Weekly Prompt No. 23: Your Nature Spark

Part 1 of a 3-Part Series: This week you identify your "nature spark" and write down your nature journaling origin story.

Circuitously I credit birds as my “tangible nature spark.” They are prominent in all of my journaling. Birds are the filter through which I view the natural world — an anchor point from which all other inquiries radiate from.

Hey, friends!

In birding, your “spark bird” is the one that inspires you to get serious about birding. Well, like birders, I think nature journalers have a “nature spark” that sets us down a path of curiosity and motivates us to nature journal. Your spark could be a single plant, animal, insect. It could also be a concept or an experience, like it was for me.

When I was a little kid, my parents took me camping every summer. The terrain varied — lakeside, desert, forest (my favorite) — but it was the experience of waking up in nature that was my spark, as I wrote in an interview for Homecoming last year.

Excerpt:

“I grew up in a tent-camping, national-park-visiting family, and I always loved that moment when snug in your sleeping bag you slowly emerge from unconsciousness at the first light of dawn in concert with the forest ecosystem. The trees are slowly illuminated as night fades. Birds start to move around, quietly chirping amongst themselves. You hear the faint hum of insects and the sound of small animals in the undergrowth. You smell the dew evaporating in the heat of a rising sun. And then you realize that you’re breathing in sync with the world as you awaken together. I carry that experience with me everywhere. If I can remember that feeling no matter where I am or what’s happening, I’m okay.”

I was a curious kid who lived in her head, and listening to the birds sing early in the morning while I was cocooned in my sleeping bag did it for me.

• What made them wake up?

• Why did they chirp, screech, rattle, and hum?

• Would my parents get mad if I joined in…

• What were they communicating?

• Were they cold?

• Where did they sleep?

• How did they keep warm in the night?

• I don’t want to leave my sleeping bag yet…

• Were they hungry?

• What did they eat for breakfast?

• Mmmm, breakfast…

The questions just kept coming. So my “tangible nature spark” is birds. They became an entry point into a vast universe that I belong to and kindled the desire to explore the natural world.

The Toolkit For This Week

• Your memories and experiences

• Journal and favorite writing implement

• Courage to dig deep, go out on a limb, and any other “nature” type metaphors I can come up with… (and, believe me, I can come up with a lot!)

Prompt