Nature Journal Project
This month is a fresh start to my nature journaling journey. I’m keeping several different journals as a way to become more of a naturalist specializing in my own habitat. This just feels like it’s the right time.
Although I’m still trying to keep things simple, I’ve created a new routine for recording my daily notes and statistics as a way to reach my Nature Study Goals for 2019.
Daily Notebooks
Every day I create a brief entry in the Naturalist Notebook which is really a five year record of daily details. You can see in the image how there is a very small box for each day running across the page. Then, down the column will be where I fill in information over the next four years. This way you can compare the daily events from year to year. Right now it feels very ambitious but I’ve learned that if you take it one day at a time it isn’t such a huge project.
The second place I’m recording daily information is in this planner/notebook. It has larger spaces for me to include more details or thoughts for each day. I’m still deciding if I like this particular notebook for this purpose, but time will tell if it works for me.
Note: It’s an 18-month calendar and so the first part has been unused. I’m trying to decide if I should just remove the pages or repurpose them in some way.
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Field Notebook
I have yet to make a single record in my field notebook. It’s super cold when I go outside and I usually wear gloves. This makes it hard to take the notebook and pencil out. That’s a pretty bad excuse for not giving this tool a try and I will be working on doing better. Maybe I should wear my fingerless gloves when I go out on my walks.
Personal Nature Journal
This is where I’ve really stepped up my nature journaling game this year. I’ve gone ahead and prepared several introductory pages for the year and then planned a few pages for January ahead of time.
If you follow me on Instagram, I’ll be sharing the month’s pages at the end of each month in a video along with an explanation.
Here’s an example of one of my January pages sharing my winter willow observations. You can see that I’ve switched to a larger size page for this year just to switch things up.
I have some of the pages planned out, but there’s still room to add in things that spring up during our nature walks like the river otter scampering across the icy river with a fresh fish in his mouth. What a great experience!
Al in all, I think I’ve been successful in getting started with my new routine of nature journaling. It takes a few minutes a day to keep up with the daily notes and maybe 30 minutes or so to create a new nature journal page in my personal journal. With this little effort, I’m loving the feeling of getting to know my habitat better with each passing week. Using the Outdoor Hour Challenges gives me a framework and inspiration to learn something new! This knowledge is not only fun to learn but very encouraging to pass along to my friends and family.
Be Inspired! Be Encouraged! Get Outdoors!
Do you want some more specific nature journal ideas? Click over to my nature journal page and scroll down for the Once-a-Month Nature Journal Project idea buttons. There’s a lot there to keep you busy!
There are many, many nature journal ideas included in the archives of the Handbook of Nature Study newsletters. If you have any level of membership, make sure to download the newsletter index to make finding a topic easy.
