Try 'nature journaling' instead of taking pictures on walks
On a fresh autumn morning at the Nagshead nature reserve in the Forest of Dean, I find myself sitting next to a pond with my eyes closed. Whilst birds chatter to each other, I sit in silence and breathe in the scent of damp earth and water mint. Large drops of water fall from the tree canopy above and as my senses fine tune to my surroundings, the dripping becomes louder and almost hypnotic.
Minutes later, I open my eyes and I scribble down a few notes, reflecting on what I’ve experienced. Whilst I can’t identify the individual birds, I find to my satisfaction that I can at least start to separate one song from another.
I feel good too – I’m not used to sitting still outdoors – more often, I’m stomping up hills, clocking up miles and elevating my heart rate.
But judging by the softness in my shoulders and the stillness in my mind, my nervous system is enjoying the change of pace.
I’m on a wildlife journaling course, run by the Tudor Farmhouse Hotel, a boutique hotel in Clearwell, Gloucestershire. The hotel attracts foodies, who come for the excellent local ingredients, but this course, an add-on experience, offers people a rather different way to connect with the delights of Forest of Dean.
I’d arrived, feeling slightly nervous, having spent rather too long scrolling through pictures of nature journal spreads on Instagram – intricate drawings of plants, watercolour illustrations and well researched field notes. I’m a nature lover (and a stationery junkie) but I am no artist. But as our guide, Ed Drewitt, an experienced naturalist, reassures our group, nature journaling really isn’t about showing off your artistic skills. “It's not about making an exact representation,” he tells us. “It's about making a memory, making a note.”
So we pick up leaves, turn them over in our hands, peer at the tiny holes an alder beetle has made and examine the thousands of spores on the backs of a fern.
I spend time with my palm placed on a sallow tree, an old gnarly willow. I spy a snail trail, notice the way the lichen has favoured one side of the tree and I watch a tiny leaf suspended in space, caught on a strand of a spider’s web. The tree alone houses a whole world that on another day, I’d have passed by in a flash. I note down words, do the occasional drawing, stick leaves onto the page and label them.
Ed explains that the act of stopping, observing, listening and noting down, fosters a far deeper connection with the world around us than a quick phone snap might do. Ed introduces us to the concept of fractals, repeated patterns in nature that can have a beneficial effect on our nervous systems: “Rather than seeing concrete and straight lines and all that sort of stuff that you’d see in an urban environment, all these fractals, these irregular or regular patterns of leaves and the way they are interacting above us here, is a very beautiful thing for our brain to see and a really good way of reducing our cortisol levels.”
Scientific research also suggests that the more time we spend appreciating the natural world, the more likely we are to look after it.
This idea is something that Dr Ali Foxon, former climate change advisor and author of The Green Sketching Handbook, is passionate about: “We are much more likely to adopt pro environmental behaviours, to do the right thing, when we care about nature,” she tells me. “The best way to care about nature is to become more aware of it. The best way to become more aware of it is to notice it.”
Ali, who is a self taught artist, started “green sketching” – a practice of noticing nature and making a few marks on paper – to calm her anxious mind and to boost her resilience during a challenging period of life. It lifted her spirits to such an extent that she now promotes and teaches green sketching, a small but growing movement, to people from all around the world.
So how does green sketching compare to wildlife journaling? At its most simple, Ali says that green sketching might be “a quick scribbly doodle that you can throw away afterwards”. Ali will often use the back or a receipt or a cafe napkin to draw both small things – pebbles, petals, blades of grass as well as larger things – whole plants, views and birds.
Ali emphasises that green sketching is very much a practice for you, and whatever you produce does not need to be shared or validated: “In a visual world with people wanting to share everything on Instagram and be evaluated by how good you are at art and everything, it’s a real mindset shift.”
Ali suggests trying “air sketching”, tracing the outline of the horizon with your finger or the end of a pencil; “think of it as taking your pencil for a walk across the landscape, over all the different bumps, shapes and lines you can see.” Ali explains that because no marks are made on paper, there is nothing to feel anxious about: “All of the benefits are in the observation.” And these benefits, explains Ali, are enormous; green sketching is grounding, it encourages us to savour (an excellent practice for wellbeing), it helps us be more creative and allows us to reconnect with ourselves.
Just before my own wildlife journaling session comes to an end, we are lucky enough to spot wild boar footprints in the mud. Ed retrieves plaster of paris, water and an ice cream tub from his backpack and shows us how to mix it all together to take a footprint cast. It is a fun souvenir to place on my desk when I get home, but Ed says 'nature memories' like this are “also a means of nature journaling. It is still a way of recording your experience with nature.”
Back at the hotel, I sip a glass of wine and keep scribbling in my journal. I vow to start collecting feathers on my walks from now on and to move a little more slowly through the natural world.
Rooms at Tudor Farmhouse Hotel start from £99 per night B&B and if you book an experience, a dinner, B&B rate of £199 is available. Wildlife Journalling is £60 per person.
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