Enjoying Outside, Inside: Beginner's Guide to Nature Journaling
Eliana Thompson • September 22, 2021
A small notebook can be a naturalist, explorer, or scientist’s best friend. Combining detailed perceptions and inner musings, a nature journal is a way to develop your observation skills as well as encourage wonder and curiosity about your surroundings. Get to know your backyard, neighborhood, local public lands, or distant landscapes through its pages. New to nature journaling? Here are some tips to help you get started.
- Choose a dedicated nature journal. It’s easy to get distracted from your main purpose if the pages are mixed up with personal reflections, grocery lists, or To-Dos. Having a journal dedicated to your observations in nature also allows you to track your progress and observation skills, as well as changes you may observe in your surroundings. A list of other tools you may find helpful can be found here.
- Identify your goals- do you want to be a better naturalist? Gain more appreciation for the environment? Get better at identifying flora and fauna? Improve your mental health? The more clarity you have, the more likely you’ll be to get there- but remember, there’s no time frame! Nature journaling is an ongoing process and doesn’t need to have an end point.
- Every time you go out to make observations, start by noting the date, time, location, and weather to reference in the future. This will allow you to observe changes over time- such as if the Swainson's Hawks arrived earlier than last year. Noting these things at the start of the outing also serves to create some momentum so your journal doesn’t end up sitting in your backpack the whole time. This can also be a good time to make a few warm up sketches to get the juices flowing.
- Choose something interesting and explore it as a diagram, adding written notes, side views, and enlargements. Make a list of species observed. You might even want to create a table of contents to add to as you go. Observation includes seeing, hearing, smelling, and tasting (but only taste if you know what it is and that it is not harmful!). Focus on seeing something new and not as much on making it pretty.
- Try writing a narrative of the outing, including behaviors of species observed - this means slowing down and taking a moment to just watch. Pictures are a great addition to a journal - they show exactly what is out there. However, drawings can provide a different type of information that pictures may not capture. Drawing allows the observer to focus in on a specific part of the plant/animal or capture something that they didn't initially see. The Nature Journal Connection series on Youtube provides some great tips and a glimpse into the process of nature journaling.
- Remember that it’s about the process, not the product. Don’t expect your sketches to be a work of art! Especially when first getting started, your sketches and notes probably won’t live up to the vision you have in your head. This is ok! It will get easier as you get more practice, and in the end it’s really about the things you notice. Have fun and don’t be a critic of your journaling!
-Eliana Thompson; ethompson@tuleyome.org
Tuleyome Social Media and Advocacy Associate
RECENT ARTICLES
Our wildest areas are under threat. In June, the Administration moved to weaken protections for our wildest public lands - those designated as wilderness, Wilderness Study Areas, Lands with Wilderness Characteristics, and recommended Wilderness. What do these areas represent? Millions of acres of untrammeled backcountry. The Department of the Interior, US Forest Service and National Park Service initiated the first step in unraveling these protections. They’ve called for a “review” of eight policies, opening the door to weaken protections and paving the way for short-term extractive industries, commercial development, and resource fragmentation at the expense of long-term conservation management of some of our wildest remaining public lands. Nearly 200 million acres of wildlands across the west could be impacted by this review, including approximately 120 million acres of Wilderness Study Areas and wilderness quality lands, and 75 million acres of designated wilderness areas. This includes the nearly 94,000 acres in Cache Creek, Cedar Roughs and Snow Mountain Wilderness areas in Berryessa Snow Mountain Nation Monument right here in our own region. These policies guide how federal agencies identify, manage, and steward designated Wilderness Areas, Wilderness Study Areas, and lands with wilderness characteristics. Together, they influence the management of millions of acres of federal public lands and translate statutory requirements into day-to-day management decisions. Continuing to protect wilderness qualities is consistent with protecting recreation. In many cases, wilderness-quality land provides the best opportunities for backcountry recreation; a CA outdoor industry responsible for 545,448 direct jobs valued at $38.1 billion. The total value-added worth of CA outdoor recreation is $81.5 billion, 2.2% of our gross domestic product. The Department of the Interior’s actions present a false choice between stewarding wilderness lands and providing opportunities for recreation. Let’s tell the Administration that we oppose these rollbacks and are committed to protecting our wild places. Sign on to the Wi lderness Review- National Sign-on Letter opposing five different actions across the three agencies by August 12th. Together, we can show this administration that we care about protecting these special places today and into the future. Sandra Schubert Executive Director
I first heard about Tuleyome when I retired early from UC Davis eight years ago. I was looking for local organizations for volunteer opportunities. I discovered Tuleyome and got connected with Bill Grabert and Nate Lillge. I helped them lead hikes and school programs, then took the CA Naturalist course through Tuleyome. My capstone project was to lead a backpacking trip into the Cache Creek wilderness, which I did just as COVID was descending on us. I was, and still am, impressed at how such a small local non-profit has both ensured preservation of important wild areas and invested heavily in outreach to local schools. Working with kids from Lake County in the Redbud area was eye-opening and extremely gratifying. Some of them had literally never been on a hike in spite of growing up so close to all that spectacular wild land! I donate to Tuleyome to help them keep up the great work!!! I’ve spent countless days hiking in and enjoying the Cache Creek area; what a gem of a local resource! And, only last spring was I able to get up to Snow Mountain…so glad it’s preserved and accessible for camping and hiking. Wow! A wilderness area near my home - that’s amazing. I’m incredibly grateful for Tuleyome’s hard work that resulted in preservation of these important wild places, and I look forward to seeing what’s next.
Driving around the Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument one rainy day revealed a network of dirt roads that were slick as snnn… well, you probably know. The wet weather made driving less than optimal for the Subaru we were in but for our amphibian friends, the low-riding California newt, the warm, misty conditions were sublime. California Newts ( Taricha torosa ) are endemic to California, which means that they are extra special because they are only found here. They occur below 6,000 feet along the Coast Ranges from Mendocino County south to San Diego County. They are also found in the foothills and western slopes of the Sierra Nevada in the San Joaquin Valley with a few isolated populations in southern San Diego County. They utilize both wetland habitat including natural and artificial pools and ponds, reservoirs, creeks and streams for breeding during winter and spring, and upland areas such as chaparral and woodland habitats where they spend summer and fall. California Newts have stubby little toes attached to short, stocky legs. Adults range from about two and three quarters inches to about three and a half inches long, not including the tail. Their bellies and undersides of their neck and chin are bright golden yellow to orange with a reddish-brown to slate gray back. California Newts reproduce from late fall to early summer depending on rainfall amounts and habitat conditions. Adults migrate from their upland refugia to their preferred wetland to breed. Eggs are attached to submerged vegetation or under rocks and females can lay up to six masses of nearly 50 eggs a day. The eggs hatch in two to six weeks depending on water conditions and temperature. Larvae are aquatic and have gills and fins. After several months the larvae begin to exit the pond and set about metamorphosing into adults and do not return to the pond again until they are ready to breed. Larvae eat small aquatic invertebrates and organic matter; adults eat insects, slugs, snails and worms as well as other amphibian eggs and larvae. Adult California Newts are highly toxic. Like other members of the genus Taricha , adults have glands on their skin that secrete the potent neurotoxin tetrodotoxin - the same toxin that is found in harlequin frogs and pufferfish. Side note, this makes them poisonous rather than venomous (like rattlesnakes). Tetrodotoxin is hundreds of times more toxic than cyanide and potent enough to kill most vertebrates. The toxin affects sodium channels and makes it so neurons are unable to fire which results in lethal muscle paralysis. One of the only predators of adult California Newts are garter snakes. Garter snakes are one of the very few organisms that have evolved to develop a resistance to the tetrodotoxin produced by the newts. Garter snakes can ingest the toxic newts with limited effects which has created an evolutionary arms race (coevolution). As the garter snakes develop stronger immunity to the toxins only the most poisonous news survive which in turn results in future generations of news with even stronger toxins. This leads to a population of garter snakes that have developed a resistance to the stronger toxin levels and and on it goes. Loads of them were bumbling along the edges of the wet dirt road that rainy day. We made several stops to relocate those that were attempting to cross but seemed to stall out in the middle, always placing them facing the direction they were aimed. I don’t know if they were heading out to their natal ponds to mingle and breed, or on their way back to nap in their upland refugia but they were definitely enjoying the day. The California Newt is currently a California Species of Special Concern due to habitat loss and invasive non-native species introduction which makes seeing so many of these little stumpy legged tetrapods enjoying the Monument even even more groovy!