Keeping Pace with 16 Places: A Simple, Loose, 4-Season Nature Journaling Challenge
An opportunity for local travel and a D.I.Y. sense of wonder
At this time over in the northern end of the continent, most of society is tired of snow. But on my side, the equinox marking the beginning of spring gets me restless every year for a while now.
And in my own past, the beginning of that ‘while’ was when I really began paying attention to the world around me again. We’re not going to speak of that time in this article (you all know how it was, it involved lots of restrictions to social life. I’m sure I’m not the only one who took it as time to take a step back and breathe).
During my post-secondary years, apart from a few longer hikes in the local trails, I really missed the bygone days of exploring my surroundings and I lost touch with the nature I grew up in. I think that distance, however long it was, had me longing for more time spent between the trees.
I started blogging in 2021, and that’s what first drove my passion for the lives and landscapes around me. But nothing fuelled it more than the journals I did.
First, I discovered a YouTuber from the early days which I somehow missed: John Muir Laws. As I followed the Nature Journaling Educator’s course from his foundation, I learned more about nature journal clubs, an opportunity to create and share inquisition in wild spaces, or even to find the wildness in our built communities.
The nature journaling movement he co-leads, which is growing across the world, inspired me to launch Hemiboreal.com, a website and club meant for creating community in our own little slice of the Earth, built around what nature has to offer to make us happier through journaling and wildlife gardening.
At the junction between boreal and temperate, hemiboreal is a little-used scientific term, which for me merits further recognition and collective appropriation. This narrowish belt of similar climate spans all across the world, and it includes where I live, the Canadian Maritime provinces. It might as well prompt further discoveries on how people live across the same seasons than us, across the world, even though different species and cultures live in each of the concerned regions.
Everyone should be aware of their life-place, and some might even want to deep-dive on its intricacies. It can be more entertaining than we think.
For example, local travel is really underrated in today’s society, and might be even necessary in the near future due to inflation, and more recently, rising cost of fuel.
You might just say “I’ve tread those paths so many times already, why should I care?” and to that I respond with a challenge for you, staycationer of the near future:
Keeping pace with a place: 64 spreads to your heart’s content
Yes, you heard me right. 64 spreads.
That means a double-pager each time I visit a place, armed with a mission of my own, 64 times, in 16 places of my choice in the four seasons.
And that mission can be anything: a moment of mindfulness in nature, a beautiful plein-air drawing, a deep inquiry through ecological investigation or a series of blotches to express the surrounding color palette accompanied by poetry (Sometimes the eye can see more colors than a camera!).
No matter—I am taking the challenge, and you can too.
Anybody, anywhere can do it.
You can just pick a yard, a set of parks, a preserve, be they in your hometown or nearby (I recommend less than an hour’s drive). Pick a few places in each, name them a generic name, and return there four times, one in each season.
Once you fill a spread, check a season off the list. Do this every season over time. No time limit, but I’ll try a year personally.
Once you’re done, pick a name that represents what you’ve seen and put it in your checklist.
To keep track of my checklist, I use a minizine, just a folded piece of paper cut to act like a booklet. This page contains more information on how to fold this kind of document, and an overview of prompts for the challenge.
What do you get out of this? A sketchbook full of adventures. A travel journal from all your staycations. You can then appreciate where you’ve been at very little cost, and reminisce on these adventures.
Make your way over here to find more information on the Four Seasons, Four Times approach I just developed from this.
Get started with nature journaling over here:
I’ll start on March 21st in a large hardcover book of blank A4 pages. Will you be joining me?
