Journal With Impact: Nature Interest

Workshop: Six Conversations for Writing Creative Journals

“The act of recording a life, in healthy solitude and active connection to loved terrain, is also the act of creating a life.”                                    Hannah Hinchman

How to find that creative interest? Begin from your own home habitat.

Like any other journal, the nature journal also extends from the five minute quick write such as ‘what did I see in nature today that affected me’ to a deep detailed scientific analysis. Sometimes the more we connect the more we want to explore. Our interest is not satisfied with a passing glance.

However there are also so many possibilities to explore that we’re not always sure exactly where we’d like to dig deep. Here are some suggestions to try out a day at a time, or a week at a time, or for long-term studies a month. When you find your journal responses producing more and more questions and ideas, then follow that curiosity.

1. Take a different route for a walk each time. Look for anything that surprises you.

2. Or look for a specific feature: type of tree, animals you see, smells and shapes.

3. Keep a log of the weather patterns or the sunrise, sunset for a month.

4. Choose one spot and look at it morning noon and night. What stays the same? What is different?

5. Choose a particular study such as the moon, or tides, or seasons and watch the changes over a long period of time.

6. Or, on the same idea, watch a nest of birds for their entire cycle while taking daily readings. Mark the day-by-day different changes.

7. If you are keeping a more scientific study create a template page where you can mark dates or time of day, notes pertinent to your study and sketches or photos.

8. Keep a sketch journal only. Or, if unable to draw, take photographs and make it a visual journal.

9. Collect leaves or seeds or stones if allowed. Draw or trace them.

Once, when I first moved to a city that had a different skyline than any I had ever seen I spent every Sunday evening over the next two months describing the colors in the sky. Not one was a replica.

The main idea is to enjoy the beauty and mystery and astounding creation that too often we can take for granted in our busy lives.

Action Steps:

1. Which of the above caught your interest or led you to your own version? Why?

2. Design a study plan that fits your life so you look forward to each week’s    discovery.

Share: What would you like to watch for in nature over the next week or month?

Read deep, marcy