What Does The Puffin Know?
Happy New Year! 2024 is a year of exciting projects beginning with The Expedition of Wonder. Read on...
Dearest friends,
Welcome, new subscribers, and welcome back, existing subscribers!
Today is the last day of my Staycation, and I’ve spent the week reacquainting myself with an activity I used to be obsessed with – reading. I was inspired due to a need to rediscover those activities that are part of my identity, in this case, avid reader. Writing this feels a bit silly. I didn’t stop reading. I just stopped reading for pleasure.
I can say the same for my art practice. Up until last year, the excitement of discovery had been seeping from my work. I was focused on outcomes instead of grounding in the process and enjoying spontaneity. I found that instead of feeling free and confident to experiment, I felt tense and my work felt static. I discounted everything I learned from making bad art – a very necessary part of artmaking, and credited chance or luck when I created something that worked. It was discouraging!
Then last year I founded Cricklewood, you joined, and together we explored nature with words and pictures. We drew to connect with our surroundings, and it was fun! My focus shifted to the process of discovery through making. I looked at the world with a fresh gaze, and I’ve heard from a number of you that you have, too!
Big New Project for 2024
This year I’ve decided to eschew resolutions, and my life goals haven’t changed so there’s no need to pledge them again. Instead, I’m embracing the project mentality, and the most encompassing one in 2024 involves you!
This year, we are going on an expedition in our nature journals. I’m calling it:
Expedition of Wonder: Cracking The Environmental Code With Birds
Nature sends information to its creatures – and that includes us – crucial to survival. I fear, however, we either don’t hear it, don’t understand it, or a combination of the two. It’s too overwhelming, we’re witnessing domestic and international horrors, and modernity does not always facilitate the reception of those signals.
Most of us haven’t been raised to trust the instincts encoded in our DNA from generations of ancestral survival in the wild. We instinctively know to pull our car or bike over to the side of the road when we hear the wail of a fire truck’s siren before we even see it approach, but we have no idea what the rapid-fire screech of a bird in a tree means. We are trying to process a lot of environmental feedback we don’t understand.
So I started to think perhaps it would be easier to start small and learn to decipher the messages we get from a small sliver of nature. And then I thought, birds…
Why birds?
Because birds are ubiquitous making them easy to observe regularly. It doesn’t matter where you live, there are at least a couple of species of birds nearby. Even Manhattan – one of the most densely populated urban areas on Earth – has birds ranging from songbirds to predator birds, such as Peregrine Falcons, and they are passing each other messages all the time.
Deciphering a code of communication
Building on everything in our nature journaling toolbox from this first year of Cricklewood (INIWIRMO, sit spots, zoom in/out, etc), we will observe birds to ascertain what clues they are leaving us. Now if you are thinking, “Susannah, have you developed a sneaky way for me to become a birder?!” – the answer is no, and yes, and maybe, but also does it matter?
I’m hoping that you’ll adapt the activities to your area and whatever creature calls to you (no, pun intended… okay, yes, I intended that pun a little…). The goal of this project is to learn to listen to what nature is trying to tell us. I’m using birds as my ciphering key, but if birds aren’t your thing (yet) choose another animal or plant you have easy access to. Cricklewood has a global subscriber community. We won’t always share the same weather, topography, or animals, but I hope wherever we are on the planet we can learn from our surroundings together.
When I started Cricklewood, it was always in the back of my mind that we would someday share a project where we focus on something specific together, and I hope my activities model a method of nature journaling to help you interact with the environment, celebrate its beauty, and decipher what she’s trying to tell us. In a nutshell, the goal is to rewild (like I discussed here) and discover ways to integrate with nature.
Why did I choose the birds of the Gulf of Maine region?
Firstly, it's because I’m so curious about our winged neighbors in this area of the United States, and I have a myriad of questions that I need answered. Secondly, the Gulf of Maine is one of the world’s most dynamic environments. It’s nourished by cold ocean waters and made up of deep basins and shallow banks. This semi-enclosed sea is one of the most biologically productive marine ecosystems.
It's also one of the fastest-warming ocean regions, with average surface temperatures rising faster than 99% of marine waters worldwide. As human activities continue to alter climate conditions, these shores will see significant changes affecting the flora, fauna, and humans populating the area and beyond. It’s the perfect lab for this project!
Becoming A Citizen Naturalist
I am an artist and citizen naturalist, not a scientist. While I try to observe and record elements of the natural world like a scientist, I process that information through my artwork and in my nature journal. There is a subjective and emotional component to my nature journal. At the core of Cricklewood, and now the Expedition of Wonder, is fostering a deep connection with the environment through drawing and writing.
We draw to learn through acute observation.
We write to process the information we glean from looking closely at the world.
We link our knowledge together to form an understanding of the ecosystem we inhabit, and through perception appreciate and bond with our biosphere.
A brief word to those of you who think you can’t draw.
You can draw, but at this moment you may not be able to draw the way you think you should, or examples you’ve seen, or even the way you want. All three were true for me when I started. I had to overcome my own bias of what my drawings should look like. Heck, to be honest, I still struggle with this. Are you surprised? You shouldn’t be.
Drawing is an evolution, like every other skill we’ve acquired in our lives. You learn as you go by doing. Let go, persevere, and lean into the notion that drawing in your nature journal is about recording your observations and experiences with nature. It’s visual note-taking. There’s no particular way it should look, and it’s for your eyes only.
Why keep a nature journal?
Keeping a nature journal places you in the center of your environment through close observation and the meditative act of drawing. It also involves walking in nature which triggers all sorts of positive physiological and psychological effects in a person. Importantly, you become part of nature’s communications network. The birds react to your presence, and you to theirs. After a while, you’ll feel it, and then the fun begins!
Something for everyone
It’s important to me that the entire Cricklewood community can participate, and I’ve designed the Expedition for armchair naturalists and field naturalists, or any combination of both because, you know, life. I have planned for us themed essays, nature journaling prompts, weekly field trips, nature journaling demos and draw-with-me sessions, and field updates and vlogs.
Free subscriber and paid subscriber content
Finding the balance between the two has been the number one reason I’ve waited to post about this project. I want everyone to have access to everything, but the reality is that expeditions need financing and this publication is reader-supported (thank you, my current tiny band of paid subscribers xo). So here is what I’ve come up with:
Cricklewood Subscribers-At-Large (my lovely free subscribers – you are the bedrock!)
A monthly theme post with a prompt sent via email (and on the website)
An Expedition nature journal page from that month
Weekly web-only posts
An occasional tip or technique video
Previews of paid content
Tiny Owl Dispatch Subscribers (my wonderful paid subscribers – Cricklewood would not exist without you!)
Enjoy everything free subscribers receive above PLUS
A monthly issue of the Tiny Owl Dispatch sent via email (and on the website) – which includes:
Exclusive Expedition of Wonder 2024 content, like essays, exclusive nature journal spreads, field studies, and project updates
Extra nature journaling prompts throughout the month to help with your practice
Exclusive web-only Expedition posts
Field vlogs
Nature-journal-with-me style prerecorded video including reference photos from my field trips
Live nature-journal-with-me Zoom sessions every quarter (March, June, September, and December)
Anything else I can think of that will add to the expedition experience!
Expedition Supporters (my generous founding members – thank you for supporting this year-long project of wonder and discovery!)
Everything Paid and Free Readers enjoy PLUS some tangible perks:
Handmade postcards and zines sent in the post throughout the year (8-12 per year)
Exclusive 2025 Tea Towel Calendar with illustrations from An Expedition of Wonder (ships approximately November/December of 2024)
Limited edition, signed fine art prints (2x year)
I am very grateful for all the support I’ve received in 2023 through free and paid subscriptions, and treasure each of you. I’m so excited to begin the Expedition and hope that you will join me in whatever way is sustainable for you.
Next week look for our first theme post and nature journal prompt of 2024 in your inbox.
xoSusannah