The following is a guest post from our amazing nature journaling teen amabassador Amaya Shreeve! Amaya has been on the Nature Journal Show several times. In this article she describes her experience at the 2021 Wild Wonder Nature Journaling Conference.
What do you get when you put a bunch of nature journalers, scientists, writers, and artists all in one room? A very happy Amaya! I’m Amaya and as you can tell I must of really enjoyed Wild Wonder!
For those of you who don’t know what Wild Wonder is I’ll tell you. It’s a nature journaling conference where people come together to learn more, share, and inspire each other. Wild Wonder this year (2021) was my favorite! I’ve been to all 3 so I know a thing or two about this conference. This year’s conference was amazing! I mean words cannot describe the excitement one has when you get to have a “goat break” with Mark Simmons!(is this too much of an inside joke? can you please explain more? I took the class and still didn’t understand the goat joke.)
What made this year truly amazing was not the classes (don’t get me wrong they were great) but it was the people who came. The people who came are willing to talk for hours on end about nature. The people who came will encourage on any big task you want to accomplish. They will make you feel loved and more at home than ever. The cool thing is these people aren’t just at Wild Wonder. They are all over the nature journaling community and they are willing to help support you and encourage you to keep up those pencil miles.
At this year’s conference I got a direct experience of how kind this community is. At John Muir Law’s keynote on day 2 he ended his talk on how amazing and supportive this community is, all the while giving the love back to everyone. He gave thanks to everyone who was helping create the conference. He also shared a big project of mine. I didn’t ask him to do this so. You can imagine how surprised I was when he shared my project. I was shocked. I ran into the other room, computer in hand, telling my mom to look. I was barely able to get the words out. I sat there watching my screen as tears of joy filled my eyes.
I can’t believe I am able to be apart so something so amazingly wonderful. So when you go to Wild Wonder don’t just look to the teachers, look to the fellow students. Seek their mentorship. After all, the best mentors tend to be your friends. Well at least mine are. If you are curious about my project. Well I guess I can tell you. I mean why not! I have created a nature journaling magazine for kids. I hope his magazine will inspire a love for nature journaling in my generation and the next. (insert a link to her magazine here?)
Thank you for reading this blog post . I don’t usually write blog posts so this was fun! Here are some links to help support me and some for you to find out more about me. A special thanks to Marley for letting me write this blog post. Lots of the love –Amaya
You can see Amaya’s fun nature journaling YouTube videos here.
Check out her Instagram.
Want to motivate more nature journaling teens? You can find out more about the nature journaling magazine on Amaya’s patreon page!
