Nature Journaling Naturalist

Field Station Stories, Chapter 1

In our Field Station Stories series, you can hear directly from our staff in the field who work to steward and teach people about these amazing landscapes. In the first edition of this series, read how nature journaling deepened a naturalist's understanding of Kachemak Bay’s unique ecosystems and helped him practice the art of looking.

By 2024 Wynn Nature Center Naturalist Ryan Zimmermann

Grewink Glacier, as seen from the road to the Wynn Nature Center.

When I first entered the Wynn Nature Center in March, the trails were buried in snow. Two or three feet, if my memory stands. I wouldn't be back there for another two months, which gave it the time needed to mostly thaw out for the summer, leaving only a few scattered sheets of ice to cover the newly exposed winding trail system. In the meantime, I had experienced Homer from other Coastal Studies locations, learning so much about the landscape to help me during my summer as a Wynn naturalist. 

The Wynn Nature Center maintains around 140 acres of trails and moose habitat filled with willow, spruce, and berries. It’s easy to find a unique spot to sit and journal or immerse yourself in nature. It wasn't an uncommon scene for a moose, spruce grouse, or boreal chickadee to make their way through the forest while I was sitting and observing. When I arrived, I had started taking small sketches of various plants or animals in my notes.

Nature journaling is something I had played around with, but never to the extent of creating finished pieces of work. But Homer is a place where the practice of nature journaling is so alive, and I was constantly inspired by artists here. Surrounded by many others who find such a need for it in their lives, I was inspired to dive back into the hobby.

This page explores the relationship between Lutz Spruce and Black-Capped Chickadees at the Wynn Nature Center.

Nature journaling makes sense to me. For many others it doesn't. Coworkers, kids, and friends have all told me they don't like drawing or they don't know what to do when given a blank page. That itself is the beauty of nature journaling. When you don't know what to do with a page, all you have to do is sit and look. From there, sketch or write about what you see. Nature journaling works because it is unique to you–your own expression of the way a place makes you feel in that moment.

There can, of course, be pressure to have a beautiful nature journal page, or make your pictures photo realistic to your subject. What really matters–and what I often tell kids on programs–is that you recognize what you’re drawing and can remember how you felt about it. For me, that emotion is the difference between nature journaling and scientific illustration. The goal with scientific illustration is to be as accurate as possible so as to identify your subject. Nature journaling can be silly, or sketched out, or just blobs of color, as long as they mean something to you. I certainly have all of those mixed into the pages of my own various journals. 

“When you don’t know what to do with a page, all you have to do is sit and look.”

In May, the plants first started popping out of the ground and showing off a new level of variety I had never seen before. I began my journey into ethnobotany, diving into resources and shared knowledge of the ecosystem around me. Indigenous knowledge of plants and the land is so readily available, which allowed me to infuse that knowledge into my naturalist work and my artwork. Having so much wildlife, critical landscape, and diverse habitat in a small, walkable, and accessible area was truly inspiring, and challenged me to do the work to learn even more about it. 

A journal page on some of the flowers found on the Lynx Link Trail in summer.

The work I did at the Wynn helped so many people get out and learn about these lands, while discussing the uses of spruce or the importance of wetlands. My favorite part was the weekly kids’ programs, and getting to take a group out to look for birds or hike around the trails using your senses. One of the kids’ favorites was ethnobotany bingo; hiking the trails, learning about native uses of plants, and getting to taste some of the edible ones along the way. Nature journaling frequently made its way into my programs, whether it was just taking a few minutes to sketch what we saw around us, a soundscape of the area, or a full nature journaling exercise. Nature journals made for great memories of a place, and allowed the kids to take away an actual piece of what they experienced in the program.

An early-season page, examining the flora and fauna at the Pratt Museum in Homer.

Looking back, even those little sketches for notes this spring were very much nature journaling. As the summer went on, I was able to capture a few select places and animals in my nature journal, and have many others stashed away in various sketches on random note pages. I finished the season with a much better understanding of this place, and feel lucky that I was able to be fully immersed in its full range of change–from the snow melt, to summer blooms, to the changing leaves of fall. My nature journals will surely match that.

Artwork courtesy Ryan Zimmermann, 2024, All Rights Reserved.