22 September 26
Slinking Towards Nature Journaling
I have not been very consistent about nature journaling, unlike my daily sketching habit and writing my daily regular journal. After watching some of the Wild Wonder conference last week I’d like to be doing more of it but need to figure out what barriers have been getting in my way. One of this is the sentiment I have to be out in the wilds to do nature journaling, though this is of course not the case. Another is that I’ve been exposed to two major exemplars for nature journaling, neither of which is going to work for me. The first is the Grinnell Method for writing field notes, which I was exposed to as a zoology student 44 years ago. This is very rigorous and scientific but not a great deal of fun. The second is seeing the journals of professional scientific illustrators, which intimidate me in with the quality of their field sketches. What if I instead think of the journal as a record of nature as it comes along in my daily path? Backyard garden notes are good to do here.
This page is from a nature journaling outing I did yesterday to the local arboretum. This isn’t precisely my backyard, but it’s only eight blocks.
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