I'm a Nature Journal Teacher/ Nature Connection Mentor on a path of relearning how to be a human in reciprocal relationship with the interconnected web of life! Come along and geek out about all our nonhuman kin with me! :) πΈπ π¦π»π¦π¦πππ’π·πΈππππ¦π¦¨π¦π±π³ β(After you subscribe, make sure to go to your email to confirm your subscription! Otherwise you won't actually get my letters. π)
Nature Journal Tip: "Correcting" Your Mistakes
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Nature Connection with Rebecca: Letters of Wonder from My Ecosystem to Yours π October 3, 02026 πLast Quarter Moon Dear friends, For a while now, I've been really into Nature Journaling with pen. Unlike with pencil, of course, you can't erase. I think this helps me to be a little looser with my sketches and less perfectionist. But... sketches are still a way of recording information. What do you do if you make a "mistake" and the drawing (and therefore, the information) is inaccurate? It's OK when this happens! One simple tip I'd like to share is that you can always go back in with words to "correct" your sketch. You can make a note stating what it is about your sketch that differs from what you observed. For example, this happened to me one time recently when I was trying to sketch a Great Egret I saw in the lake. (I was very excited because they only pass through where I live during the migration season). In my first sketch, I pointed with an arrow and wrote "this drawing looks more like a crane head (wide head)." The way I drew it reminds me of the Blue Crane, the national bird of South Africa, who I have seen at the zoo. It's also ok if your sketches have mistakes and inaccuracies in them because you can keep trying! Another way you can "correct" your mistakes is by making more drawings. You will look a little more closely and learn a little more every time. After drawing the Egret a few times, I had the realization that the way Egrets often hold their necks looks to me like a question mark! And that shape clearly differentiates them from the cranes. That's how you learn new things from direct observation. Every drawing of a species is practice for the next one. Every time you notice a mistake, that discrepency creates curiosity, which makes a void in your brain that's highly attuned to relevant information and is ready to absorb your next observation. Making mistakes can also prompt you to seek out resources to help you learn. After this birding outing, I went to my copy of the book The Laws Guide to Drawing Birds because I knew there was a page about how to draw Egret necks. I've had this book for many years, and the guide I needed was right there, but only now after trying to draw the Egret myself did I have a reason to dig in to these specific technical details. The next Egret I drew was much better. John Muir Laws also has a whole free class online about How to Draw Herons and Egrets! All of this can carry into your life beyond nature journaling, too. It's perfectly ok to acknowledge your mistakes or inaccuracies. We all have mental models in our brains about how the world works. It's easy to feel very attached to those models, and even form identities based on them. When we learn new information that contradicts our models, it is easy to double down and get defensive about our beliefs. What if instead, we can try to be open to learning new things about the world, and about each other? -Rebecca π P.S.
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Rebecca Rolnick Writer, Naturalist, Educator βwww.rebeccarolnick.comβ βhttps://www.instagram.com/habitat_restoryation/β Land Acknowledgement: This letter is sent from Syracuse NY, which is in the unceded ancestral lands of the Onondaga Nation of the Haudeonsaunee Confederacy. β¬β¬π²β¬β¬ This is a 100% human-created newsletter. No AI was used in the outlining, writing, or editing of this letter. |
Nature Connection with Rebecca
I'm a Nature Journal Teacher/ Nature Connection Mentor on a path of relearning how to be a human in reciprocal relationship with the interconnected web of life! Come along and geek out about all our nonhuman kin with me! :) πΈπ π¦π»π¦π¦πππ’π·πΈππππ¦π¦¨π¦π±π³ β(After you subscribe, make sure to go to your email to confirm your subscription! Otherwise you won't actually get my letters. π)
Nature Connection with Rebecca: Letters of Wonder from My Ecosystem to Yours π October 18, 02026 π First-quarter Moon Dear friends, Here's one specific way that connecting to nature can also help you connect better to other people. (You can also click here to watch the video version of this letter). One exercise you can do to help you deepen your sensory experience of nature is a Sense Meditation. When you go outside, listen towards your left. Listen towards your right. Listen to the quietest...
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