A week ago I snagged a stint with a traveling nature journal that is making the rounds. It’s a nature journal that is being sent to whoever wants to take it. Each user keeps the journal for five days or until five pages are filled, then sends it on to the next person. I was lucky enough to be the first person to respond when it became available, and the journal arrived chez moi this past Monday.
I gotta say, thumbing through the journal and looking at the work of the folks who had it before me was both thrilling and a little intimidating. But it was so exciting to get to study other people’s nature journal pages. Just seeing the different styles and focuses was a fantastic learning experience for me. At first I wondered how the heck I would find five pages’ worth of stuff to write/draw about in five days. However, something about having the book in hand released the mental block and stuff just flowed onto the pages. Oh, there was a lot of erasing and a little trepidation the first time I put pen to paper, but overall it was a lot of fun.
Anyway, here are my pages.
Monday 2021-05-17 I found the not-so-secret nesting spot for the Brandt’s cormorants. This is apparently a new site for them. I had a lot of fun with the cormorants on the rock—all those postures to study and draw! And I’m very pleased with the larger pair in the corner. They actually look like cormorants!
Tuesday 2021-05-18 The journal has both white paper and tan toned paper. Nobody had used any of the toned pages yet. I decided to use it for these sketches of blooming sand plants. My favorite sketch on this page is the California poppies.
Wednesday 2021-05-19 While flipping through the photos I had taken at Asilomar over the weekend, I decided to draw some of the molluscs. My favorite on this page is the turban snail. And octopuses are really hard to draw!
Thursday 2021-05-20 I used my last two pages to diagram sea urchin larval development. The difficult thing about this page was getting the layout to flow the way I wanted. I used about half an eraser, trying different arrangements of text and drawings! The sketches themselves were not that difficult, as I’ve drawn these larvae many times before.
So there you have it—a week’s worth of nature journaling. It was an immense honor and pleasure to participate in this living document of nature observations. I’ve sent the traveling journal up to Anchorage, Alaska, and am excited to see what the next person does with it.