Focused Wandering

Combining the purpose of inquiry with the spontaneity of an adventure.

Birch Trees in Acadia National Park, 8cm x 13cm, pastel on card, c.2019

What I love most about nature journaling is the unlimited exploration of the minutia around me. There is abundant stimuli for the senses. It’s exhilarating and surprising - you just don’t know what you’ll find! But this abundance can be paralyzing, too. 

With so much to observe in nature, I find that a little focused wandering can be what’s needed. Last year I wrote about following your curiosity like a trail of cairns on a mountain path until your journaling coalesces into a thread of deeper understanding.

Curiosity Chains

Conversely with focused wandering, you set out with an idea or question in your mind. It’s open and expansive, but balanced by some constraint.

Where to mine ideas for focused wandering

If you are new to nature journaling, start with your why first. What is motivating you to take a pencil and paper into the wild? Perhaps you were out in your yard one day and you saw a bird you’ve never seen before. Or maybe you were walking with your child along the shore and discovered a tidepool. I know someone who started nature journaling because he saw interesting tracks in the snow and became curious about the creatures crossing his yard that winter.

Whatever is your why, like my friend it could spark a theme to focus your explorations. If you’ve already been nature journaling for a while, mine your previous journals for emerging themes you can explore further. Even a single bullet-pointed note can be a jumping off point for focused wandering!

Expedition of Wonder

My project of focused wandering is the birds in my geographical area. If you’ve been around Cricklewood for a while, you know 2024 is the beginning of the first year of the Expedition of Wonder. I’m observing the birds of Downeast Maine and the Canadian Maritimes. When I go out in the field it’s to observe and make notes in my journal about them and their habitat.

You can read more about it here.

What Does The Puffin Know?

April’s Prompt: Start Your Own Expedition Of Wonder

You needn’t come up with anything elaborate. I’ll be honest, I may have gone overboard with my project, but I’m rolling with it (I’m also giving myself the better part of a year to work on this).

Think about what sparks your interest right now, and see if you can come up with a theme to explore for a month or more.

Here are a few thoughts to help inspire you:

• Is there anything related to the change of seasons in your region that sparks your curiosity?

• Have you found a new wild plant in your garden and wonder how it got there? This can open up a whole theme of seed migration that you can mine for a single thread of inquiry or many!

• Look at your favorite species of wildlife in your area - why is it your favorite; what about this creature’s habits interest you; what questions do you have about how it lives, eats, mates, travels, it’s habitat and interactions with other animals?

I’d love to know what your focused wandering topic is, so put it in the comments below, if you’d like.

Schedule For April

I’m posting web-only content throughout the week on the homepage, but in addition to that the following emails are scheduled for the rest of the month:

Tiny Owl Dispatch, which will have Expediton updates/essays and a nature journal prompt, will be published/sent next weekend.

The monthly nature-inspired Draw-With-Me video will be published/sent the last weekend in April. It will be in the same format as the one I did before with a 5-minute how-to draw tutorial for free subscribers, and a 55-minute draw with me style video with reference photos for paid readers. We are going to tackle illustrating nests. They look complicated, but they are actually simple to draw with a whole lot of fun texture to illustrate.

The previous Draw With Me was about Canadian Geese:

Draw With Me No. 1: Canadian Geese

New Cricklewood Homepage

Substack implemented some new tools this week that made it possible for me to organize the homepage. There is a feature section at the top with recent and popular newsletters followed by a section where all the Draw With Me Videos will be housed, sections for the monthly newsletter and the Tiny Owl Dispatch. Of course, the menu bar still has links to those sections, but I like a good landing page. You can also find my bird cam list, other places to find me online, and most importantly the Substack publications I highly recommend, so please have a look.

News

In February, my pen and ink drawing of Big Red (a Red-tailed Hawk) was featured in Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Cam-Inspired Creations Community Art Book online. So much beautiful artwork inspired by the bird cams. It was exciting to be included.

Well, that’s all for now. Cricklewood only exists because of all of you, my lovely subscribers. Thank you very much for subscribing, for reading, for nerding out with me, drawing with me, journaling with me, and in 2024 going on an expedition with me.

xoSusannah