Beginner’s Guide to Nature Journaling: 12 Tips For a Better Nature Journal

One of the most impactful methods I ever learned to improve my experience of the outdoors is nature journaling.

Nature is filled with amazing things to discover at every turn… but it’s also incredibly complex!

The first time I tried to observe meaningful patterns in birds & plants, it was like my brain couldn’t fully process all the information coming in through my senses.

There are literally thousands of interactions to explore outside between birds, plants, trees, seasons, weather, insects, soil conditions, ecology, mammals and more.

But if you don’t have some way of sorting through all this information, nature can easily feel like an impenetrable wall of green.

This is why writing your observations in a journal can really help to unlock your brain’s ability to unpack natural mysteries and make amazing discoveries.

This is where nature journaling saves the day as one of the absolute best strategies in your naturalist toolkit.

So what is nature journaling?

Nature journaling is the process of recording your observations about birds, plants, trees & other natural things on paper.

It’s a simple & effective tool to help naturalists improve their observation skills and see big picture ecological patterns more clearly.

Nature journaling gets the observations out of your head and onto paper so you can record & keep track of the big picture patterns.

The result of writing things down is that you instantly see new perspectives and think of new questions to ask…

It’s a great way to help you:

1. Make better observations about nature through sensory awareness
2. Build deeper and longer lasting memories of the natural world
3. Uncover new ecological perspectives and ask better questions about your environment
4. Appreciate nature and have a more meaningful experience outside

This is a huge passion of mine with tremendous potential to help people grow along their journey into nature…

So today let’s explore 12 simple steps and tips to help you use nature journaling to enhance your connection with nature!

1. Choose A Dedicated Nature Journal

I highly recommend that you start your nature journaling adventure by dedicating a stand-alone journal 100% for the purpose of nature observation.

This might seem like a simple thing, but it can actually help a lot with your overall focus over time.

If you mix your nature journals with personal reflection journals, it’s a lot easier to get distracted and lose track of your purpose.

Having a dedicated journal that’s entirely devoted to nature will help you solidify your intentions to observe & understand what’s happening outside.

It also keeps all your recent observations closely at hand.

Your previous entries are always directly in front of you to reference back and help you spot trends, seasonal patterns or behavioural relationships of animals.

This will make your progress a lot more obvious.

As you turn the pages, you’ll be able to clearly see how your awareness & observation skills are growing and improving with each new entry.

You’ll feel a real sense of accomplishment when you completely fill your first journal from cover to cover with observations!

Feel free to use whatever type of journal feels good to you.

Some people prefer lined paper, others prefer blank, or even graph paper can sometimes be helpful when sketching.

And remember to put the dates, time of day & notes about weather at the top of each entry (more on this later).

All this will help you be more intentional about your nature journaling routines so you can be more aware of patterns outside.

2. Identify Your Nature Journaling Goals (What Do You Want?)

I know you’re probably excited to get started…

But before you rush out and immediately start journaling away, you might find it helpful to spend a few minutes clarifying your nature journaling goals.

It’s important to realize that people don’t all journal for the exact same reasons.

Depending on what you want to get from your time outside, we can approach nature journaling differently and individually cater your experience to get faster results.

So let’s build some clarity.

What do you want to get from your nature journal?

• Do you want to become a better naturalist?
• Do you want to enhance your appreciation of the environment?
• Do you want to get better at identifying birds, plants & trees?
• Do you want to experience the mental health benefits of connecting with nature?
• Are you more interested in documenting the life & behaviors of local animals?
• What is it for you personally?

Take a few minutes to reflect on what gets YOU personally excited about nature, then on the first page of your journal, write out a short mission statement to help you stay focused.

Feel free to add as much detail as you’d like and really paint a vivid and inspiring picture for yourself…

How would you feel & experience nature differently once you actually achieve your desired relationship with nature?

Now every time you open your journal, the first thing you’ll see is a reminder of all the things that are inspiring you to get outside and explore.

If you ever feel resistance to setting goals because you’re worried about failure, just think of this exercise as giving yourself a direction to focus on.

Nature works on it’s own time schedule, so don’t worry about whether you actually achieve these goals in any specific time frame.

The purpose of setting nature journaling goals is simply to help you stay focused and always strive to a higher level.

Just remember – the more clarity you have about what you want to experience, the more likely you are to actually get it.

3. Apply The Two Fundamental Nature Journaling Strategies

An important thing to realize is there are different types of nature journaling techniques that can help you get different results.

I like to categorize nature journals broadly into two different types with very different goals & results.

Field Journaling

Field journaling is any journal that you do outside and in-the-moment while you’re immersed in a natural environment.

This might be sitting down with a plant and sketching the leaves or flowers. Or sketching a coyote track… and also written descriptions of bird & animal activity.

The defining feature here is that you’re taking your journal into nature and using it live in the field.

Field journaling is great for helping you develop identification skills, sketching tracks & plants to help you learn the species & observe more closely during your time outside.

But the downside of field journaling is that it pulls you out of the full sensory immersion experience.

This is why sometimes people who do exclusively field journaling can lose sight of the big picture & lack overall nature awareness skills because their nose is stuck in a book.

It’s important to balance your field journaling with another type of journaling that emphasizes more big picture awareness & overall tuning in.

That’s what we’ll talk about next…

Memory Journaling

Memory journaling is nature journaling that you do after you come back from an experience outside.

Rather than using your journal live in the field, instead you focus 100% on experiencing nature… then engage your memory after you get home to recall the sights, sounds & feelings you observed while you were outside.

Memory journaling is one of the most important techniques for developing overall awareness & observation skills that reveal the big picture patterns of an environment.

This technique often leads to surprising insights and realizations about your blindspots, and further avenues to explore more closely next time you go outside.

With practice, your naturalist memory will improve to the point where you can mentally replay observations in your mind with incredible accuracy, long after they occur.

This is an essential skill for being able to understand ecology & wildlife patterns at a high level.

If you’d like a step-by-step template to help you get good at memory journaling, check out my Nature Memory Journal program, which includes all the instructions you need to get started.

4. Focus On Process Not Product

It’s important to realize that keeping a nature journal is not just about having something pretty to look at later on.

Sure it’s nice to have your observations on record, but the real magic actually comes from the process you go through in order to create the journal itself.

This is because most people tend to explore nature in a very casual and unaware way… they bumble along in the forest without really registering what their eyes and ears are telling them.

Yet simply adding in the intent to journal your observations, effectively causes you to pay closer attention than you normal would if you were just walking along like normal.

There’s an extra bit of focus in the back of your mind because you want to remember things for your journal.

The process of journaling itself can actually break old patterns of awareness & help you look closer, even if you never do anything with the journals.

This should bring a sigh of relief because it means you don’t have to be perfect.

It really doesn’t matter if you’re not a good sketcher.

It doesn’t matter what the end result looks like as long you have learning experiences along the way!

Nature journaling is first and foremost a tool for training your awareness to notice more… so you should never judge your journals by how they look.

The real benefit is the process of discovery you go through along the way.

5. Sketch With Your Mind’s Eye

Sketching is a great way to improve your identification skills and add some nice visuals to your nature journaling routines.

Have you ever noticed how the simple act of trying to draw something instantly helps you to look more carefully and examine things in greater depth?

So just like we discussed in step #4, the purpose here is NOT to create a flawless drawing…

The real benefit of sketching is that it burns a clear image of whatever you’re sketching into your memory.

You’ll notice that simply drawing a plant makes you much more likely to actually recognize the identification characteristics in a field guide.

You can also enhance the memory benefits of sketching by intentionally pausing before you sketch to close your eyes and create a mental image in your mind.

The steps go like this:

1. Closely examine whatever it is you’re sketching (plants, leaves, rocks, nuts, etc)
2. Close your eyes and see the object as clearly as you can in your mind’s eye
3. Repeat steps 1 & 2 until your mental image is crystal clear
4. Then finally you sketch the object

This simple technique will bring much better results than passively sketching something without engaging your mind’s eye.

6. Use Storytelling To Paint Pictures With Your Words

Each time you have new experiences in nature, there are stories to go with it.

Storytelling is one of the best ways to capture moments of discovery in nature, and translate your observations into insight.

Have you ever noticed how telling a story changes how you feel and think about an experience?

This is because storytelling is a HUGE part of how humans process life and learn about the world.

Just think about it… what’s the first thing you want to do after you have a cool experience? You want to tell your friends & family!

And telling the story gives you a chance to sort out the details more clearly in your head.

As you communicate what happened, there are all kinds of little details and aha moments that resurface as you reflect and gain new perspectives.

Well, this is exactly what happens when you write your nature stories down in a journal!

The prompt I always give students in my distance mentoring program goes this:

Imagine you had to describe your nature experiences to someone who wasn’t there, and include such vivid depth and clarity that they could see what you saw, hear what you heard, and feel what you felt, in the same order and sequence that happened in real life… like a movie.”

Storytelling is one of the best ways to capture moments of discovery in nature, and translate your observations into new awareness.

You’ll be amazed how recording these observations continues to produce new insights about nature even many years down the road.

7. Write Questions To Prompt Awareness

Questions are one of the most important things to include in every nature journal because each new question helps you look closer.

Whenever you finish a nature journal… take a few moments to look back and think about some next level questions you could ask yourself.

• What questions could I ask here to look closer?
• What else could I observe?
• What haven’t I thought of yet?
• What am I curious about here?

Asking questions is one of the simplest journaling exercises you could ever do, and it has dramatic effects on how you tune in.

The purpose of asking yourself questions is not to pressure yourself into finding the answers.

It’s simply about feeding your curiosity and giving you the opportunity to think about what else you could explore next time.

Each new question adds yet another unique layer of perspective into the equation.

It causes you to look in a new direction and ponder the possibilities.

With practice & repetition, asking questions will help you become significantly more alert and tuned in when you step outside.

8. Set The Context For Your Journals

When it comes to journaling & nature observation, a common limitation is when naturalists become fixated on a single point of focus.

Maybe you saw a cool animal or plant that you want to journal about and study.

So you might write down a few details about where you saw it, what was it doing, how did you feel in that moment, etc.

That’s what we would call the foreground of your observations.

It’s all the stuff that’s immediately front and center in your awareness during a nature experience.

But it’s important to realize however, that in many cases the biggest insights about nature don’t actually come from the foreground… it comes from the context and more background elements.

These are all the things that aren’t directly related to the focus of your attention, yet still have a secondary effect by providing context:

• What was the weather?
• What time of year? What was happening seasonally?
• What time of day?
• What other birds, plants & animals are out there?

An example might be seeing dozens of bald eagles along the edge of a river…

You might become so focused on those amazing majestic birds, that you miss out on what they’re telling you about the timing of the salmon runs.

You might miss the little signs of robins, crows and other birds alarming up the bank, and the signs of bears feeding on the fish too.

It’s super important that you don’t ignore the context of your experiences, because that’s often what leads you to discover fascinating connections.

9. Draw Maps

Another great way to set the context of your nature journals is by drawing maps as shown in the following video:

Mapping is a technique to help you look at nature from a more interconnected and 3 dimensional perspective, while adding context and spacial relationships.

It helps you spot patterns about where things are located on a landscape that you wouldn’t normally see from the ground level.

As you position things like plants, trees, hills, water & animal sightings… you start to realize it’s not just random.

There are actually patterns to how and why things are positioned certain ways in nature.

Mapping is also an excellent brain skill that helps you visualize new angles on a familiar scene.

Just remember that step 4 applies to mapping as well – Focus on process not product!

It’s important to not get stuck on trying to draw a perfect map.

Your first attempts at drawing maps from observation & memory will probably be filled with mistakes and inaccuracies… and that’s okay!

The important thing is that drawing maps in your journal helps you look at nature more carefully, and with practice you will be able to draw increasingly accurate maps after any walk in the woods.

10. Take Inventory Of What’s Happening In Nature

One of the secrets to uncovering mysteries of nature is being able to widen the scope of your awareness.

Journaling is a great way to do this because writing things down helps you stay on track and be more intentional about the observation process.

Most people have at least 1 or 2 areas of nature study that are most interesting to them.

It might be plants or birds or tracking, or whatever it happens to be.

But you don’t want to ignore what the clouds & weather are saying just because it’s not your biggest passion.

As we discussed in step 8, sometimes the biggest insights come from completely unrelated areas of nature study.

So a great way to keep tabs on everything is by running through a complete inventory of nature as like a daily or weekly journal.

It’s kind of like running through a list of questions where each question directs your attention to a different aspect of nature:

• What’s happening with the plants?
• What’s happening with the trees?
• What’s happening with the birds?
• What sign of mammals can you find?
• What patterns are you noticing with the forest & overall ecology?
• What’s happening with the weather & seasonal changes?
• What’s happening with human activity & behavior?
• What’s happening to the water levels?
• What’s happening in the insect world?

Taking inventory like this will ensure you don’t forget about any aspect of nature, and help you continually stretch your awareness into the blindspots.

Try to collect at least a few observations from each area of ecology, and with repetition you’ll be able to round out and expand your overall naturalist awareness.

11. Always Look For Patterns

The big thing that makes nature journaling work so well is that it enables you to record and identify patterns that would otherwise be invisible.

Most people move through nature with their awareness only partially open. They see only what’s directly before their eyes.

But the real wonders of nature require you to look deeper.

You need to look beyond the surface, and stay acutely aware that there’s always more to the story.

In the times when nature seems boring… it’s simply because you’re not looking closely enough.

And even in the times when nature completely blows your mind… the reality is you’ve only just scratched the surface.

Journaling your observations enables you to slow down time and examine things more carefully as you ask yourself – What is the pattern here?

• What am I observing?
• What is that telling me?
• What am I learning here?

The more intentional you are about looking for patterns, the more your experience of nature will improve.

12. Supplement Your Journals With Research

If you really want to maximize the benefits of nature journaling, it is sometimes helpful to use other people’s journals as sources of knowledge.

This is where field guides and knowledge resources come in handy.

A good way to do this is to ask yourself – What questions do I have now after this experience?

Make a quick list of things you want to look up, then grab some field guides and start exploring.

There is a whole art and science to the effective use of field guides.

It’s important to be aware that resources can be frustrating for some people because they’re so information dense.

That’s why I would suggest you go light, and let go of expectations before you dive in.

Rather than trying to get fast & direct answers, I would encourage you to approach field guides the same way you approach the forest… with an open attitude of exploration.

It’s not necessarily important to find the exact answer you’re looking for. Sometimes you will, but in many cases it’ll take a few tries.

Research is more about continuing the journey into learning.

You might not always find what you were looking for, but you’ll find other things along the way.

You might find there are 2 possible plants that you were looking at, and in order to be sure you need to go back outside and look closer.

Most often you’ll find that field guides won’t directly answer your questions on the first try because your own awareness simply isn’t open enough yet.

YOU need to take what you learn from field guides, journal the insights, write down some questions, and go back outside to follow up and gather more information.

13. Keep It Fun & Interesting!

As with all things in nature, the most important thing is to keep your journals fun and interesting.

If you follow these 12 tips, you’re going to be amazed by how many opportunities you have to stretch your relationship with nature through journaling.

And if you’d like help along the way, check out my nature memory journal program to get a step-by-step template with questions, mindsets & strategies for nature journaling success!