I spent the day in Pepperwood Preserve, a conservation and nature study center in the heart of Sonoma County, as part of the California Naturalist Program certification. I’m taking the course at this location to learn more about this incredible natural setting in order to become more involved as a volunteer.
This first field session was focused on drawing skills—an important part of one of the naturalist’s key tools, a field journal. Now, I am not an artist, but that’s not so much the point. The act of drawing gives us the ability to capture key details of what we see in the field and emphasize key elements that strike us at that particular moment.
A quick study across the senic vista. What I most like about this is that I used a piece of burnt log from the nearby fire pit to make the drawing. The 4 smudges in the lower foreground are fog collectors for climate studies.
Of course, being a huge fan of digital photography, I really appreciate my Nikon point & shoot. So ultimately, I find it useful to combine digital pictures with good field journaling, sketches, and detailed notes.
A most outstanding resource on the subject of field journals is The Laws Guide to Nature Drawing and Journaling. John Muir Laws is just an outstanding and very personable resource with an excellent website. The book is really amazing and in depth. I’m taking it section-by-section.
My naturalist class urges us to use the “Grinnell” Method, developed by Joseph Grinnell (1877–1939), an American field biologist and zoologist. It is, to say the least, precise. Hopefully practice will make…well, not “perfect” but good enough. (To be mindful…)
Our field-records will be perhaps the most valuable of all our results. …any and all (as many as you have time to record) items are liable to be just what will provide the information wanted. You can’t tell in advance which observations will prove valuable. Do record them all!
~Grinnell, 1908
a drawing of the clouds and rain from the journals of Thoreau
I do find that this time-honored technique is an important part of the naturalist experience for the individual while also leaving an important and personal record. Beyond simply recording data, field journals offer engaging and compelling observations and reflections that provide important context. I was just reading an article that quotes the field journals of Henry David Thoreau (also not necessarily artist), and I was struck by his boundless enthusiasm and curiosity as well as his detailed observations.
Towards the end of the session on Saturday, we stopped under this Bigleaf Maple, native from Alaska to southern California. (Yes, maple trees in California, big bold hardy ones, not those precious palmate maples.) The hills around us are dotted with splashes and zones of deciduous color right now—likely this tree. The patterns that appear indicated specific preferable growing conditions. Given the summer heat, these trees do best with some humidity, like the fog blanketing the area the morning we started, so I’m postulating that the specific and demarcated color splashes in the hills represent growth patterns defined by the effect of the fog rolling over and concentrating on the hills.
An example of the color patterns of what I assume are deciduous trees in the hills of Pepperwood Preserve. Sadly, because of the ongoing effects we have had of Sudden Oak Death in the forrests here, some of us were wondering. Closer examinaton may be required.
Natural Musing 