This May at Bullitt Reservation, home to Hilltown Land Trust’s and the Trustee’s office in Ashfield, local artist and teacher, Lori Austin, taught nature journaling to a group of fifteen adults and children.
The day-long class was funded by Ashfield and Goshen Cultural Council grants, and focused on growing curiosity about the natural world, asking questions, and tracking learning through journaling. Students were supplied with journals, colored pencils, watercolors, and example books. Lori gave students a zine by the Wild Wonder Foundation, Your Quick Start Guide to Nature Journaling, to help inspire them on how to start journaling, basic questions to ask, and places in their everyday life where they can journal at.
Lori is a semi-retired teacher with over twenty-five years of experience and has recently been called back into the Ashfield schools to teach science, technology, engineering, art, and math (STEAM). Her passion for nature journaling grew from a love of nature and began journaling over fifteen years ago.
Lori was inspired by renowned Ashfield-based artist, Beverly Duncan, while enrolled in her botanical painting class. Influenced by Duncan’s teachings, Lori works primarily working in watercolors, and uses quick sketches and field notes to guide her more in-depth paintings of the animals and plants around her.
The two-session long nature drawing class included a morning session focused on the purpose and process of nature journaling while the afternoon session focused on understanding the context of what we see around us and asking big picture questions. The morning session began with examples of different journals from more drawing-based work to others filled with writing, diagrams, and small sketches.
Lori brought in her own journals, a collection created from the years watching the seasons change and noticing animals coming out of hibernation, birds returning from migration, and plants beginning to blossom and grow.
Lori began the session by reading a picture book, I Am an Artist by Pat Lowery Collins, to encourage the students to embrace their own method of journaling and to believe in their abilities, despite their level of experience with drawing or painting. The book emphasized how all people are artists in the ways they look at and notice the natural world around them.
After looking at examples, students collected material and scattered across the garden, field, trails, and forest edges at Bullitt to make observations. Students were encouraged to ask questions like, “why does the leaves of this flower grow in clusters of four instead of five?” and “what pollinators pollinate this plant?”
At lunch, the group shared what they had noticed: all the beautiful spring ephemerals, the various birds, and the rolling hills.
In the afternoon session, the group’s focus shifted from the small details of plants and animals to how the landscape around them formed. A passage about the geological history of the Northeast, including the glaciers that formed the slopes and valleys of the Hilltowns, contextualized the landscape.
Suddenly, the rolling hills seemed to have more of a story than just being the beautiful backdrop to a loan tree in a field. Now, the giant boulder on the Pebble trail at Bullitt had a new story too; this giant boulder is a glacial erratic and was carried by one of the many glaciers that shaped the continent. With this new perspective and air of awe, students went out into nature for the second time to observe the landscape in the afternoon session.
As people moved from one observational spot to another, two Hilltown residents who had recently finished a botanical drawing class with Beverly Duncan bonded over their journals. They sat around passing each other’s journals, sharing their watercolor and color pencil techniques, and the creatures that they observed that spring.
With others joining in, the legacy of Beverly Duncan and other local artists was reintegrated through story telling. Some journals from classes with these artists were passed around and exhibited work from the past several years of observations of the natural world.
At the end of the day, students left at their own pace, thanking Lori for a wonderful day packed with information and inspiration.
It was clear the impact that drawing, notating, and asking questions has on people’s connection to where they live as well as the small communities that are created between people who share a passion for the natural world.
Photos of students’ work will be up on display at the Ashfield Library, capturing the many ways to observe and document nature.
Resources for getting started with nature journaling include: Orra White Hitchcock: An Amherst Woman of Science and Art by Robert L. Herbert and Dario D’Arienzo, The Curious Nature Guide: Explore the Natural World Around You by Clare Walker Leslie, and Sara Midda’s South of France: A Sketch Book by Sara Midda.
