Nature Journaling with John Muir Laws

John Muir Laws  0:00  
You don't need to go to the distant National Park to find wander around you. Hello

Michelle Fullner  0:05  
and welcome to Golden State naturalist, a podcast for anyone who's ever wanted to learn how to look a little more closely and find wonder in the most seemingly mundane of moments. I'm Michelle Fullner. And you just heard the voice of John Muir laws, who's going to guide us today on an exploration of nature journaling. Now, before you turn this off, because you don't think of yourself as an artist know that one of the things we're going to talk about is why pretty pictures actually don't matter in nature journaling, the aesthetic quality of the art, thankfully, for many of us, just isn't the point of the activity. So on today's episode, find out what the point of nature journaling actually is. And we'll also talk about a lot more like the nature of memory why your brain is expensive, what to try and so six things should be included in every nature journal, how to cultivate attention, growing your curiosity, art supplies, metadata, what love is prompts bloody feathers, nature journaling in cities, a hat throwing Yosemite Ranger, the ephemeral nature of being and how to find rapture in the little mysteries all around us. Really quick. Before we get to that, don't forget to subscribe to make sure you stay up to date on new episodes. If you're listening on Apple podcasts, you can do that by hitting the little plus in the upper right hand corner of your screen. I also want to celebrate really fast that Golden State naturalist is now only $20 a month away from being fully funded by the amazing listeners helping out on Patreon, it would mean so much to me as an independent podcaster if you could help me cover that last $20 by chipping in as little as $4 a month with that membership. You also get access to all kinds of cool video and audio extras AMA's and more, including sending me your questions for the naturalist before I go out on interviews. Thank you so much to everyone who's already supporting on Patreon. There'll be an AMA or ask me anything coming up soon, which will probably be more like a very casual zoom hangout where everyone wears loungy clothes and drinks their favorite beverage. You can find me on Patreon at www.patreon.com/michelle Fullner. That's Michelle with two L's and Fullner is fu ll en er and if you're enjoying the show, I cannot tell you how much it helps to leave a rating or review particularly on Apple podcasts or Spotify. This helps Golden State naturally stay active in the charts which helps more people discover the show last month with your help Golden State naturalist hid number six in the nature charts. So thank you so much for making that possible by listening, reviewing and sharing with everyone who's ever told you an interesting fact they learned on a podcast you can find me at Golden State naturalist on both Instagram and Tiktok if you want to see my outdoor adventures and pictures of the interview locations, but now let's get to the episode John Muir laws also known as Jack is a principal leader and innovator of the worldwide nature journaling movement. Jack is a scientist, educator and author of numerous books including the laws guide to nature drawing and journaling the laws guide to the Sierra Nevada and so many more. He also recently illustrated a beautiful new book called Wild Sonoma Jack is the founder and president of the wild wonder Foundation, which is a nonprofit organization dedicated to encouraging nature connection and conservation through attention curiosity, art, science and community. And he's the founder and host of the nature journal club, which is a worldwide intergenerational nature journaling community with a Facebook group that's over 45,000 members strong. He was given the 2020 by nature Local Hero Award for his work in environmental education and he's a regular contributor to The Nature magazine with his naturalist notebook column. His work intersect science, art and mindfulness trained as a wildlife biologist and an associate of the California Academy of Sciences. He observes the world with rigorous attention. He's also a fantastic human being and delightful conversationalist as you're soon going to see. So without further ado, let's hear from John Muir laws on Golden State naturalist.

John Muir Laws  4:17  
Boy it's a weird looking little thing, and this one has a little white nugget sticking out of it. I wonder if those flowers Jack

Michelle Fullner  4:23  
and I met up back in November at Bedwell Bayfront park right on the southwestern edge of the San Francisco Bay. We're the rolling hills of the peninsula give way to saltwater in the space between hills and water though there's an almost eerie place where the ground is made up of white grade crystals that crunch with each footstep and shallow streams sneak lazily across a landscape dotted with unassuming brown plants no taller than your ankle. It was these plants we stopped to examine each of us pulling out a notebook before sitting cross legged on the ground. Most of the plant was this mass of sort of dried up crinkly brown material.

John Muir Laws  5:00  
And then there are these succulent red and Spring Green jewels that stick out of that. And then each one of those has texture, right? Like like morning do little droplets of morning do or lizard skin, lizard skin

Michelle Fullner  5:17  
is a good one, we were surrounded by mysteries, any of which we could have pursued that date, the strange, Lumpy ground with hollow places inside what type of mineral we were crunching all over, we knew it wasn't salt, because Jack tasted it, I'll actually put a video of that on social media, and then these strange plants with this funny little succulent looking thing on the end of it, and we decided to sit and look at the plant. And as you listen to this first part of the episode, I want you to imagine us both sitting there on the mineral ground sketching this odd little plant, but one of the things I really wanted to understand is why it's important stop and actually draw something rather than just stopping to look

John Muir Laws  5:59  
at it closely. The purpose of the journal is the journal itself is just, it's an extension of of your memory, it's a way of kind of logging more stuff into your memory in a way that you can retrieve it, that process is going to help you notice more in the moment.

Michelle Fullner  6:16  
So being more present and more observant is huge. But there's another big reason for the journal, our

John Muir Laws  6:22  
brains cannot hold very much information at one time. And if we try to kind of fit another little piece in there, what it does is it kicks out something else that you are thinking about, right. And we think that you make some cool Natural History observation that that is going to stick with you, you're going to remember this indefinitely. But that's not the way that it works. Unfortunately, we forget stuff, we're so much more forgetful than we like to think because our memories do this really wonderful thing. Like you think about something that happened to you when you were a little child, some little childhood memory. And when you recall it, you can recall it vividly as if you're, you're looking at a little movie of it right? Well, probably most, if not all of what you're experiencing is something you made up. And what happens is your brain will will recall a little nugget of an experience. And then there are all these gaps. And then your brain fills in all those gaps with stuff that's completely made up. And sometimes you can even take some story that you've heard or something that you read about it and incorporate that.

Michelle Fullner  7:30  
You know, it's funny, that reminds me of when I was little I have these very strong memories of being little. And when the video camera would come out, running over and sticking my face in it and making silly faces and just running around like a little maniac being crazy. And then I went and I watched the home videos, it was my brother doing all of that. I didn't do any of that. I was like sitting there watching, observing what he was doing.

John Muir Laws  7:55  
So that's we confabulate we make stuff up, or we incorporate whatever into our memories. And it has the subjective feeling of being your experience. So vividly. I know I was there.

Michelle Fullner  8:10  
I was a little maniac when I was I was so energetic, I was bouncing off the walls. That was totally me, I identified with it. It's very strange to be confronted with facts that are not just different from your memories, but actually make you rethink who you were and who you are. But that's just kind of how memory works.

John Muir Laws  8:27  
Isn't it interesting that very often around photo albums, we were like, oh, yeah, I totally remember that event. Okay, what happened next, we have no idea. But we see this little photograph. And then we can kind of invent a story of us being in that, yeah, there's this little artifact of an experience, I'm seeing that I'm supposed to be in that, then my brain goes ahead in and events, all this stuff around it. So if we're doing that all the time, and we're trying to use evidence to make explanations from things, if we're trying to make sense of this world. By observing it, we can't handle it. Yeah. And so we, I mean, the brains just good enough to kind of get us through the forest and be able to, you know, collect enough roots and tubers and avoid the leopard and be able to procreate, and we try to like figure stuff out, it's not gonna happen. So what we have to do is get our observations down onto the paper, get our questions down onto the paper, get our explanations, anything that is going on in here that you think is worthwhile, get it down on the paper. And that's two of our scientific things. It's also true of the kind of the goofy moments of our life, like here, here's this feather. That's Jack

Michelle Fullner  9:38  
tapping on a drawing of a feather in his nature journal, covered with blood.

John Muir Laws  9:42  
So where did this come from? Well, my daughter found it underneath the tree across the street. And while he was on a meeting, she came banging on the window showing me these bloody feathers. Right? So the phenomenon is great and turns out I was leading a workshop on how do you kind of You know, use inquiry to investigate phenomena, how do you select phenomena, and my daughter is like whole outside my window holding up a phenomena, right? And dropped itself into your lap. So I said, bring that in and bring that in. And so we did this online with with with with this group of people. So I have to have her in there too, because that's part of the experience as interesting as the rocket of feathers splattered with blood work, right. The other part of the experience is, I love this little girl, and she brought up this, like bloody feathers to pop up, because she was so excited about it not grossed out at all about it. I love that. And, you know, there she was out the window. So, you know, you think like, I don't know, women forget that, right? Give it two days, Jack

Michelle Fullner  10:46  
pointed out that Charles Darwin didn't actually figure out his ideas on transmutation of species until after he left the Galapagos Islands and was back in England looking at his notebooks, because

John Muir Laws  10:57  
what you can do is you can hold on paper, many more ideas and complex ideas and show relationships to them, then you can inside your electric meat. So you're you're sensing and perceiving. If you see something, get it down in here, get the next thing down in here, get the next thing down in here. And then you can look in here, and you can see all of your ideas swimming together. And you can do something even bigger with it. What

Michelle Fullner  11:24  
if you don't feel confident in your ability to capture it? Okay, that

John Muir Laws  11:28  
doesn't matter at all. It doesn't matter at all. One of the biggest myths about nature journaling, it's it's about kind of nature drawing, and it's this thing that nature artists do when they go out and they're going to nature journal, and no, so I'm starting off here making it kind of, you know, going to be making a drawing, I'm going to do the rest of this in a totally diagrammatic fashion. And you'll see that I'll be able to record a ton of information about this. In a way that is not pretty pictures. But what I'm trying to do is, if you want an interest, a good page, make it dense with information. When

Michelle Fullner  11:59  
I go out to nature journal, I tend to get really fixated on the prettiness of the pictures I'm making. It's hard not to we're used to seeing beautiful finished products by professional artists and graphic designers. And it's hard for me not to compare my work with theirs. But when I think like this, I'm entirely missing the point of the nature journal,

John Muir Laws  12:19  
that this is like, I'm dyslexic, right? So and if I'm trying to say transparent, how do I spell transparent? Nothing, I can't write transparent cuz I don't know how to spell that. You see, like, that doesn't make any sense like this. This is your brain on paper. Right? Right.

Michelle Fullner  12:34  
This was the exact right example to use with me. In my former life as a high school English teacher, I can't tell you how many kids would stop writing in the middle of an assignment. Every time they were afraid they were spelling a word incorrectly. It drove me crazy, because by focusing on their spelling, even on free writing assignments, they were interrupting their thought process and not getting all of their ideas and observations on paper, I always wished I could magically clear away all of the insecurities holding them back and open up their ability to break through to the next level of thinking. But it never occurred to me that I was doing the same exact thing in my nature journal. As an antidote to this kind of fixation on prettiness Jack said to focus on getting as much information onto the page as possible. He even pulled out a

John Muir Laws  13:25  
ruler, it's about three centimeters tall, and it's about 14 centimeters wide. So

Michelle Fullner  13:32  
rather than focusing on aesthetics, Jack suggest focusing on questions, data, observations, relationships, and possibilities. But what if your drawing still looks nothing like the thing you were trying to draw? And

John Muir Laws  13:45  
so when I get things down on paper, I can then say, like, does it really look like that? And if so, I can write you know, should be wider?

Michelle Fullner  13:53  
Well, now you have an artifact right? To compare to reality. That's right, rather than trying to just remember a bunch of facts in your head.

John Muir Laws  14:02  
That's right. That's right. And the remembering is not going to just like the video of the child playing with the video camera, it's that's not going to work out well for you.

Michelle Fullner  14:13  
Keeping a nature journal helps us work with the way our brains work rather than against it at this point, whether you've ever nature journal before or not, I hope you're wanting to go out and give it a shot or to refine or grow your practice. So let's get into a few of the practical elements of setting up your page. Do you usually note the weather the time all of those things? Or do you sometimes do that sometimes not? I

John Muir Laws  14:37  
do it when I'm paying attention and being a good naturalist. Okay? So the more I can make that metadata my habit, the better off I am, because the scientific value of this information goes way up when I date stamping, geo referencing and so I'm gonna re recorded the location mineral flats at Bedwell Bayfront Park the day and November 11,

Michelle Fullner  15:02  
and relevant weather information, let's

John Muir Laws  15:05  
say three to four days after rain. And it's partly cloudy. drawn a little cloud with a little sun peeking out.

Michelle Fullner  15:15  
One great thing about recording metadata like this is that you can do really cool things with it, like go back to the same place on the same day, the next year and compare things like what the weather is doing, the state of the vegetation, how dry things are, whether or not a plant is blooming, and so much more. It's really just a great way to level up our observations about the natural world. So recording metadata is one fantastic tool to use in your naturalist toolkit. This next part you're about to hear is just absolutely stuffed with more tools for you six of them, in fact, and if you use them intentionally, you're going to grow so much as a naturalist and nature journaler. Actually, just like person who is alive,

John Muir Laws  16:00  
what I like to do is I like to think in my head of two triads, words, pictures, numbers. I've got words, I've got pictures, I've got numbers. Okay. I noticed I wonder it reminds me of. So those are the two triads, there's words, pictures and numbers, there's a notice, I wonder it reminds me of and what you're doing when you're nature journaling is you're putting those two together and putting them down on the page. And so you can use those as prompts as you're doing things real time, or then you can kind of look back at it and said, like, Am I doing words, pictures, numbers, and I noticed I want to remind me, I've got these, it reminds me of VHS. I've got a lot of observations here. There's no questions. All right.

Michelle Fullner  16:37  
Jack goes into more detail on these in the laws guide to nature journaling, which I adore and have used a ton by the way, but I also think you can get a lot out of just hearing them again. So here are the two triads, one, words, pictures and numbers. Don't be deceived by the simplicity of this. It's so powerful to include these three things together. And remember that you can get creative with them. I love the idea of putting a few lines of poetry in your journal, for instance, or just waxing poetic about something you see. And the second triad is I noticed, I wonder, it reminds me of these three prompts, help you make observations, ask questions, and draw comparisons. Don't worry, you'll hear those stated again. But when he went over them out loud, Jack realized that he was missing questions he was missing, I wonder. So he thought of a couple of questions and added them to his journal right there.

John Muir Laws  17:31  
So are these little red growths? Green growths? Are these new since the rain? I want to be intentional about bringing those questions into my journaling process. And I can use that thinking have I noticed that wonder it reminds me of as a triad to prompt me to notice when I haven't asked questions, or I haven't done. And it reminds me of or if there's something that I'm leaving out here that could make this process richer. Now,

Michelle Fullner  18:06  
if you're getting into this idea, and you're curious about what kinds of art supplies to get, Jack has a whole list of suggestions on his website, which is John Muir laws.com. And of course, I'll link that in the show notes. But one of his suggestions is a very cool pencil that draws super light blue called a non photo blue pencil. And that allows you to capture the shape and proportions of something as you start sketching. And if you sketch lightly, you don't even have to erase this blue pencil, you can just start using a heavier pencil or a pen overtop. I also just love his whole philosophy about art supplies.

John Muir Laws  18:43  
A little set of colored pencils is absolute gold, or a little set of watercolors. If you're comfortable with how to use watercolors to allow you to start to play with colors. Colored pencils are much easier to navigate at the start, you want to use a system that is going to make it easy for you to get the information that you want down onto a page in a way with the least hassle or a trouble. That way the process of doing it gets out of the way of the thinking. So

Michelle Fullner  19:17  
whatever supplies help you forget about the fact that you're using art supplies are probably the best art supplies. Again, the point is the thinking you're doing about the world around you. Almost every single time I've put my nicest paper and watercolors into my backpack for the day. I failed to use them. I'm just paralyzed by not wanting to mess up that beautiful paper with my subpar art. But by not doing anything at all. I cheated myself out of who knows how many new observations, insights and moments of presence. Jack explains this so much better and more colorfully than I'm explaining it so I'm going to pass the baton back to him.

John Muir Laws  19:56  
If you have a journal, you want a journal that feels sturdy that feels that you like the feel of that kind of invites you as a naturalist to take notes in me take notes here, I'm, you're, I'm an extension of your brain. And but if it feels fesi then it feels like an extension of your brain and you, you can't play here unless you're going to be proper. Right, right. And then like, is this really worthy of being put down on my find lemons? Right? And you like, like, oh, no, I've got a just a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Like, I can't put it you know, this is there's, there's there's a tablecloth and find China here, I cannot eat my peanut butter and jelly sandwich here. Alright, and so you don't bust out your journal. You don't play with it. And so you are hurting yourself. You are hurting your ability to think fundamentally, you're hurting your ability to think because you've got journal supplies, then that feel like you can only use those if you know it's going to meet some particular aesthetic standard, right. As opposed to this is an extension of my brain. And I recognize that journaling is an essential thinking skill. At

Michelle Fullner  21:11  
this point, we packed up our notebooks and art supplies and hiked up the hills away from the mineral flat staffing occasionally to examine little mysteries as we went, you start to see them everywhere. When you're with Jack and his practice, eyes are scanning the world for beauty and strangeness in every direction, we found a place to sit under a tree for our full conversation. I actually got chills when I went back over the audio from this interview because the truths within it are so resonant. So stick around, we'll be back with that after a short break.

And now, on to the full interview. How would you define nature journaling? And how did you get interested in it?

John Muir Laws  22:36  
I define nature journaling as using words, pictures and numbers, to document and record our observations, our questions and the connections that we make. I noticed I wonder it reminds me of on to an external source. Usually this means an analog pad and a pen or a pencil. The exact tools that you use don't matter. But it is using these processes of observation and curiosity to allow us to connect more deeply with the natural world around us. I got started in this when I was a little kid in elementary school. I was a little nature nerd. My parents watered the seeds of little nature, curiosity. And on one of our early family trips. a botanist friend of my mom's was walking along with a nature journal and she was drawing and sketching all the different plants that she found. And my mom noticed that everywhere that her friend Neela went, Nila would sit down and make a sketch of a plant. I was kind of her shadow and I walked, I would just walk next door and then sit down and watch what she was doing. And then she get up and then she watched this throughout the day. And you know, paying attention is so important for connection with nature. Paying attention is so important for our relationships with our children. And she paid attention and the next time we went out into the field, she said Jack, I've got something for it. She opened up the back of the car. And there was exactly the same kind of notebook journal that Neela had the same kinds of pencils and erasers and tools. And she said this is for you. And I knew just what to do. And I went from there. I

Michelle Fullner  24:28  
love this story so much. It reminds me a little bit of Ralph Washington Jr. from the entomology episode and how his grandma noticed his fascination with bugs and got them a little bug catching kit. There's so much power in noticing what a kid gravitates toward and fostering that love. Now, you heard a little bit earlier about why nature journaling is important but I asked Jack if he wanted to elaborate on that at all and I absolutely adore where he went with this.

John Muir Laws  24:56  
I think that people should nature journal because the process helps you pay attention. And the process allows you to discover levels of richness, connection, mystery and beauty that are largely inaccessible, when we're just experiencing it with our eyes, that piece of paper can hold so much more than our brain can on its own. And it's through that act of attention, that we make connection and fall in love. My definition of love is sustained, compassionate attention. And when we pay that deep, deliberate attention to the world around us, it affects us in a profoundly different way. And I want to help people find that beauty, I want to help people make those connections, I want to help people fall in love. And it's from that love, that we are motivated, then to become stewards of this place. So, for me, teaching people how to nature journal, is my way of helping them on the path to stewardship of the earth. Like you think about your relationship, say with your child. And when we we stop, and we really pay attention, it fundamentally changes our relationship with them. And they are seen, and we are seeing and then they're seeing, and it's through that act of attention, that you build your relationship, when you put down what you're doing, and are really there. That's the fabric that relationship can grow and thrive in. Because that attention itself is the act of love. And

Michelle Fullner  26:39  
I like that you, you state it that way. Because sustained compassionate attention is something actionable. And I notice that it's lacking this definition of love that we often think of in this very emotional, emotionally intense sort of way, right? It's not an emotionally based definition of love. And so why do you think you favor this definition, that doesn't describe a feeling?

John Muir Laws  27:03  
Yeah, I think of love is something that I do not have something that happens to me. And certainly the feeling of falling in love. I think that that is more of a biochemical trick of our neuro chemistry to get us to pair bond long enough to continue the species. Fair enough. And so that happens to us. But then you get up the next morning, and the work begins. And somebody who's following that kind of biochemical feeling, then says I've got to break up with you, because I just don't feel that spark that magic anymore. Or what you could do is you could roll up your sleeves and pay attention and really learn this person, and you will connect with them in a different way. And it is so rich, and so powerful. And that love that comes through time. And attention is like you can think of that in relationship to the child, your partner or a place that is there a place that you particularly love. And that that connection that you have to it comes out of the Act of, of attention.

Michelle Fullner  28:17  
And I know you've talked before, too, about this idea of cultivating attention. How do we how do we do that? Especially how do we do that in this world?

John Muir Laws  28:26  
So attention and curiosity. These are skills, they're skills and you you need to work at them. Because our brains are easily distracted. We live in a clickbait world. And there are so many things, you know, pulling at me you have this, like your attention is your most precious commodity. How are you going to spend your attention today? And all these little online Gremlins want that attention. And you can use it in a way that deepens your relationship with the world and others or you can also just let it pull you from distraction to distraction. So I believe that in being intentional about my observation, I believe in being intentional about my curiosity, so I'm not just waiting for curiosity to happen to me, I'm gonna do curiosity right now. And when that happens, I'm able to lean into things more deeply. I'm pulled into let myself kind of fall into the gravity well, of an amazing phenomenon and be pulled and moved by that. And it takes work and it takes practice. The more you practice, the richer the experience becomes. So I now I'm getting positive feedback by spending time looking at you know, a weird plant on a mineral flat and it's so pleasurable there's so much just joy in mystery and wonder and these cool things that are happening, right? And the mystery that I'm uncovering just, it doesn't make me more jaded. Like, now I know what's going on, it makes me even more amazed and aware of how much I don't know. When you get curious about something, your brain releases dopamine Hmm, that's a dopamine dependent response. So here's this big slosh of this neurotransmitter. And you're now in the presence of this crazy little jewel of a plant. And what are you going to do with that, and it's such a pleasure, I feel like I you know, everyday that I can go out and wander and explore, I feel like I've won the lottery, I have a mind that is capable of grokking part of this wander around me. And it is, it's joyful. But it takes intentionality, it takes work. So thinking is calorically extremely expensive, right. So your brain is 2% of your body weight, your brain uses 20% of the calories that you consume. Wow. What 2% That's one out of every five burritos, wow, is to feed your brain. We've been hiking and walking around here. And our brains are using 20% of our energy that's Raizy. It's wild. So your brain has all sorts of useful ways of kind of reducing the caloric load on that brain. And, you know, that may be one reason why like, I'm going to like, Oh, look at this YouTube video. And you might also like this, oh, I'll go there. Like, it's easy to do that. And our brain finds those little channels. They're seductive. But if I can get myself to drop into a gravity well of a phenomenon, time and time again, it just shows me how much richness is around me, in every little phenomenon that is around me. All the meditation work is to try to get you to be present. When we're doing nature journaling, we are right here, right now. And the more we can let this moment be, the more the world opens up.

Michelle Fullner  32:16  
Yeah. And that is hard. If you haven't practiced it. I noticed that days that I spend too long scrolling on my phone, then I feel scrambled. And if I try to sit down and focus on something, my brain rejects it. And it's telling me no, no, go back to scrolling on your phone, right? Because it gives you all of those immediate little hits, and there's all these little bids for your attention. But then the next day, it's harder for me to pay attention for a long time because I haven't cultivated it.

John Muir Laws  32:45  
What seeds do we choose to water, they talk about meditation, as a practice, journaling is a practice, you go out and you practice it. And you are doing it for the sake of whatever you're doing in that moment. But also, as you do that, you make that practice more accessible to your neural networks.

Michelle Fullner  33:09  
One of the things that's really helped me in the past when I've gotten super addicted to my phone is to have a very easy accessible replacement behavior. Like for a whole year, I would just always have a book with me. And every time I went to pick up my phone for no reason, I would just pick up the book instead and sit there and start reading and my mental health was so much better when I was doing that. But if you struggle with this, too, maybe let's I'll try practicing replacement behaviors together. I was literally about to say DM me on Instagram, if you want to try this out with me. And then I realized that that would suck us back into Instagram. This is how they get you. And a lot of what this is making me think of to you. You haven't mentioned a whole lot of particular species or scientific facts while we've been talking. And that makes me think, you know, maybe you don't have to go to Yosemite to do this. So what about people who live in a very urban environments, or be very degraded ecosystems? I mean, what does nature journaling look like for them?

John Muir Laws  34:07  
I'm gonna pull up my journal here. It's a new journal. And this is a study of the potato that sprouted in my cupboard. I love it. And I was utterly enthralled by this potato. And I kept this potato, it's skin has now turned green and actually today or tomorrow, I'm going to be doing this potato part two, huh? It's got these little horns on it. So I named it Thor. These little kind of like the viking helmet. But you know, there's so much going on in the potato that sprouted in my my cupboard. And it is wonderful and exciting and interesting. And it is not where you go. It's not where you look. It's how you look. And so look at these clouds above us. There's so much going on in these We could have spent our day looking at clouds instead of the mineral flat. The phenomena that are fascinating are everywhere. And what we want to do is part of becoming the the naturalist is we are training ourselves to find the wonder in more and more and more things around us to find beauty in more and more things around us now at the start, you know, Oh, that's beautiful. It's Yosemite Falls. With the light coming through, and in from this angle, we see a rainbow forming here. And, you know, yes, that's beautiful. But this little puddle over here, that is reflecting this incredible blue of the sky is beautiful, there's this little piece of the sky sitting in the middle of this dusty road, or could you walk over there and jump through into the sky on

Michelle Fullner  36:03  
the other side,

John Muir Laws  36:04  
you know, and that's, that's beautiful. They're like, if you just just right here, right? Now, what I want you to do,

Michelle Fullner  36:10  
I want you to try this with us, too. So listen to what Jack asks you to do, is

John Muir Laws  36:14  
what we're both going to do is we're both going to look around. And we're each going to find just a little moment of beauty, and just a little micro beauty. And you just you can frame with your hands, when you look through that way, that little moment over there. The way that the light hits the yellow grasses right there, and this lights them up this whole gray hillside, and then there's this little zone of those yellow, yellow glasses, glasses, and there's light coming through just and then they're glowing. That's beautiful. Right? And so you're finding you're taking just a little beauty break and you find a micro beauty. Let's both do that. Okay,

Michelle Fullner  36:45  
okay. Okay, take a second to do this. But I don't know where you are right now. So please don't drive into like a particularly beautiful tree or anything like that be safe. Okay, beauty break, then we'll share what you got,

John Muir Laws  37:03  
I'm looking over this direction, at the pastel blue of the distant mountains, there's this sort of warm sky behind it with the orange. And then there's this dusty pastel blue, and you kind of look around, and there's that little dusty pastel rim around us, it is just it's you kind of put a little circle around that you could frame that you can hang it on your wall, and you'd have that little piece of beauty.

Michelle Fullner  37:31  
I've got the way that these these leaves on this eucalyptus tree are just swaying. Oh, and and so part of the beauty is in the movement, but also the way that the light is catching the top half of the leaves, and then there's shadow, and underneath. Absolutely

John Muir Laws  37:46  
beautiful.

Michelle Fullner  37:47  
I hope you found a little moment of beauty to the more you look, the more you'll see. Also, I know eucalyptus trees are invasive, please don't hate me for thinking their leaves are pretty in the wind. And

John Muir Laws  37:59  
had you not mentioned that I would not have noticed. Alright, so we can find these, you know, part of what we're doing is we're we're training ourselves to appreciate the micro beauties, little more and more, just a, I don't need Yosemite, if you can find the beauty here and see that, that one that only that little part of there, that tree is dancing. And we can do the same with wonder, right? So my, my kind of go to approach as a naturalist is I'm looking for beauty and wonder. So I'm looking for the things that make you go ah, or and, and then the more you practice it, the more subtle, the little the little moments of beauty can become. And then you find yourself to sort of walking, surrounded by all these little moments of beauty. And then surrounded by all these little strange things that you realize you don't understand. And being a naturalist is an invitation to go there. Where

Michelle Fullner  39:04  
I think a lot of times, we need permission, right? Growing up, I always had a really hard time with feeling like oh, do I belong here? Do I belong there? Am I welcome here and my welcome there. Nobody sent me an invitation to this party called life. But still, I'm here and I don't really know what to do with my hands. And I think that if you have a nature journal, I mean, it gives you something to do with your hands right now gives you a purpose. Yes, in a way to be in that space that gives you an invitation to be there and an invitation to look carefully.

John Muir Laws  39:36  
That's right. It is it's two things. It's the invitation. And it's also the tool that you would use to go there. It's the invitation and it's the key. And

Michelle Fullner  39:49  
Jack has taken that invitation and that key and unlocked some amazing things with it. So here's a little look into some of what he's been working on the wild wonder Foundation. is brand new? Can you tell me a little bit

John Muir Laws  40:02  
about that? I'm so excited about that. I'm so excited about the wild wonder Foundation, we wanted to kind of to create a hub for this kind of investigation of the natural world. So, using the tools of art, and science community, can we help people build a deeper connection with the natural world in a way that will motivate us all to become active stewards.

Michelle Fullner  40:34  
I mentioned a minute ago that wild wander is still new, but they're already doing so many cool things like the wild wonder nature journaling conference and video series online for free to learn nature journaling from John Muir laws, they even have a couple of international projects that are very kid centric in places like Tanzania, and the Galapagos Islands, one of the main focuses of wild wonder is community. And I really like the way that they go about building that

John Muir Laws  41:01  
we have one fundamental rule. And that's kindness, just because it's a good one. From that you can build all sorts of other things. But if you don't have that, it's not going to work.

Michelle Fullner  41:10  
being unkind is a very fast way to shut down somebody's idea that might have turned into a really great idea. This is true, even if you didn't like it right away.

John Muir Laws  41:18  
And growth takes vulnerability. And we can't be vulnerable. In the presence of people who are being really unkind to us, we have to keep our armor on. Yes. So if we can kind of create an environment where it's okay to shed our armor, we're going to be able to crawl out of that shell and find a newer, bigger one.

Michelle Fullner  41:40  
crawdads not the hermit crab hermit crab style, thank you.

John Muir Laws  41:46  
Right, but if I can't slip out of my shell, I'm not gonna be able to grow, right? You're stuck. I'm stuck in this little show.

Michelle Fullner  41:52  
Can we just generally get more great nature analogies like this, that was awesome. Another project that you just recently finished as well, Sonoma. And I own it, and it is beautiful. So can you tell me a little bit about the project? And what is this book? Well, to know, well,

John Muir Laws  42:08  
cinemas a really was a really fun project. And now is a really cool book. What it is, is the result of a collaboration. So we had artists, photographers, naturalists, writers, working together as a team to celebrate a place. And some of the just the natural wild parts of a place, we were talking earlier about how you don't need to go to the distant National Park to find wander around you. And this book is helping to point out how, you know, right here in the middle of this county, there's all of these resources and species and interactions that are beautiful, exciting, fascinating and wonderful. Many people come to Sonoma, because it's known for its wine region, so maybe come for the wine, but stay for the biodiversity, it's a chance to really realize that this this place is so much deeper in a very accessible way. And then my hope from that is that somebody who say goes to Sonoma, before the wine, then has the chance to fall in love with some of the biodiversity and beauty of the place, can then take that back home to wherever they are, to learn that the biodiversity of wherever they are in their home is also so exciting and beautiful and wonderful. Okay,

Michelle Fullner  43:44  
first of all, I love that I think it's beautiful that so many of us live in the middle of places that we don't always recognize the biodiversity of and the specialness of the ecosystems around us. Secondly, apparently Jack didn't want to brag, so I'll do it for him. The foreword of this book was written by none other than Jane Goodall. I was starstruck by proxy when I found that out, and really just flattered that like she even knows we're over here. Here's a little excerpt from her forward. Wild Sonoma, exploring nature in wine country is a book for our times. It provides an introduction to the natural and unnatural forces shaping our environment then offers an informed and lively Field Guide to common plants, animals, birds and insects, one is likely to encounter on a hike in Sonoma. Lastly, it suggests a set of special excursions to experience the nomos very natural landscapes. That second part of the book that Goodall mentions is the field guide section. And that's where Jack's many diverse illustrations live. I asked him how he prefers to work on his illustrations for projects like this, and he said that he uses a combination of field observations and photographs, but that the real life observations help inform him of the personalities of his subjects. If

John Muir Laws  44:56  
you're sketching from life in the field, then you can kind of get a sense of the Gestalt the Oops, the feeling of this thing?

Michelle Fullner  45:02  
Well, that's one of the things I really like about your art in general is that I feel like it does this amazing balancing act of being accurate. And it's something where it could be a scientific diagram. And it includes all of the correct parts. But at the same time, it doesn't feel flattened out on the page of a textbook, it feels very alive to me. Yeah. And I think you've got interesting angles, and you've got interesting quirks or expressions, or poses that that do show movement, and they show life. So I really, I admire that about your art in general. And that comes out in wild Sonoma as well, thank

John Muir Laws  45:35  
you. I think that that is getting better with time. Because the more experience I have with a particular organism, the more that I'm going to be able to get that into my work. I love

Michelle Fullner  45:47  
that Jack acknowledges his own growth here and the journey that he's on to keep growing as an artist, it's very encouraging to people who are on the earlier end of that spectrum and haven't practiced as much, we actually got into a whole conversation about something called growth mindset that is all about this idea of continuing to learn and grow. We talked about it for about 15 minutes. And it was such a great conversation. But I had to find some ways to make this episode not be two and a half hours long. So what I did is I took that little section out, and I'm going to publish it separately as a little bonus mini episode for you because I think it deserves its own Deep Dive. Broadly speaking, this might not even be a fair question. But what's your favorite type of thing to draw? plants, birds, insects, landscapes? skyscapes water? Do you have a favorite type of drawing or painting?

John Muir Laws  46:43  
I do, but it's in a different category of categories. Okay, so it's not that it's, it's, it's birds, it's not that it's, I like to draw into a mystery. I like to find things. For me, it's the most fun when I get onto the edge of, of something that I don't understand. And let's say I'm drawing a bird, okay. But I really get excited and have fun when I start to realize that there's something about this that I don't understand, or that I haven't seen before, what's going on with this. And if I can sort of fall into that mystery, I completely lose track of time, I am absolutely unaware of the uncomfortable position of my leg under my body, right. And I am just immersed in whatever it is a little bit of the unknown is really, really fun. So that doesn't have to be a new species. I mean, it could be literally a potato, it could literally be love potato for the potato,

Michelle Fullner  47:52  
potato, keep an eye out for Thor on my Instagram sometime this week. And then just make sure to not scroll mindlessly for an hour after that. And

John Muir Laws  48:01  
yet, I'm a sucker for a good mystery. So when I'm looking at something that I have looked at before, what I very often will try to do is can I find something novel in the familiar? Can I find what is new for me in this phenomenon, and I'm intentionally not looking for what I do already know, to reconfirm that, but I look for the edges of what I don't know, and try to run up to that edge and spread my arms and fall into it. I

Michelle Fullner  48:39  
love that. And I think that that's such a better way to learn more things also, right, ironically, when it's not about how much you know, that is a way of knowing more.

John Muir Laws  48:49  
Yes, that's right. And it's so much fun. Like I used to think that to be a good naturalist. I needed to memorize all this stuff, right? Sure. And then being a dyslexic naturalist, and it's hard to read. I'm thinking like, how am I going to be a naturalist if I have a hard time reading all this stuff? I know think that just the essential skills of how can I play with a mystery? How can I tinker with the unknown? How can I do that intentionally? And what practices Bring me more into that? That's fun.

Michelle Fullner  49:28  
So find a mystery to fall into. It can be a teeny tiny mystery. That's okay. But first fall into this last question with me. What about this work of being a naturalist nature journaling, teaching nature journaling? All of the art that you create? What about it still takes your breath away?

John Muir Laws  49:50  
Maybe this isn't quite the answer to the question that you've asked. But what is it that makes it take my breath away? Even more so now? Oh, then before is how lucky and ephemeral I am that I get to be here, I get to be the one who sees that the light is transmitted through those blades of grass, causing them to glow with this lime green. And there'll be a time that these fresh blades of grass aren't here, there'll be a time that I'm not here. You know, maybe being a daddy makes me also then realize that I'm at a part in my life where, you know, it was two and a half now, almost three years ago that my mother died. And I'm now a father of these two little children. And I'm aware that I have this one sort of very brief time to be here and experience all of this. And how can I show up for that? It's beautiful to think about that. And I think that the fact that it's ephemeral, and I'm ephemeral, make it all the more poignant and urgent. I mean, just look, look at this. At

Michelle Fullner  51:19  
this point, Jack took out his close focusing binoculars and pointed out a tiny little slant that you really have to be looking to notice it pushing up to this will just a few feet away from us personality. And it's just this nub, never been plant pushing up through the moist dirt. Yep.

John Muir Laws  51:41  
This is this is probably the first day that it is received sunlight. So little yellow. And that may not have even been there when we sat down and mean, that's incredible. And just to be in the presence of this little seedling that is poking up. How lucky how lucky we are. What, then is my responsibility to this world. I knew a ranger in Yosemite named Carl Shar Smith, he was this botanist and a friend of my parents. He drove this old, ancient ancient car. That was a wonder that it still moved named Rosa Dante. But he was older than it and he would lead these walks these nature walks in, in Yosemite when my parents met him and first got to know him, you know, he would he would hike up to the top of Mount Dana and back reciting poetry the whole. And then in his later years, what he would do is he would lead as mobility became an issue, he would lead these these field trips into 20 Meadows where he would take people out and then he would take off his straw Ranger hat. And he would throw it out into the field. And the hat would float out like a frisbee and float down onto the ground. And then he would have the people in his group come out and lay down on the ground on the grass and around that hat out like the spokes of the wheel. And then he would move that up and spend the entire time on just what was there underneath that hat. Wow. And it would be an amazing tale and discovery. That's right there underneath the hat.

Michelle Fullner  53:49  
Not a very big area.

John Muir Laws  53:51  
And, and it's not. It's not where you look. It's how you look.

Michelle Fullner  53:58  
I think that's the perfect note to end on. Thank you so much, Jack, I really appreciate how much time you gave to this. Well, thank

John Muir Laws  54:04  
you for coming down. Yeah, this was really fun for me to find to look forward to seeing how you splice this together and what you do with

Michelle Fullner  54:12  
it. It'll be fun. All right, thank you. After we finished the interview, and we were walking down the path out of the park Jack bent down and he picked up a little pebble. And it's sort of this brownish, maroonish color very small and smooth and shiny. And he held it up and he said this is a magic pebble. If you keep this pebble in your pocket and forget about it at some point during the day, you'll put your hand in your pocket and you'll feel it and you'll remember that it's there and when you pull it out, look around because that means that there's something beautiful nearby after you notice the beautiful thing, put the rock back in your pocket and the next time you pull it out. It means there's something weird nearby and you have to look around and see what's weird And throughout the day, you just alternate between what's beautiful, and what's weird. At this point I had completely bought in to this magic pebble. And I was really excited when Jack handed it to me. So I'm holding it right now. And I'm in my bedroom. And I'm looking around. And the beautiful thing that I see right now is the quilt that's on my bed because it used to be on my parents bed when I was a kid. And it had kind of become invisible to me. But this pebble helped me see it again. So get yourself a magic pebble, find a teeny, tiny little pebble and keep it in your pocket. Because there's beautiful and weird things all around you all the time. Before I go, I just want to say a big thank you to Jack for spending so much time with me. I think we spent about an hour and a half or two hours longer together than we had actually scheduled. So thank you for being flexible and so generous with your time. I also want to thank hayday books for helping coordinate this interview and going back and forth. I don't know how many emails thank you so much for being the scheduling Pro and being so great and in just every way. Thanks as always to Stan for paying sustained compassionate attention to our kids while I was gone on this interview all day long. And to everyone here listening for sticking around to the very end of the episode. Something interesting for my week is the same interesting thing that's happened to many of us in California and that is that we've had five atmospheric rivers in two weeks, and my backyard only got slightly flooded. So that was exciting. We actually mark the severity of rain around here by how much of our patio is covered in water. So at the worst point 1/3 of our patio was covered in water this time, which is a lot but not quite as bad as that one atmospheric river we had a few years ago where like 90% of the patio was covered in water and we thought our house was gonna flood so well better than that. I hope that you were able to stay safe and dry in the midst of this wild weather. Okay, thanks for listening. Go get some like crappy paper and a clipboard and a pencil and draw something outside or good paper or like a real journal or notebook whatever you've got, but just don't let not having the right thing. stop you. Okay, see ya on the next episode of Golden State naturalist bye.