Nature Journaling With a “Muggle”: Challenge Day 26

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Have you ever nature journaled with a muggle aka someone who doesn’t nature journal? What about with a group of muggles?

Today’s Prompt: Nature journaling with a muggle

In the Harry Potter book series, people who do not use magic are called muggles. Soon we will see that this term might not be the best for non-nature journalers. However, it is useful to have an easy to use term sometimes. The important thing for today is not the term. The important thing for today is to try to nature journal with one of these people or potentially a group. Likely individuals include: your spouse, members of your family, friends, etc. Here are several videos about nature journaling with muggles.

What you can learn from nature journaling with a muggle

First of all you will be forced to explain things. They won’t know what pencil miles are, or landscapitos. They won’t know what metadata is and they won’t know who John Muir Laws is. That is good because explaining these will improve your understanding.
Does your muggle friend or spouse walk as slow as you do in nature? I highly doubt it! You will have to adapt or compromise. This is good practice. Can you work a little faster? Can you adapt your approach in other ways? Surprisingly, this can be aggravating but try to think of it as a challenge.
Equally important, is that you will be “stealth teaching”. Your friend thinks you are just going to do some sketches on your monthly friend hike. In fact, you are going to be exposing them to concepts of nature journaling, the most powerful learning technology in the world! Sometimes, this type of modeling is more influential then regular teaching.
Lastly, this is good practice for the holidays. You never know when you might need to change the subject during family conversations. When your brother in law starts making inappropriate remarks you can quickly interject with a nature journaling tangent. To see more holiday tips check out this video.

In conclusion, there are a variety of reasons to try to nature journal with a muggle. It also means you will get to share your nature journaling practice with people in your life who are not nature journaling yet. And that reminds me. A new term we are trying for muggles is “Yetys” the people are not nature journaling YET. This term is more in alignment with our growth mindset. Want to know more about a growth mindset and the power of the word “Yet”? Check out this video below with Carol Dweck.