As temperatures cool and snow begins to grace the northern Sierra Nevada’s ridges and peaks, the “Mountain Children” of Plumas County carry a easy however transformative software of their backpacks: a nature journal. These journals seize every scholar’s experiences in photos, phrases, and numbers, every web page changing into a window into their weekly adventures.
I’ve been a place-based educator for 3 many years. Place-based schooling is a pedagogical method that facilities instruction and studying within the locale the place a baby lives and attends faculty. Every place holds nature and tradition concurrently. Youngsters within the main and intermediate grades are in a developmental stage the place the bodily and temporal place in entrance of them and at their ft is the context for cognitive understanding. Place is a literal right here and now and in addition supplies a construction of mindfulness.
In Plumas County, our program Outside Core combines nature journaling with a broader place-based curriculum, the place college students join with close by pure areas and their very own sense of self as a Mountain Child. By this program, which has been occurring for 20 years, every baby develops their distinctive connections to the land, drawing out their very own “aha” moments, discoveries, and reflections in journals that develop into private archives of place and time and self.
X
In a world saturated with distracting screens and instantaneous updates, nature journaling slows the tempo and roots every baby within the current second, connecting them to their very own ideas and expressions within the place that shapes who they’re. For a lot of college students, this could imply a higher sense of connection, compassion, belonging, and residential.
What’s nature journaling?
“I ponder if it’s a seed or a leaf. I discover a spot that would maintain a seed. It jogs my memory of a wing.”
Nature journaling is a conscious follow that invitations us to file what we see, really feel, and marvel concerning the pure world. Echoed in historical expressions like petroglyphs and cave work, nature journaling invitations us to watch intently, replicate deeply, and doc the world round us.
Analysis means that common time in nature will increase focus, boosts temper, and reduces stress. Journaling has been discovered to bolster these advantages, making a reflective area that enhances well-being, encourages creativity, and strengthens a way of belonging.
The mythologist Michael Meade writes that “nature doesn’t make copies, solely originals.” This rings true within the Higher Feather River Watershed, the place every season, every phenomenon, and every baby who enters this place is considered one of a form. I additionally remind youngsters that no two days, no two moments, are ever the identical. February 1, 2025, for instance, comes solely as soon as; in journaling, college students seize this distinctive day and all it holds, honoring the second by merely observing and documenting it.
That the waxing crescent moon seems far to the west throughout a 5:24 p.m. sundown on February 1 that additionally reveals a brightly shining Venus and a barely seen Saturn is observable, true, and plain, as lengthy an atmospheric river doesn’t get in the way in which.
When college students journal, their unique impressions meet the originality of the noticed panorama. This assembly level—between baby and place—turns into a dialogue, every journal web page a mixing of two distinctive geniuses: the kid’s and the land’s. Right here, nature journaling reveals sudden moments of marvel and noticing, connecting youngsters to a spot that’s alive with particulars they might in any other case move by. This rising consciousness fosters an intimacy with the land and with themselves that’s as irreplaceable because the place itself.
In every baby’s nature journal, private discoveries meet shared experiences. After an outside journey, I prefer to leaf by their journals and see how every baby has captured one thing distinctive—a leaf sample, a bug, the form of a cloud, or the colour of a distant ridge. On this means, nature journaling turns into a collective follow; every baby’s remark is a puzzle piece that contributes to a broader view of the panorama. Their journals replicate how they’re studying to belong to this place, connecting with themselves and each other.
Nature journaling gives youngsters the liberty to discover their relationship with the land in a means that reveals each who they’re and the place they’re. For these Mountain Children, nature is an arbiter of fairness. It doesn’t acknowledge cultural or social divides—it rains and snows on all, warms and cools everybody with shared winds, and calls for the identical effort from every lung that tackles a steep slope. Each place invitations consideration to passing seasons and the each day parade of phenomena.
And whereas rural settings like ours supply mountain views and open areas, nature journaling is simply as significant in city areas. My time dwelling in Albany and commuting to my undergraduate schooling within the Strawberry Creek Watershed at UC Berkeley was imbued with sidewalk crack ecology, favourite native birds, the seasonal pulse of fog. There was no lack of alternative to watch, file, and replicate on dwelling and studying.
Certainly one of my closest companions on this work, John Muir Legal guidelines—a fellow UC Berkeley conservation and useful resource research main—shares this perception in fairness. Jack and I, along with others in my area and all over the world, have aimed to foster a tradition of nature journaling centered round a love of place, individuals, and function. Jack usually reminds youngsters that nature journaling isn’t about making fairly photos. Nature journaling is about stepping exterior, selecting up the pencil, and bringing the place to the web page. Over time, we’ve seen nature journaling develop into a sustaining custom for youngsters within the area, a dedication grounded unapologetically in love and supported by years of cautious consideration.
Classes for educators
Nature journaling is a part of our broader Outside Core curriculum within the Higher Feather River Watershed. This program gives youngsters a approach to decelerate inside their “river of studying,” encouraging them to pause, replicate, and develop private relationships with the land.
“Who lives within the forest?”
By our Studying Landscapes partnership with the Feather River Land Belief, we’ve got conserved a wild place inside a 10-minute stroll of each faculty within the area. This initiative ensures that every faculty has a close-by outside area, giving each baby extra equitable entry to nature. These websites present youngsters with a everlasting place to study and probe for this era and past. These Studying Landscapes are nature areas which might be proximate and can all the time be there for any given day of each faculty 12 months. They’ve seen us by troublesome occasions, from the COVID-19 pandemic to the Dixie Hearth, and assist a tradition of resilience of each baby.
This journey of connection is considered one of empathy and compassion, beginning with the self and increasing outward. Our Outside Core curriculum encourages youngsters to method annually’s classes with an open coronary heart and an inquiring thoughts. We start with the Backyard Yr in Kindergarten. First-graders comply with the pollinators into the research of invertebrates. Second-graders develop into herpetologists as they discover reptiles and amphibians. Mammals are explored in third grade. Fourth grade is the Yr of the Trout. Fifth grade is targeted on birds. Sixth grade is the Watershed Yr. Every year, they return to the identical woods and creeks however with new function and views, discovering who else lives right here, what these creatures want, and what it takes to outlive and thrive.
For educators seeking to incorporate nature journaling or different place-based practices, listed below are three easy methods to get began:
1. The framework: Have a mannequin to remind youngsters learn how to create a web page of their nature journal. It ought to embody figuring out the place you might be (location) and if you find yourself (date and time). This turns a clean web page right into a historic file of journey and discovery. Subsequent, determine what we name the three languages of nature journaling that use distinctive components of your mind: photos (drawings, maps, diagrams), phrases (labels, observations, questions), and numbers (measuring, estimating, counting).
2. The instruments: It doesn’t take a lot to create a nature journal. A very powerful elements are an individual and a spot. Subsequent is one thing to file with and one thing to file on. When you actually can use something, I’m a fan of the basic quantity 2–pencil and a devoted journal. There are various journal kinds, however two cost-sensitive choices that we use are BareBooks and Sketch for Colleges. Making your personal can be a enjoyable choice.
“I discover the leaf appears to be like like a 3 headed lizard. I ponder what tree my leaf is from. The leaf jogs my memory of micro organism.”
3. Create a “sit spot” routine: I like to ask youngsters to have a spot, their spot, to know higher than anybody else on the planet. Like several intimacy, it takes time to actually come to know a spot. It takes time and repetition. Visiting the identical place time and again by seasons and over years builds connection and understanding. I additionally encourage a house sit spot the place the homework could be a repeatedly visited yard or neighborhood spot of personal, joyful inquiry that touches their after-school hours, weekends, and even summers.
There are, after all, many extra concepts. I might invite you to go to the web site of the Wild Marvel Basis to discover extra sources and concepts. These embody John Muir Legal guidelines’s Find out how to Educate Nature Journaling, a free curriculum with 31 classes, and The Nature Journal Connection, a 40-video collection to guide and information youngsters by a 12 months of nature journaling.
The transformative energy of nature journaling
Plumas County, like a lot of rural California, is politically numerous, representing each conservative and liberal views. And but I’ve seen time and again how a shared love of individuals and place dissolves even the sharpest divides. When native residents, lecturers, biologists, and fogeys collect as a group—be it for a category hike or a stewardship venture—we’re united in our love for our youngsters, our land, and our frequent function. The watershed, with its ridges and rivers, reminds us that boundaries are short-term; like waters that finally merge at a confluence, we’re all related by our take care of this place and each other.
For Mountain Children, nature journaling is a path towards belonging, a journey that unfolds in each the panorama and inside every baby. Childhood right here is marked by the seasons, by 13 lunar cycles that create alternatives to note and study from the rhythm and sample of their world. Nature journaling isn’t about some generic, indifferent type of nature. It’s the character that lives right here, and builds familiarity over time, that deepens right into a deep love of place. This “topophilia” roots us, binds us, and transforms us over time.
Over years of instructing, I’ve seen this connection deepen within the lives of youngsters and adults alike. I’ve watched youngsters develop up, filling their journals with observations of every season and the small miracles of life within the Higher Feather River Watershed. With every entry, they uncover themselves as a part of this place, each witnesses and individuals within the magnificence, fragility, and resilience of life right here.
By this journaling follow, youngsters study that they aren’t separate from nature—they’re a part of it. Their journals develop into home windows into empathy, compassion, and duty for the life round them.
After three many years, the Higher Feather River Watershed has formed not solely my understanding of this place however of myself. Who I’m, partially, is the place I’m. They’re indivisible. I’m a citizen and steward of this place, and it holds me as I maintain it. It cares for me as I take care of it. Nature journaling has been a path of self-discovery, a journey that I see echoed in my Mountain Children’ experiences. By reference to place, we create area for progress, understanding, resilience, and therapeutic, for ourselves and others.
To anybody in search of the same journey, I encourage you to discover a close by place to sit down and return there usually. Let it develop into a spot that you recognize as intimately as you yearn to be recognized. There, within the quiet of your reflections, you could uncover a way of belonging that runs deeper than phrases—a way of place, a spot referred to as residence. I go away you with a favourite quote by poet Wendell Berry, whose phrases echo the spirit of this journey:
The world can’t be found by a journey of miles, regardless of how lengthy, however solely by a non secular journey, a journey of 1 inch, very arduous and humbling and joyful, by which we arrive on the floor at our ft, and study to be at residence.