it and there were tears. Except, you know, it was just tenderizing. Kind of like it was cuddling with the snake. And the rabbit’s ears were floating straight up. White rabbit caught in its thick coils – underwater – snake’s head was up on a little shelf. Well, the anaconda, the dead rabbit and about 10 third grade boys on a field trip. Grow up outdoors and you get your fair share of snake stories….one of my favorites is still the Anaconda at the Jacksonville Zoo. For proof, I refer you to Exhibit A below, “sketch of white rabbit caught in anaconda’s coils.” Exhibit A. I mention this because almost every time I talk with someone about keeping a “nature” journal they say something along the lines of, I’d love to do that, but I can’t draw. True confession: I have little to no artistic skill.
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