In this nature journal interview you will get a peak into the story of another nature journaler. You might not be as young as Fiona… And you might not have filled 1,900 pages of nature journals…Nevertheless, I’m sure you will be moved by this conversation.
Tips from this Nature Journal Interview
- The best place to nature journal is somewhere with lots of mysteries! You don’t have to travel.
- Luckily, you can find lots of mysteries near your home or even inside.
- Nature journaling is not an “art project.” Your pages don’t have to look a certain way. They also don’t have to look perfect.
- The main point of nature journaling is to be amazed by nature, to look more closely to nature and to learn.
- Don’t be afraid to start nature journaling just because you are intimidated by all the visually polished pages you see online.
- If you are a more experienced nature journaler consider sharing some of your less perfect pages to encourage beginners. In this interview Fiona said “The pages you don’t want to share are the pages that you need to share.”
- Nature journaling can help your birding. The nature journaling approach can help birders appreciate and find nuance even in the most common “trash birds.” For more about how to combine birding and nature journaling check this video out. Also be sure to check out Fiona’s recent article in Birding Magazine for more about this topic.
More about Fiona Gillogly
Here is a short bio from Fiona to learn more about her that was not in the nature journal interview.
Fiona Gillogly, age 17, has loved art and nature since she was a little girl. In 2016, on her 13th birthday, she discovered nature journaling through a chance meeting with John Muir Laws, and she was thrilled to find something that combined these two things she adored. Since then, she has
become a passionate nature journaler, naturalist, and advocate for nature. Fiona spends time daily in the wild lands near her home. She loves to look for mysteries in nature and explore them in the pages of her nature journal. Fiona also loves to bird, draw, paint, craft, act, sing, harmonize, play
cello, compose music, write stories, and speak German.
Fiona has attended Waldorf schools since the age of 3, where art and nature are an integral part of the curriculum, but none of her nature journaling has been a part of school instruction. All of it has been self-motivated. In the 4 years that she has been nature journaling, Fiona has completed 23
journals with more than 1,900 pages of nature journaling explorations.
Fiona is one of several naturalists included in John Muir Laws’ latest book, How to Teach Nature Journaling (https://johnmuirlaws.com/product/how-to-teach-nature-journaling/). Fiona recently published her first print article in the June issue of Birding, the national monthly magazine of the American Birding Association. The 7-page article is called: “A Birder’s Brain on Paper: How keeping a nature journal improves our birding experiences.”
Fiona plans a career in ornithology that also includes field sketching/illustration/art and writing. You can read more about Fiona, watch some of her talks, and see examples of her writing and her nature journaling pages here: https://www.fionasongbird.com/naturalist.html
