Tracie journaling on a hot day in Kangaroo Valley, NSWRoss Gurney

Text and uncredited sketches by the authorTracie McMahon

Slow down and seeI started nature journaling out of a realisation that I was never going to be happy with any photo I took on a trip. I could blame it on poor equipment, poor light, or just not enough time, but really, it was a case of imposter syndrome.

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Journal samples, clockwise from top left: Grampians Peaks Trail, Victoria; Trondheim, Norway; South Coast Track, Tasmania; Drysdale NP, Western Australia.

T here were so many beautiful photos out there – look at the winners of the competitions in Bushwalk Australia – how could I compete - why didn’t I just buy a postcard or a published book of photos?

The answer is because they were not mine. They didn’t capture how I felt when I collapsed at the top of the mountain, when I found an odd little flower huddled in a rocky cleft, or the colours I saw, made luminescent by my own joy.

I’m a reformed accountant – trying to regrow the neural pathways pruned by the rigours of the business world. In 2019 I took a 12 month sabbatical from “left-brain thinking”. My list was bushwalking, camping, write a book and learn how to draw.

The book is still a work in progress, but I stumbled onto nature journaling – which combined everything. I enrolled in a six-week course, and despite the eyebrow-rise of the instructor when it was clear I had not held a paintbrush since primary school, I was hooked.

Why nature journal?John Muir-Laws, the “godfather” of nature journaling says he journals for three reasons: “to see, to remember, and to stimulate curiosity. The benefit of journaling is not limited to what you produce on the page; it is rather found in your experience and how you think along the way.”

And so it began; my plan was to record the experience of the Larapinta Trail.

I have now filled four hard cover volumes of journals and numerous trip journals. The little trip journals are self-made to fit into a pouch I carry on my waist, with all my other essentials such as my PLB.

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Black Summer fires from Govetts Leap, Blue Mountains NP, NSW

Burnt red gum on the Larapinta Trail, NT

And this is the beauty of nature journaling. It is light, you can do it anywhere, and there are no rules. Nature journaling is not art. It is a capture of a moment: the light, heat, exhaustion, or wonder. It also makes me take a good break. My arthritic joints have decided that after a few hours of walking, I need to take a break, sit, and rest before taking on the next hill.

Each piece takes me about an hour. If it is complicated, or I need to look something up (like plant names), I will just sketch it out, make notes of what I was trying to do, take a few photos and finish it at camp that night, or at home when I can access my growing library of plant identification books.

I use watercolour pencils, mixed media paper and a good paintbrush. I particularly like working with materials I find on site, like the water in a creek or rubbing over the texture of bark. One of my favourite pieces is of Govetts Leap in the Blue Mountains during the Black Summer fires of 2019-20. I can still smell the ash in the page.

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Capturing clouds

Govetts Leap Brook, Blue Mountains NP, NSW

Connecting to natureNature can also paint itself. The piece above on clouds was made by painting cloud shapes with water and then mixing a few colours. The colours were dropped into the water and the sun and wind of the day did the rest. I took it home, did some Googling on clouds and labelled it.

Nature journaling has also trained me to take notice. One of John Muir-Laws exercises is perspective, in which you capture what

you see up close – say 10 cm, then 1 metre, then 100 metres. There have been so many occasions when I have found a tiny orchid right in front of me, that I am sure was not there when I sat down!

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Inspiration Point, Santa Barbara, CaliforniaMax Arkley-Smith

If my walk is an "out and back" exercise, I also find a stop involving nature journaling makes for a different perspective. I see so many more plants, birds and insects on the return journey and I am sure they didn’t just turn up for the afternoon show.

Sharing the joyWhile journaling lets me capture my own joy in nature, it also provides me with a way of sharing that that joy with others – and it is infectious.

I volunteer at a local historical museum with extensive gardens and have had full houses for school holiday activities with kids making treasure maps of the plants of the garden or sensory maps of the seasons. Participants tell me they find it “accessible”. There is a freedom to it, that allows them to record their personal connection to place. I have even managed to indoctrinate one of my

own children. My twenty-five-year-old son recently spent a few months thru-hiking in the US, keeping a nature journal, his “postcard” tells me so much about his perspective. He is a climber, so the rocky outcrops with their colours and contours feature. If I was there, it would be full of flowers.

Have a go yourselfThere are courses you can do to help you on your way, but it is not essential. You don’t need to be an artist, or a naturalist, just curious. John Muir-Laws’ web page

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