Nature Journaling: More Than Sketching
Does the idea of sketching in a nature journal fill you with anxiety? What comes to mind when you hear the term ‘nature journaling’? For most of us, a nature journal brings thoughts of perfectly sketched or painted landscapes of beautiful mountain vistas with perfect birds and flowers spread through its pages, right?
However, drawing, painting, and sketching are just one way to record your interactions with nature in your journal. Let’s take a closer look behind the scenes of nature journaling!
Why Keep A Nature Journal?
While there are probably as many reasons as there are people keeping journals, here are just a few of the more compelling reasons to make nature journaling a regular part of your life:
- Sketching practice — many people using nature journaling to improve their drawing and sketching skills
- Identifying species — keeping a journal can help you learn to identify wildflowers, fungus, trees, birds, . . . you name it.
- Observational skills — looking at something long enough to record details of the way it looks, how it smells, or what it sounds like has the side-effect of sharpening your skills of observation
- Deepening your connection to nature — This, for me, is the very best reason to keep a nature journal!
The Role of Sketching and Painting in Nature Journaling
Even though there are many more ways to interact with your journal, sketching certainly has its place. I urge you, even if you think you can’t draw, to take a stab at sketching in your nature journal from time to time. The practice of looking at something long enough to try and draw it — to capture its details, forces you to notice things that you otherwise would have overlooked.
For example: I was recently sitting on a bench sketching a landscape. A tiny, fluffy, tan seed landed on my shirt. I have seen these and similar seeds floating around, all my life. They are ordinary because they are so plentiful; but since I had my journal and pencil in hand, I decided to sketch the little seed. As I looked closely enough to draw it, I noticed this tiny little hook-like projection at the bottom. Huh, I’d never notice that before! It makes perfect sense — this seed flies around and ‘hooks’ itself onto another plant, a bird, a dog, . . . and spreads this plant far away from its parent.
What plant did this tiny seed come from, I wondered? I made that notation in my journal next to the seed and finished drawing the landscape. I intended to do some research about the little seed at some point. Then one evening I was watching a rerun of NCIS and there was the seed! It stuck in my mind because of the sketch, and I learned that it was the seed from a sycamore tree.
The moral of this long story: when we draw things we are unfamiliar with and write about them, they stick in our brains. The more we learn about nature, the more in love we become with her!
Nature Journaling: Beyond the Sketch
Don’t want to, or can’t draw? Or perhaps, you just aren’t in the mood to sketch. No worries! Words can be a powerful way of nature journaling and making those important connections. Sketching tends to keep us locked into a visual connection as well as a scientific, observational mode; so we may miss other important things going on around us.
Take out your journal — close your eyes for a few moments. Use your other senses! What can you hear? Birdsong? Can you describe that song with words or letters? Is it melodic, trilling, harsh? Now open your eyes. Can you spot the bird that is making the sound? Try to identify the bird.
Repeat the same exercise using your other senses. What can you smell? Turn a rock or piece of bark around in your hands. What does it feel like? If you are certain about the identification of a plant — taste it.
Record all of your findings in your nature journal. Write a poem, . . . or a song. Here’s a great exercise — how would you describe a particular bird or plant to a blind person? They still have 4 senses! It’s not as easy as it sounds — give it a shot!
Play around with your journal. Have fun. Make nature journaling your ‘happy place’. Go beyond the scientific observation. Feel the nature all around you. Get to know her on multiple levels! All of these fun exercises will absolutely deepen your connection to nature and with yourself.
Helpful Resources
Need a little help identifying what you find in the field? There are tons of available resources out there. Check your local library for guides on identifying everything from mushrooms, wildflowers, birds, mammals, trees, . . .
In the field, Cornell University has a plethora of free resources on birding. Try their eBird and Merlin apps on your phone to help you identify birds and their songs in the field. eBird lets you track birds that you’ve spotted and in turn helps track bird migrations and bird counts. Find eBird here. Find eBird and Merlin apps at your app store.
Make sure to check out this post for a list of supplies and also the mental health benefits of nature journaling.
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Keeping A Nature Journal
Keeping a nature journal is a practice that can be as diverse as the journaler! If you do an internet search on nature journaling, you’re going to find, almost exclusively, articles and how-to’s devoted to homeschoolers using nature journals for science. While that is a very worthwhile endeavor, there is much more to keeping a nature journal than as a ‘science class’! And it’s certainly not just for the kids.
Nobody sees a flower, really — it is so small — we haven’t time, and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.
Gerogia O’KeeffeReasons To Keep A Nature Journal
Many of the reasons for keeping a journal of your nature adventures overlap with reasons to just be out in nature, such as:
- Mental health
- According to recent studies, time in nature can decrease depression by up to 70%.
- Boosts serotonin and decreases cortisol levels
- Allows you to process thoughts
- Can be a form of meditation
- Deeper connection to nature
- Forces you to focus on details
- Slows you down
- Teaches you to ‘see’ your surroundings
- Causes you to be in the here and now
In addition to the mental health benefits, keeping a nature journal can help deepen your connection to nature! Taking the time to sketch, photograph, or interact with nature (through things like leaf rubbings and collecting) forces your mind to focus on the here and now, and on the details that give you that deeper connection. You notice details that otherwise you might miss. Journaling gives you the opportunity to discover the ‘awe’ of natural things and phenomena. Personally, I’m always up for more awe and amazement in my life!
How to Keep A Nature Journal
Good news! There is no one right way to keep a nature journal. If you’re like most people, when we think of a journal, we picture beautiful, accurate drawings accompanied by scientific journaling. Those journals do exist, but the simple fact is most people don’t share their journals — they’re personal. They are filled with one person’s private thoughts and experiences. There is no need to worry about your drawing skills or writing expertise.
Here are just a few ideas for you to use in your own journal:
- Pencil sketches
- Watercolor drawings
- Words only — maybe you just want to capture with words what you are feeling as you observe a bird, sit by a babbling brook, or wonder why that cloud formation looks like an ice cream cone (For writing inspiration, find a list of nature writers in this article from the Sierra Club on nature journaling.)
- Objects
- Rubbings of leaves or bark
- Taping flat items to pages
- Pocket pages to hold not so flat items
- Photos — If photography is more your style, your journal can certainly be more like a scrapbook.
Tools & Supplies
The last thing you want when you’re out on a hike enjoying the nature around you, is a huge heavy backpack full of art supplies! Luckily, that’s not necessary. All you really need are a few basic supplies. I tend to carry just a smallish notebook and a mechanical pencil. Always having my phone handy for a quick snapshot so that I can remember colors for later is a big help.
Here are a few simple supplies you may want depending upon how you keep your nature journal:
- Notebook of some type — for me — smallish and easy to transport
- Sketching tools
- Pencil (mechanical — no need for sharpener)
- Watercolors – a very small, dry set
- Waterbrush – no need to carry water — this is a brush with a hollow handle filled with water — you can refill from a stream or your water bottle if you need to
- Graphite stick or charcoal for rubbings
- Baggies for collecting items — flat(ish) things like leaves can be taped right into your journal. A flower can be pressed and added in. You may want to include small pockets in your journal for collecting these items.
- Camera (phone camera)
Skills
More great news! You do not need any specific skills to get started.
- To begin, you need only to develop your skills of observation!
- Add in over time:
- Ability to sit quietly so you may observe/sketch skittish wildlife you may encounter
- A few basic drawing or photography skills are nice to have
- Walking with ‘soft eyes’ vs. ‘hard eyes’. Soft eyes means that you are just walking without any particular purpose or intent in mind. If you are focused and actively hunting for something, you will miss other subtle things along the way. In other words, soft eyes is relaxing and you’ll often stumble upon something amazing and awe-inspiring for your nature journal!
There really are as many ways to keep a nature journal as there are people who keep them. What’s your journaling style? Share your thoughts in the comments!
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- Mental health
Forest Bathing: What, Why and How
Forest bathing, translated from the Japanese phrase shinrin-yoku, is the simple practice of spending time in nature — doing nothing in particular. I can’t think of a better place to begin your journey to reconnect with nature!
Forest Bathing: What It Is
Forest bathing is simple in concept. You go to a natural setting. A forest is ideal, but if you don’t live near one, any city park with a tree or two will work also.
A proper forest bath has no agenda, no direction, no goal. Turn off your phone! You are going to amble, wander, sit, explore, wonder, and experience whatever happens. Most people treat a hike in the forest as only exercise. ‘Let’s walk really fast and get some cardio in today!’ It can be that; but it is so much more.
Forest bathing is going to a park — you may follow a trail; you may not. Stop when you feel like stopping, move when you feel like moving. Engage your senses: feel the breeze on your skin, listen to the wind in the trees, take in the scents, touch rough bark, or dangle your feet in the stream. Sit under a tree and munch on the snack you brought. Follow a bird, or sit in the dirt and follow an ant. Talk to a tree. Just be.
Nothing New
What’s currently ‘trending’ comes and goes in cycles. Forest bathing is one of those things that feels new because it’s popping up everywhere you look at the moment. In spite of its trending status it is, in fact, a practice that has been around since the beginning of time.
Before the mass migration into urban and suburban areas after the industrial revolution, everyone everywhere lived in nature. It’s where the food was, and the community activities, the entertainment. It was where you could go to be alone for a while and gather your thoughts. It didn’t have a name, it was life.
Forest Bathing: The ‘Why’
Deadlines, to-do lists, work schedules, getting kids where they need to be on time, . . . need I say more? Current society seems to dictate our every waking minute. Many of us equate busyness and a full schedule with success. But is it?
Are we, as a people, stressed because of our jobs and to-do lists, or does the stress come from lack of connection to nature? I believe it is a bit of both. We need times of deadlines and schedules as much as we need time to ‘do nothing’.
- Decreases stress (decreases cortisol production)
- Reduces sleeplessness
- Reduces depression
- Decreases blood pressure
- Reduces anger
- Increases happiness
- Increases concentration
- Boosts immune system
- Increases the amount of NK (natural killer cells)
There is solid science behind these claims. Dr. Qing Li , an immunologist in Japan, has been conducting research for several years. For an overview of his science check out this YouTube video interview of Dr. Qing Li. He has also written a book: Forest Bathing: How Trees Can Help You Find Health and Happiness.
Forest Bathing: How Often
In listening to Dr. Qing Li, we learned that he discovered that part of the secret is the volatile oils given off by the trees, so forest bathing must literally include trees! Further, spending time in an actual dense forest creates a much longer-lasting effect than an urban park.
His studies taught us that the effects of spending an hour or so in a real forest last from 2 weeks to one month. He states that once a week in an urban park with trees should be adequate to maintain the effects.
I believe, however, that once you begin to add forest bathing to your regular routine, you’ll want to spend as much time as you can out there–deepening your own special connection with nature!
For more information on just how being in nature can improve mental health, you might enjoy this article. You might also enjoy this article on Hiking for Mental Health.
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A Nature Hike Improves Mental Health
Can taking a nature hike improve mental health? According to several current scientific studies, it can! Deadlines. Schedules. Concrete. Traffic. Cell Phones. Email. Cubicles. Windowless offices. Stress. Just writing the words has me feeling tight, pinched, and stressed! Even when we love our jobs and our lives, we need to make time for rest and renewal.
More and more studies are proving that time in a natural setting on a regular basis is the best way to reboot. Here are 10 ways that a hike in the woods can improve your mental health.
1. Hiking Boosts Endorphins
Endorphins are a feel-good hormone. They are released by the body as a natural pain killer — ie: when you’re walking uphill on the trail. Studies show that as little as 20 minutes of exercise is all it takes to get a boost of endorphin.
2. Hiking Boosts Serotonin
Serotonin has many roles and purposes in our bodies, but for this discussion we’re looking at its role as a mood regulator. Serotonin is a chemical produced in the body, mostly in the gut. Its production and release requires exposure to sunlight.
Besides sunlight your body also requires tryptophan to produce serotonin. How do you get tryptophan? It’s in the trail mix of nuts, seeds, and dark chocolate that makes a perfect hiking snack! So make sure to pack some along on your hike along with a banana. Take a break, have a snack, absorb some sun on your skin and get your serotonin levels humming!
3. A Nature Hike Reduces Cortisol Levels
Cortisol is a regulator. It helps us keep a rhythm of day and night. Our constant exposure to the blue light used in technology; computers, cell phones, TVs, etc., tricks our body into thinking it is perpetually morning.
There is a difference in the light of morning and the light of evening. Morning light is blue and causes a rush of cortisol to wake us up and get our day going. At night the light is a soft orange, signaling the reduction in cortisol so that we can wind down and go to sleep.
Spending time in nature, no matter what time of day, can help our bodies reset the cortisol cycle.
4. Time in Nature Increases Our Level of Negative Ions
Ions surround us. There are both positive and negative ions found naturally in our living world. In a perfect environment, they are balanced. However, in our current world we are constantly bombarded by excess positive ions emitted by all of our electronic gadgets and gizmos. We are out of balance.
Time in nature can even out that balance. Forests, waterfalls, and the ocean all create an abundance of negative ions!
5. A Nature Hike Boosts Our Oxygen Levels
We all learned this is school, but how often do we think about it as adults? Trees breathe in carbon dioxide and breathe out oxygen! Yep, get out in an area with plenty of trees and you get an oxygen boost. A bit of exercise, deeper breaths, and increased oxygen levels can amount to boosting brain power and creativity.
Science has also shown us that there are essential oils called phytoncides released into the air from trees and plants. Breathing in these naturally occurring phytoncides helps not only to boost your immune system, but also to assist in stress reduction.
6. Walking Meditation is Easier in Nature
Meditating while walking in nature can have tremendous benefits. It’s much easier to focus on being mindful and present when your body is engaged in physical activity. Many people who struggle with seated meditation have no problem with walking meditation. There’s something about the forward motion of your body that causes your mind to move forward as well.
7. A Nature Hike Allows A Closer Connection to Nature
Spending time in nature, taking your time, and noticing all of the awe-inspiring wonder around you can help you feel connected. We forget because we are so isolated from nature most of the time, but we are nature. Loneliness abounds in our society. We can feel most alone in a crowd of people. That kind of loneliness comes from disconnection. While we absolutely still need close relationships with people in our lives, there is a vital connection to be had in nature as well.
We can find a sense of our belonging to nature. The exciting part? It takes time. Developing a connection to nature doesn’t happen overnight–it takes time and commitment, just like any long-term relationship. The more time you spend in that connection, the more in love with nature you become and, . . . the bigger that sense of belonging becomes.
8. Creative Thinking Gets a Boost From A Nature Hike
There are multiple studies that show spending time in nature and away from technology can boost your ability to solve problems in a more creative way by up to 50%. Taking away the noise of the city and your office allows you time to think, increasing both your memory and your ability to use creative problem-solving skills.
9. Nature’s Antidepressant Bacteria
Soil can make you happy and smarter! Scientists have discovered a bacteria called Mycobacterium vaccae. This beneficial bacteria resides in the soil and works like an antidepressant in our system. It works on many chemical levels that are still being studied, but we now know that it affects serotonin in a positive way, giving our brains a boost as well as our mood.
How do we access this miracle microbe? Hiking along a dirt path through the forest causes the bacteria to be released from the soil as we walk. We breathe it in. Playing with our hands in the dirt both releases it to our lungs as we breathe, and also through our skin through direct contact. Give yourself permission to get dirty and enjoy those antidepressant effects!
10. Forests Buffer Noise
Sounds — man-made sounds, . . . we are inundated by the sounds of traffic, sirens, construction equipment, lawn mowers, as well as the constant hum of computers, video games, and TV. This constant noise takes a toll on our physical bodies as well as our minds.
Step out into the forest where the trees and underbrush filter out much of that man-made noise. Listen to the sounds of wind through the trees, singing birds, and hear the crunch of leaves under your feet. Giving your ears a break from the noise of the city is yet another way to boost brain power and increase your access to your own creativity.
Interested in the scientific studies? PubMed has over 100 studies on the health impacts of forest bathing (spending time in nature).
Now that you have 10 more reasons to get out in the woods and take a hike, what are you waiting for?!
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