Setting Up Your Nature Journal

Your Nature Journal or Field Journal is your personal record of how you perceive the breathtaking outdoors. It is your account of a day’s walk, an animal you saw along the way or a flower growing out of a crack in a rock. It may be a record of the shape of the clouds you get enthralled by as you lay in the grass, or a army of ants you saw working so hard for the survival of their colony. Let us not forget the sounds you heard from a babbling brook and the coolness you felt on your bare feet when you waded in to it. Let us not forget the birds, the sound their wings made as they flew by, and sung melodiously, will sure capture your thoughts and emotions.

Your Nature Journal will become a personal treasure that you will want to look back on over and over again, for many years to come. Keeping this issue in mind, you will want to use a sketch book that will with stand the abuse that it will be under. Your journal needs to be with you as you hike, picnic or just go for outings at the park. It will travel with you when you go camping or exploring and may need to endure the moisture of the outside air.

The paper should be of good quality that will take any medium such as pencil, inks, marker, crayon, colored pencil, chalks, charcoals, or even water color paints. Be sure the covers are of good quality, and can endure the above mentioned areas where you will be.

An important thought to remember, is that what ever the quality of the empty book, it will be worth nothing with blank pages. It is when there are notes, drawings and quick sketches that fill the pages. Your thoughts of a glorious day in the outdoors. The descriptions of wildlife and plants or rocks and creeks. This finished journal will be priceless! They represent what cannot be bought or sold, your personal experience in the happy world of outside, through your eyes.