As temperatures cool and snow begins to grace the northern Sierra Nevada’s ridges and peaks, the “Mountain Kids” of Plumas County carry a simple but transformative tool in their backpacks: a nature journal. These journals capture each student’s experiences in pictures, words, and numbers, each page becoming a window into their weekly adventures.
I have been a place-based educator for three decades. Place-based education is a pedagogical approach that centers instruction and learning in the locale where a child lives and attends school. Each place holds nature and culture simultaneously. Children in the primary and intermediate grades are in a developmental stage where the physical and temporal place in front of them and at their feet is the context for cognitive understanding. Place is a literal here and now and also provides a structure of mindfulness.
In Plumas County, our program Outdoor Core combines nature journaling with a broader place-based curriculum, where students connect with nearby natural spaces and their own sense of self as a Mountain Kid. Through this program, which has been going on for two decades, each child develops their unique connections to the land, drawing out their own “aha” moments, discoveries, and reflections in journals that become personal archives of place and time and self.
In a world saturated with distracting screens and instant updates, nature journaling slows the pace and roots each child in the present moment, connecting them to their own thoughts and expressions in the place that shapes who they are. For many students, this can mean a greater sense of connection, compassion, belonging, and home.
What is nature journaling?
"I wonder if it is a seed or a leaf. I notice a spot that could hold a seed. It reminds me of a wing."
Nature journaling is a mindful practice that invites us to record what we see, feel, and wonder about the natural world. Echoed in ancient expressions like petroglyphs and cave paintings, nature journaling invites us to observe closely, reflect deeply, and document the world around us.
Research suggests that regular time in nature increases focus, boosts mood, and reduces stress. Journaling has been found to reinforce these benefits, creating a reflective space that enhances well-being, encourages creativity, and strengthens a sense of belonging.
The mythologist Michael Meade writes that “nature does not make copies, only originals.” This rings true in the Upper Feather River Watershed, where each season, each phenomenon, and each child who enters this place is one of a kind. I also remind kids that no two days, no two moments, are ever the same. February 1, 2025, for example, comes only once; in journaling, students capture this unique day and all it holds, honoring the moment by simply observing and documenting it.
That the waxing crescent moon appears far to the west during a 5:24 p.m. sunset on February 1 that also reveals a brightly shining Venus and a barely visible Saturn is observable, true, and undeniable, as long an atmospheric river doesn’t get in the way.
When students journal, their original impressions meet the originality of the observed landscape. This meeting point—between child and place—becomes a dialogue, each journal page a blending of two unique geniuses: the child’s and the land’s. Here, nature journaling reveals unexpected moments of wonder and noticing, connecting kids to a place that’s alive with details they would otherwise pass by. This growing awareness fosters an intimacy with the land and with themselves that’s as irreplaceable as the place itself.
In each child’s nature journal, personal discoveries meet shared experiences. After an outdoor adventure, I like to leaf through their journals and see how each child has captured something unique—a leaf pattern, a bug, the shape of a cloud, or the color of a distant ridge. In this way, nature journaling becomes a collective practice; each child’s observation is a puzzle piece that contributes to a broader view of the landscape. Their journals reflect how they’re learning to belong to this place, connecting with themselves and one another.
Nature journaling offers kids the freedom to explore their relationship with the land in a way that reveals both who they are and where they are. For these Mountain Kids, nature is an arbiter of equity. It doesn’t recognize cultural or social divides—it rains and snows on all, warms and cools everyone with shared winds, and demands the same effort from each lung that tackles a steep slope. Every place invites attention to passing seasons and the daily parade of phenomena.
And while rural settings like ours offer mountain views and open spaces, nature journaling is just as meaningful in urban spaces. My time living in Albany and commuting to my undergraduate education in the Strawberry Creek Watershed at UC Berkeley was imbued with sidewalk crack ecology, favorite native birds, the seasonal pulse of fog. There was no lack of opportunity to observe, record, and reflect on living and learning.
One of my closest partners in this work, John Muir Laws—a fellow UC Berkeley conservation and resource studies major—shares this belief in equity. Jack and I, together with others in my region and around the world, have aimed to foster a culture of nature journaling centered around a love of place, people, and purpose. Jack often reminds kids that nature journaling is not about making pretty pictures. Nature journaling is about stepping outside, picking up the pencil, and bringing the place to the page. Over time, we’ve seen nature journaling become a sustaining tradition for children in the region, a commitment grounded unapologetically in love and supported by years of careful attention.
Lessons for educators
Nature journaling is part of our broader Outdoor Core curriculum in the Upper Feather River Watershed. This program offers kids a way to slow down within their “river of learning,” encouraging them to pause, reflect, and develop personal relationships with the land.
"Who lives in the forest?"
Through our Learning Landscapes partnership with the Feather River Land Trust, we have conserved a wild place within a 10-minute walk of every school in the region. This initiative ensures that each school has a nearby outdoor space, giving every child more equitable access to nature. These sites provide kids with a permanent place to learn and explore for this generation and beyond. These Learning Landscapes are nature spaces that are proximate and will always be there for any given day of every school year. They have seen us through difficult times, from the COVID-19 pandemic to the Dixie Fire, and support a culture of resilience of every child.
This journey of connection is one of empathy and compassion, starting with the self and expanding outward. Our Outdoor Core curriculum encourages children to approach each year’s lessons with an open heart and an inquiring mind. We begin with the Garden Year in Kindergarten. First-graders follow the pollinators into the study of invertebrates. Second-graders become herpetologists as they explore reptiles and amphibians. Mammals are explored in third grade. Fourth grade is the Year of the Trout. Fifth grade is focused on birds. Sixth grade is the Watershed Year. Each year, they return to the same woods and creeks but with new purpose and perspectives, discovering who else lives here, what those creatures need, and what it takes to survive and thrive.
For educators looking to incorporate nature journaling or other place-based practices, here are three simple ways to get started:
1. The framework: Have a model to remind kids how to create a page in their nature journal. It should include identifying where you are (location) and when you are (date and time). This turns a blank page into a historic record of adventure and discovery. Next, identify what we call the three languages of nature journaling that use unique parts of your brain: pictures (drawings, maps, diagrams), words (labels, observations, questions), and numbers (measuring, estimating, counting).
2. The tools: It does not take much to create a nature journal. The most important ingredients are a person and a place. Next is something to record with and something to record on. While you literally can use anything, I am a fan of the classic number 2–pencil and a dedicated journal. There are many journal styles, but two cost-sensitive options that we use are BareBooks and Sketch for Schools. Making your own is also a fun option.
"I notice the leaf looks like a 3 headed lizard. I wonder what tree my leaf is from. The leaf reminds me of bacteria."
3. Create a “sit spot” routine: I like to invite kids to have a spot, their spot, to know better than anyone else in the world. Like any intimacy, it takes time to truly come to know a place. It takes time and repetition. Visiting the same place again and again through seasons and over years builds connection and understanding. I also encourage a home sit spot where the homework can be a regularly visited backyard or neighborhood spot of private, joyful inquiry that touches their after-school hours, weekends, and even summers.
There are, of course, many more ideas. I would invite you to visit the website of the Wild Wonder Foundation to explore more resources and ideas. These include John Muir Laws’s How to Teach Nature Journaling, a free curriculum with 31 lessons, and The Nature Journal Connection, a 40-video series to lead and guide kids through a year of nature journaling.
The transformative power of nature journaling
Plumas County, like much of rural California, is politically diverse, representing both conservative and liberal perspectives. And yet I’ve seen again and again how a shared love of people and place dissolves even the sharpest divides. When local residents, teachers, biologists, and parents gather as a community—be it for a class hike or a stewardship project—we are united in our love for our children, our land, and our common purpose. The watershed, with its ridges and rivers, reminds us that boundaries are temporary; like waters that eventually merge at a confluence, we are all connected by our care for this place and one another.
For Mountain Kids, nature journaling is a path toward belonging, a journey that unfolds in both the landscape and within each child. Childhood here is marked by the seasons, by 13 lunar cycles that create opportunities to notice and learn from the rhythm and pattern of their world. Nature journaling is not about some generic, detached form of nature. It’s the nature that lives here, and builds familiarity over time, that deepens into a deep love of place. This “topophilia” roots us, binds us, and transforms us over time.
Over years of teaching, I have seen this connection deepen in the lives of children and adults alike. I’ve watched kids grow up, filling their journals with observations of each season and the small miracles of life in the Upper Feather River Watershed. With each entry, they discover themselves as part of this place, both witnesses and participants in the beauty, fragility, and resilience of life here.
Through this journaling practice, children learn that they aren’t separate from nature—they’re part of it. Their journals become windows into empathy, compassion, and responsibility for the life around them.
After three decades, the Upper Feather River Watershed has shaped not only my understanding of this place but of myself. Who I am, in part, is where I am. They are indivisible. I am a citizen and steward of this place, and it holds me as I hold it. It cares for me as I care for it. Nature journaling has been a path of self-discovery, a journey that I see echoed in my Mountain Kids’ experiences. Through connection with place, we create space for growth, understanding, resilience, and healing, for ourselves and others.
To anyone seeking a similar journey, I encourage you to find a nearby place to sit and return there often. Let it become a place that you know as intimately as you yearn to be known. There, in the quiet of your reflections, you may discover a sense of belonging that runs deeper than words—a sense of place, a place called home. I leave you with a favorite quote by poet Wendell Berry, whose words echo the spirit of this journey:
The world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles, no matter how long, but only by a spiritual journey, a journey of one inch, very arduous and humbling and joyful, by which we arrive at the ground at our feet, and learn to be at home.
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