When I was little, I liked to fill notebooks with all kinds of things I saw in my life. For a time, it was mostly people, and places. Once I got my first official journal, a gift from my mom on my 10th birthday, I started writing about other things.
I would walk down to this small park right by my house, and sit in the shade of a tree while I watched people walk their animals and play in the field. I wrote down all the different kinds of dogs I had seen, and drew replicas of the clouds in this book, but I got bored pretty quickly.
I started paying attention to the familiarities I saw in each of the trees. Each one mimicked the other, but yet was so different. I would pick up fallen leaves, and write down how the patterns that went through them made me feel.
I found that I loved being around plant and animal life, plant life specifically. While this book started as one to write down all my observations, it turned into one of reflections. I would describe how these leaves looked but I didn't think that I was telling enough. I started to include my thoughts about them. Why I just liked to sit and trace over the textures on the tree trunks over and over. I was only fully satisfied when I put myself into my journal.
The journal my mom gave me was green and leather, and I had filled it up with images of rainy days, and drawings of rose bushes. So I decided to make it my nature journal, and I tried to write in it as much as possible.
As a 12 year old boy though, I got bored after a few months and moved on to other things. I don't know where my nature journal went, but I wish I still had it, so I could go back and see what kind of naturalist I used to be.
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