nature writing journals

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Written by Emily Harstone October 12th, 2020

13 Literary Journals that Focus on Nature and the Environment

Most literary journals, unless they have a very focused mission, or are genre journals, are open to publishing poems, prose, and nonfiction featuring nature. Most writers that focus on the natural world do not have an issue finding homes for their work in general interest literary journals.

Still, there are a number of journals that focus on publishing writing that focuses on the environment.

It’s important to note that most journals that only publish poems that focus on the natural world are currently preoccupied with ecopoetics , which, according to the Poetry Foundation, is a “multidisciplinary approach that includes thinking and writing on poetics, science, and theory as well as emphasizing innovative approaches common to conceptual poetry”.

Of course there is overlap between the ecopoetics and nature poetry, just like there’s an overlap between journals that publish nature writing and those that focus on environmental change. Below I’ve collected a list of journals that publish one or both.

Not all of the journals are currently open to submissions but the majority of the journals are.

The Hopper Magazine

This is an environmental literary journal published by Green Writers Press. The Hopper looks for a number of very specific things in the writing they publish, which includes poetry and prose, including work that “Offers new and different articulations of the human experience in nature. Specifically, nature writing that is psychologically honest about the environmental crisis and the impacts of mechanical modernity” and work that “Explores place as both the cultural and physical landscapes of an author’s region.” Read their full submission guidelines with care.

This wonderful online journals focus is on how place shapes identity, imagination, and understanding. A lot of what they publish focuses on nature, but not all of it.

This respected and well paying journal publishes fiction, essays, and poetry, about the Pacific Northwest but only by authors based in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and British Columbia.

Minding Nature

This journal publishes a wide variety of work on humans’ interactions with the environment as a whole, including works of ecopoetics.

A literary journal focused on re-imagining place. They publish prose and poetry. They charge for online submissions, but postal submissions within the US are fee-free.

Orion Magazine

Orion Magazine brings ideas, writers, photographers, and artists together, focused on nature, the environment, and culture, addressing environmental and societal issues. They generally have an additional theme for most issues. They are only open for pitches on a theme till October 15th, and are not currently open to fiction, general nonfiction, or poetry.

Hawk & Handsaw: The Journal of Creative Sustainability

Focused more on the environmental and sustainable side of things, Hawk & Handsaw publishes visual art, poetry, creative nonfiction, and fiction.

Green Briar Review

An online literary journey that focuses on the natural world, and often on the changing of the seasons, they publish nonfiction, cultural essays, reviews, fiction, and poetry, and photography/art. They read a limited number of fee-free submissions during their reading periods.

Split Rock Review

They are an online publication that publishes “poetry, short creative nonfiction, short fiction, comics, graphic stories, hybrids, visual poetry, photography, and art that explore place, environment, and the relationship between humans and the natural world”. They read a limited number of fee-free submissions during their reading periods.

They bill themselves as the literary journal of the environmental crisis. They publish poetry and essays.

Words for the Wild

This UK-based publisher of poetry and fiction often has an additional theme for online issues and anthologies, some focus more on ecopoetics, others more on nature.

Terrain An online journal that publishes fiction, poetry, and a variety of nonfiction, focusing on nature and the environment.

The Wayfarer

They focus on publishing contemplative voices. Not all that they publish focuses on nature and the environment, but much of what they publish, does intersect with these themes. They publish poetry and essays.

Emily Harstone  is the author of many popular books, including  The Authors Publish Guide to Manuscript Submissions ,  Submit, Publish, Repeat , and   The 2020 Guide to Manuscript Publishers.

She regularly teaches three acclaimed courses on writing and publishing at  The Writer’s Workshop at Authors Publish.

You can follow her on Facebook  here .

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5 places to submit your environmental writing

The natural world is a source of inspiration for many writers. If environmental themes play a prominent role in your story, poem or personal essay, consider submitting it to one of the journals on this month’s list. All are currently open for submissions and none charge reading fees.

Note: We are a creative writing school and compile these lists for the benefit of our students. Please don’t send us your publishing queries or submissions :). Click on the green links to go to the publication’s website and look for their submissions page.

Terrain.org publishes both established nature writers and new voices on a rolling basis on their website, and accepts articles and reviews alongside poetry, essays, and short fiction of up to 6K words. As a journal about place, they welcome stories that explore urban as well as natural landscapes.

The Hopper wants your explorations of the human experience in nature. They publish approximately one poem and one prose piece (fiction and creative nonfiction up to 4K words) per month on their website alongside an annual print journal.

The Future Fire has a broader scope than just nature writing, and welcomes any socially-progressive writing that seeks to imagine possible futures. They pay for fiction (flash fiction up to 1,000 words; short stories up to 7,500 words; novellas up to 17,500 words) and poetry (up to 60 lines per poem, 3 poems per submission), and nonfiction submissions are by query only.

Deep Wild publishes creative work ‘inspired by journeys to places where there are no roads’. They are currently accepting submissions for their second annual publication, and are looking for poetry, fiction, and narrative nonfiction (word limit for both is 3,000 words).

The Tiger Moth Review is a literary journal based in Singapore focused on nature, culture, and the environment. They especially encourage writers from southeast Asia to submit but have published pieces by authors from around the world. They accept submissions of poetry and fiction (up to 5K words) year-round and publish their favorites in an online magazine twice per year.

3 responses on "5 places to submit your environmental writing"

My 90 word sci-fi eco-poem is much loved by the several dozen people who have read it. The poem is about humans who leave Earth to search for intelligent life in the Milky Way. Long gone generations who were all unable to fulfill their quest eventually return to the good green Earth. Where can I submit this poem?

I have written a short piece on the farmer fishermen of the early fifties on the North West coast of Ireland and the demise of that fishery. Where can I submit this?

Where would I submit a short piece on the demise of the Atlantic Salmon?

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Nature Writing is Survival Writing: On Rethinking a Genre

Michelle nijhuis thinks it’s time for some new perspectives.

If there were a contest for Most Hated Genre, nature writing would surely take top honors. Other candidates—romance, say—have their detractors, but are stoutly defended by both practitioners and fans. When it comes to nature writing, though, no one seems to hate container and contents more than nature writers themselves.

“‘Nature writing’ has become a cant phrase, branded and bandied out of any useful existence, and I would be glad to see its deletion from the current discourse,” the essayist Robert Macfarlane wrote in 2015. When David Gessner, in his book Sick of Nature , imagined a party attended by his fellow nature writers, he described a thoroughgoing dud: “As usual with this crowd, there’s a whole lot of listening and observing going on, not a lot of merriment.”

Critics, for their part, have dismissed the genre as a “solidly bourgeois form of escapism,” with nature writers indulging in a “literature of consolation” and “fiddling while the agrochemicals burn.” Nature writers and their work are variously portrayed, fairly and not, as misanthropic, condescending, and plain embarrassing. Joyce Carol Oates, in her essay “Against Nature,” enumerated nature writing’s “painfully limited set of responses” to its subject in scathing all caps: “REVERENCE, AWE, PIETY, MYSTICAL ONENESS.”

Oates, apparently, was not consoled.

The persistence of nature writing as a genre has more to do with publishers than with writers. Labels can usefully lash books together, giving each a better chance of staying afloat in a flooded marketplace, but they can also reinforce established stereotypes, limiting those who work within a genre and excluding those who fall outside its definition. As Oates suggested, there are countless ways to think and write about what we call “nature,” many of them urgent. But nature writing, as defined by publishers and historical precedent, ignores all but a few.

The nature-writing genre emerged in the late 1700s, during the peculiar moment when nature, as Europeans and North American intellectuals saw it, was no longer fearfully mysterious but not yet endangered. The scientific classification of species had brought some apparent order to undomesticated landscapes, allowing writers such as William Bartram, a botanist who traveled through the American South shortly before the Revolutionary War, to perceive not a tangle of flora and fauna but “an infinite variety of animated scenes, inexpressibly beautiful and pleasing.”

Such “appreciative aesthetic responses to a scientific view of nature,” as the writer and naturalist David Rains Wallace once described them, were products not only of their time and place but their culture and class. Scientific views of nature are not the only possible views, of course, and as many anthropologists and linguists have pointed out, the concept of “nature” as a collection of objects, separate from but subservient to humans, is also far from universal.

In the 19th century, many of the thinkers we now call nature writers took some exception to the genre’s original project. While Ralph Waldo Emerson famously saw human transcendence as the primary purpose of the non-human world, his rebellious protégé Henry David Thoreau was more interested in other forms of life for their own sake, and more willing to get his literal and metaphorical boots muddy. John Muir, though notoriously dismissive of the human history of the Sierra Nevada , had unusually egalitarian ideas about other species, considering even lizards, squirrels, and gnats to be fellow occupants of the planet.

As I learned while researching my book Beloved Beasts , a history of the modern conservation movement, the rise of the science of ecology in the early 20th century made it ever clearer that the boundaries between humans and “nature” were more linguistic and cultural than physical. Rachel Carson, who cited Thoreau as one of her primary influences, further expanded the nature-writing genre by tying the fate of other species to the fate of human bodies.

Any genre can only stretch so far, though, and the limitations of nature writing are inscribed in its very name. Nature writing still tends to treat its subject as “an infinite variety of animated scenes,” and while the genre’s membership and approaches have diversified somewhat in recent years, its prizewinners resemble its founders : mostly white, mostly male, and mostly from wealthy countries. The poet and essayist Kathleen Jamie calls them Lone Enraptured Males .

Meanwhile, writers in every genre and discipline are wrestling with the relationship between humans and the rest of life, recognizing that while writing about other species is often about wonder and uplift, it is also, inevitably, about survival—the survival of all species, including our own. Amitav Ghosh, whose novels often follow the connections among species and habitats—humans and snakes, tigers and dolphins, land and sea—recently published The Nutmeg’s Curse , his second book-length essay about the literature, history, and politics of climate change. (The first was The Great Derangement , published in 2016.)

Science-fiction writer Jeff VanderMeer returns again and again to the unstable boundaries between humans and other species, most recently in his novel Hummingbird Salamander . Margaret Atwood, a dedicated birdwatcher, wrote that the sight of red-necked crakes “scuttling about in the underbrush” in northern Australia inspired her dystopian MaddAddam trilogy . Historians such as Dina Gilio-Whitaker, the author of As Long as Grass Grows , and Nick Estes, the author of Our History Is The Future , document the damage done to Indigenous cultures and all species by centuries of capitalism and colonialism. These and many other works acknowledge that humans are both observers of and participants in the network of life on earth—and that our roles, while often destructive, can be constructive, too.

Today, the nature-writing genre reminds me of the climate-change beat in journalism: the stakes and scope of the job have magnified to the point that the label is arguably worse than useless, misrepresenting the work as narrower than it is and restricting its potential audience. The state of “nature,” like the state of the global climate, can no longer be appreciated from a distance, and its literature can no longer be confined to a single shelf. If we must give it a label, I say we call it survival writing. Or, better yet, writing.

 __________________________________

Michelle Nijhuis’s book Beloved Beasts is available through W.W. Norton & Company. Copyright © 2022.

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Nature Journaling

“ Nature journaling is an extremely effective and engaging way to teach observation, curiosity, and creative thinking. Journals are the ubiquitous tool of scientists, naturalists, thinkers, poets, writers, and engineers. Using a journal is a skill that can change students’ lives forever. ” - John Muir Laws, Emilie Lygren,   How to Teach Nature Journaling

Alan and Linda Zuckerman share some great tips for nature journaling in their article  Keeping a Birdwatching Journal : 

• If you are intimidated by your lack of writing ability, remember that you don’t need to share your journal with anyone if you don’t want to. You don’t even have to reread what you’ve written. The point of journaling is the activity itself. 
• Spelling and grammar don’t count – even for the kids. The quickest way to destroy the joy of creation is to demand perfection.
• Try drawing some things. It doesn’t matter how they come out – though your attempts will surely get better over time if you stick with it.
• Your journal can’t be ruined.  It is a record of your learning experiences and failed experiments, and dead ends are part of learning. Crossed out words and imperfect drawings are found in the best of journals.
• You don’t have to write in your journal every day. In fact, it’s best if you wait until you’re in the mood.

The  BEETLES Project  at the Lawrence Hall of Science uses  "I Notice, I Wonder, It Reminds Me Of"  prompts to support exploration of outdoor areas. These prompts are a great way to focus your nature journals - whether you're out exploring a nearby park or watching an ant crawl across your kitchen table.

• I Notice:  Focus on drawing or writing about what you can observe with your senses. What sounds do you hear? What colors, shapes, and behaviors can you see? Try to describe what you observe (blue, smooth, etc.) instead of just identifying it (an egg).
• I Wonder:  As you write or draw, note questions you have about what you are observing. Did you observe an interesting pattern or behavior that you wonder about?
• It Reminds Me Of:  Does what you are observing remind you of something else you have observed? Does it remind you of an event in your life when you observed something similar or felt the same way? A nature journal is a great place to record memories, feelings, and connections.

Nature Journal Activities

Biodiversity

Description:

• We often use the prompts "I Notice, I Wonder, It Reminds Me Of" developed by the   BEETLES Project  to guide our journaling. Visit our  Nature Journaling page  for a quick description of how this works, or view the  full lesson plan  on the BEETLES website. 
• You can use   this template  if you would like some structure for your journal entries, or you can develop your own format.

Journaling Prompts:

We all depend on biodiversity for our survival. For example, we eat living things, and we breathe oxygen that comes from plants.

• What living things do you depend on for survival? For enjoyment? List as many as you can. Some may still be alive, but others may be products made from organisms that are no longer alive.
• Think about a time when you felt very aware of the living things around you. Maybe you were enjoying the sounds of plants blowing in the wind, or you were worried about an insect stinging or biting you. Write about the experience and how you felt.

Spend 10-15 minutes (or more!) watching for weather changes out your window or while outside. 

Sit outside or at your window and observe the weather.

• Weather station observations:  If you built weather observation tools, record measurements. 
• Clouds:  Is it sunny, partly cloudy, overcast?
• Wind:  Is the air calm?  Light breeze? Steady wind? Gusts of wind?
• Temperature:  Does it feel warm? Cool? If you don’t have a thermometer, you can describe it as “t-shirt weather”, “sweatshirt weather”, or “jacket weather”.
• Humidity:  Does the air feel dry or wet? Is it raining? Is there dew on plants or other signs of moisture? 
• Pressure:  If you have built a homemade barometer, can you see any change in pressure from the previous day? 
• Change:  Is the weather changing rapidly or is it steady throughout the day? 
• Are insects or birds more/less active? Do they do different activities in different weather conditions? 
• Do trees or other plants change in noticeable ways? 
• Return to the same spot multiple times per day or week to observe the changing weather. 
• How do different types of weather make you feel? 
• What does a sunny day remind you of? What about wind?  

Spend an hour (or more!) looking at clouds. It’s a great way to pass an afternoon.

Take a seat in your yard or at your window to look at the passing clouds.

• Record the date, weather conditions, location, and your observations.
• Try finding different shapes or animals in the clouds and draw them in your journal.
• Return to the same spot or window multiple times to observe the clouds. Draw the clouds you see, or record whether there are no clouds. 
• Are the clouds always moving in the same direction? At the same speed?
• Can you notice any daily patterns, such as a certain kind of cloud that only appears in the morning?

Which type of cloud would you like to learn more about? Write or draw and write what you already know about it, and then list some questions you have.

Which direction are the clouds coming from? Based on what you know about the area around you, what might the clouds have passed before they reached your location? What will they pass as they are moving away from you?

Let’s think about our own watershed and try to draw and label the different parts.

Think about your watershed. Draw and label these aspects of your watershed in your journal:

• What is your home river or creek?
• What is the tallest peak around your home river or creek?
• Where does the water from this river or creek drain to?
• What does it pass by or through as it drains downhill?
• Where does it end up?
• What surfaces slow it down? Speed it up? Hint: think about (or try) the experiment with permeable versus impermeable surfaces, from the Nature Observations link associated with this activity. 

Look out your window (or explore outdoors if you can), and record the different surfaces you see. When it rains, how does water flow along these surfaces? Are there high points and low points? Are there permeable and impermeable surfaces? Draw and write about them.

If we take the time to look closely, we can find many shapes, colors, and sometimes even crawling critters in a tiny bit of soil.

• We often use the prompts "I Notice, I Wonder, It Reminds Me Of" developed by the  BEETLES Project  to guide our journaling. Visit our  Nature Journaling page  for a quick description of how this works, or view the  full lesson plan  on the BEETLES website. 
• You can use  this template  if you would like some structure for your journal entries, or you can develop your own format.
• Sketch the different particle sizes, describe the texture, and things you notice in your journal. What do you notice, what do you wonder about, and what does it remind you of?
• If you are able to get soil from more than one location, compare and contrast the colors, particle sizes, and textures of multiple soils.
• Write about a memory from your life that is related to soil. For example, maybe there was a time you got mud all over your clothes, or a time when you planted seeds in soil. Write about what happened and how you felt.
• Describe what you notice about the soil color in your area and how it compares to nearby areas.
• What patterns do you notice in the state map?
• Write a few “I wonder why…” statements about what you observe on the map.
• For a fun way to record the types of soil you are observing, try  Painting with Soil !

Journaling About Arthropods:

Think about the experiences you have had with arthropods in your life, and take the time to observe arthropods in your life today! Record your thoughts and observations.

• Write about an experience you have had with arthropods. Maybe you were chasing butterflies or you walked into a spider web. What happened and how did you feel?
• Which kind of arthropod would you like to learn more about? Write or draw what you already know about it, and then list some questions you have.
• Are there any arthropods that are special to you or to your friends or family? What makes the arthropod special?
• What are the arthropods doing? (describe what you see, hear)
• Can you observe an arthropod up close? Draw it in your journal. Pay special attention to the shape of its body parts and how/where different parts are connected. For example, how many main body sections does the arthropod have? Where are the legs attached?

Pollinators

Safety Consideration:  

While most pollinators, such as bumble bees, mason bees, and honey bees are docile, it is important to be careful and give them space when observing them as they pollinate flowers.  People with allergies to bees and pollen should take particular care.

Journaling About Pollinators:

It may be difficult to find a pollinator that will sit still for a drawing, but there are lots of ways to record your observations and thoughts in a journal. If you are able to take pictures of the flowers, with or without the pollinators, that could be a great way to record what you see. 

• What are the pollinators doing? (describe what you see, hear?
• How long do they stay at one flower?  
• Do they visit other flowers? 
• How many pollinators are around?
• Click here for instructions on how to draw  hummingbirds ,  butterflies , and  bees .
• Imagine YOU are a pollinator. Write a short story or paragraph describing your activities.  What/who are you? How do you interact with plants? Why do you visit certain types of plants? 
• Write about a personal experience you’ve had with pollinators. Maybe you saw a hummingbird visit a feeder or a flower.  Maybe you were stung by a bee! What happened? What did you notice? How did you feel about it?

Journaling About Flowers:

Flowers are great journaling subjects because they have so many different colors, textures, and scents. If you can’t visit any flowering plants outside or see flowers through a window, check to see if there are flowers inside! Some houseplants have flowers, and some of the food we eat is made of flowers. For example, when you eat broccoli, you are eating tiny flower buds! If you don’t have any live flowers to observe, you might be able to find artificial flowers or photos or drawings of flowers in the newspaper, in books, or on clothing.

• If you are able to observe flowers close up, choose one flower (you can leave it attached to the plant) that you would like to observe. Record every detail you notice about the flower. It can be tempting to say, “I’m done!” before you have noticed many of the details, so you might choose to set a timer for five or ten minutes to make sure you take the time to move beyond the “obvious” details.
• Go on a shape hunt! Choose a shape (triangle, circle, or another shape) and try to find flowers or parts of a flower with that shape. Record your observations in your journal with drawings and words. You can use   photos of flowers  if you are not able to observe any live flowers.
• Write a poem about how you feel when flowers first begin to bloom and signal that spring has arrived.
• When you look out your window or walk around outside, make a color map that shows where you can find flowers of each color. Repeat this process in a week (and in another week after that, if you want!) to see how the colors of flowers around you are changing.

Journaling About Trees:

Trees are great journaling subjects because they don’t crawl or fly or squirm away as we try to look closely. You can observe trees indoors by looking out your window or outdoors by sitting quietly near the tree. When you do this, record what you notice, wonder, and feel.

• You could make a sound map that includes multiple trees, or you could make a sound map of one individual tree by mapping how sound moves through the tree when the wind blows on the leaves or branches.  
• Write a poem about your tree, either on your own or using   Poet-Tree  ( en español ). 
• Some organisms may be large enough to observe through a window. If you can go outside to observe a tree, look closely at the bark to see if you can find any small plants, animals, or fungi!

Birds are perfect subjects for nature journaling. Most of us can observe birds in our every day life, by watching them, hearing them, or both! Birds have interesting behaviors that can inspire many questions, especially if we take the time to observe them closely.

Journaling About Birds:

You can observe birds by looking out your window or sitting quietly to listen for them. When you do this, record what you notice, wonder, and feel.

• The location of your observations.
• The weather.
• What plants are blooming. (Describe them if you don't know their names.)
• The birds you observe and what they are doing.
• Return to the same spot (for example, look out the same window) more than once to see whether you notice different birds (or different behaviors from the same birds) at different times or on different days.
• Sometimes a blank page can be intimidating. For help structuring your journal entries, check out this  journal template , which you might choose to copy by hand onto your own paper.
• Write a creative story that uses some of the birds you are seeing as characters.
• Write a poem about birds, either on your own or using a  Poet-Tree . ( en español )
• Record your questions and thoughts about a bird's habitat needs and life cycle.

Drawing   Birds:

Do you want to draw the birds you see but don't know where to start? The naturalist, author, and educator John Muir Laws has a  How to Draw Birds  guide on his website that will lead you through the steps.

These activities are part of  weekly activity sets that we provided for parents and teachers supporting students while schools were closed in Spring 2020. For more information, return to the COVID-19 Programming Resources page.

Donna L. Long

The earth is good., nature writing themes and expanding your journaling.

Nature writing is about the environment, the care and respect of the land, living with beings that share the land with us and the spiritual aspects of existing in a living universe.

The natural history genre written in English has a long history in North America. From the late 1600s and early 1700s to the present day, written works celebrating the land have found a ready audience. The lush abundance of the American continents and the wise management of land by indigenous Americans enthralled the European newcomers. Even if at the time the Europeans didn’t understand the wisdom, knowledge and sacrifice if took to keep a land abundant and healthy.

In This Incomparable Land , Thomas J. Lyon categorizes the genre into a wide range of themes and styles:

• field guides and professional papers
• natural history essays
• escape: from cities and towns, solitude and back country living
• travel and adventure
• humanity’s role in the environment (see Land Ethics and Sustainable Living )
• and I add fiction

Nature writing is how we can express not just what we see or hear, but how we feel. How we feel about events, the weather, our mood, and so on. What we write doesn’t have to be thousands of words, sometimes a few sentences are enough.

These themes are not neat. An field guide can have elements of the personal experience of the writer. A essay on land ethics can contain a ramble. A theme can have elements of other themes within it.

The Natural History Essay

With the exception of field guides and professional papers, nature writing is most often published in the form of the personal natural history essay. Henry David Thoreau is considered the originator of the form. The essay often consists of natural history information and personal and philosophical ideas in response to the natural world.

Places to Observe in Your Nature Journal

The ramble ian essay in which the author goes on a walk, usually close-to-home, and writes about the pleasures of being outdoors, the feel of place, and closely observes the happenings of plants and animals.

Essays of Experience

In this type of essays the writer shares their experience walking, building, living in a place. An example is Thoreau building his cabin in Walden , or Henry Beston beachcombing in The Outermost House .

Travel and Adventure

These essays focus on the excitement of danger, novelty of the new, and discovery of new places. Imagine if you stayed in a camp deep in a rainforest, and you wrote about it.

Working a farm, being outdoors, caring for land, plants, and animals has its’ own beauty. As a person works with the land a deep satisfaction and affection for the land can be developed and shared through writing.

Humanity’s Role in the Land

This topic takes up the topics of land ethics, philosophy, religion, economics, and human relations to our world and each other. How are we to live on planet Earth? The genre often issues challenges and calls to environmental activism, like in Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring .

Not just nonfiction but fiction too has focused on the land and the wider universe. The land herself, is often a character in a story and shapes people and events.

The Elements of Nature Writing

Descriptive passages.

The genre is distinguished by descriptive passages, interwoven with scientific facts. There is an art to reading scientific articles and elegantly incorporating the information into an essay. It is very pleasing when it is done well.This writing form is called creative nonfiction.

Descriptive passages describe time and place and what is experienced by the senses. In reading a natural history essay, the reader has a sense of actually being there. Of being able to see, smell and feel the place in their mind’s eye.

The Nature Journal

The nature journal is an important piece of equipment for the writer. The nature journal often serves as a place to record thoughts, feelings and facts. A journal can provide a rich source material for further work. From the journal, full-blown essays, articles, op-ed pieces and stories are written.

Nature Writing Journal Prompts

• Write a field guide page. Choose a plant or animal and draw them using arrows to point out important identification marks. Are there differences between male and female? Juvenile and adult?
• Write and experience essay. Have you built a outbuilding or layed out a garden? What was the experience like of being outdoors? Was the shine shining? Were your hands freezing cold?
• Write a ramble. Take a walk in a familiar place, close to home or work. Try to describe that place using the four of the five senses of sight, sound, feel and smell. Be careful of tasting.
• Write of an escape from city or suburbs. Have you visited rural or remote areas lately? How was it different from the built up artificial environments of city and suburbs.I could write about driving fast along deserted country roads and the sense of freedom I felt.
• Or do you live in rural or remote areas. What does it feel like to visit city and towns?
• Write of travel and adventure. Have you climbed mountains or hiked backcountry trails. I could write of my adventure of climbing Hawk Mountain or walking along a stream in the Smoky Mountains. If you haven’t had adventure maybe its time to go on one.
• Farm Life has its own rhythms. I grew up going to my grandparents farms and market gardens. I feed chickens and hogs. I loved the smell of new hay. I loved being outdoors. Share your farm experiences.
• Land Ethics essays help to clarify who you think you are and your responsibility to the land. I write about land ethics often on this blog. Who do you think you are?

See my booklet  Nature Journal Prompts (pdf) for more inspiration.

More on Nature Writing

Start a Nature Blog

Nature Journal Writing Prompts

Writing and Blogging Tips: A No Nonsense Guide

What is a Naturalist? (journal prompt)

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The Ultimate Guide To Nature Journaling: Tips For Writing About Nature

We’ve gathered the best tips for writing about nature in this ultimate guide to nature journaling. What a wonderful, joyful way to expand your homeschool nature study!

As part of the Outdoor Hour Challenge I always suggest and encourage a nature journal entry to follow the outdoor time. I know from experience that this takes the nature study to a higher level and each person can personalize their study by slowing down to record a sketch or some narrative in their nature journal.

“We stifle the desire to write if we first lay down rules and formulas as to how to write. Let the child have a personal experience; then allow it to write. Did you ever have a pupil who could not write a composition, but who could write a letter that was full of originality and personality? Why could it write the one and not the other? Too often, I fear, we prevent children from writing by trying to make them write. Of what use is writing anyway, if it is not self-expressive? So let the child have something real and personal to write.Then when the child has written, throw away the blue pencil and suggest tactfully how the piece may be improved here and there. Do not hinder the child.” The Nature Study Idea, Liberty Hyde Bailey

I have been reading a lot about nature journals this summer as part of research for a new project and I came across this quote by Liberty Hyde Bailey (contemporary of Anna Botsford Comstock ). I have found in our family that what he says is very true. If our children have something they are excited about….they relish the idea of sharing it with someone. They can’t wait to talk about it or write about it.

Nature Journal Idea: Write a Letter About Your Nature Study

So enjoy a new idea (it was new to me). After you have your outdoor time and your child has a great experience, have them write a letter to someone about it. They can include sketches or just writing, telling the story of their adventure. Perhaps this will encourage them to dig a little deeper about their subject and since they have plenty to write about….it won’t seem like work.

Nature Journaling as Part of Your Nature Study

For more nature journaling inspiration, enjoy these ideas!

• Creating a Nature Journal Supply Kit for Your Homeschool
• Keeping a Nature Journal: Review
• Monthly Nature Journal Activities for Your Homeschool
• 3 Tips for Nature Journaling When You Think You Can’t Sketch
• Getting Started in Nature Journaling

Enjoy FREE printable pages for a Preschool Nature Journal , along with a how to video. Fun for your youngest ones!

• Nature Study Printables for Toddlers and Preschoolers
• Keeping Weather Records
• The Homeschool Nature Journal Habit
• Ideas for Drawing in Your Nature Journal
• Homeschool Nature Journal or Nature Notebook?
• Project Based Nature Study: Keeping a Calendar of Firsts

Writing About Nature: A Creative Writing Book for Your Homeschool

The Writing About Nature book will help a wide range of writers who find their passion for nature moves them to document in words the creatures, plants, rhythms and cycles experienced in the great outdoors.

Writing About Nature – Book Review

Writing About Nature by John A. Murray (affiliate link to Amazon.com) was a book that came highly recommended on Amazon.com as a book to help to those that are aspiring to write about nature or their nature experiences. In my case, I don’t intend for everything I write to be published, quite the contrary. I write mostly for my own enjoyment and to keep a record of those things I find the most interesting as I make observations both in my own yard and as I travel.

From the Preface of Writing About Nature : “To give those who can not or will not attend schools the means to learn about the subject on their own, at whatever pace they choose. To provide teachers from high school on up with fifteen lessons to be completed in a semester, written by someone who has taught the subject enough to know what works and what does not work.”

The book is organized by topics: journals, essays, the writing process, opening and closing, word pictures, figurative language, character and dialogue, story-telling, fiction and poetry, revision, and research.

My favorite chapter was on the journal. I have gleaned more out of this part than any other because my aim is not to write magazine articles or essays to publish, but to satisfy my desire to record my time in the natural world in a way that is not only an accurate record but enjoyable to read. After reading this chapter, I completed the practice exercise that suggested writing a journal that covers one season of the year….writing each day through the whole quarter, noting the changes that occur as nature moves through a circle of time. I did the spring season from March to June earlier this year. What a wonderful journal to look back upon!

Learning About the Writing Process

My second favorite chapter in this book was on the writing process. It outlined and explained how different writers have successfully used methods of writing that fit different objectives. There are quotes and portions of writing from famous writers like Thoreau, Abbey, and Mark Twain.

I was able to glean some tips for experimenting with ways to write about nature like keeping random field notes and then writing from those or using a quick write method which makes for a more conversational style of writing. Playing with words and ideas is something that is enjoyable for me so this chapter gave me fresh ways of creating a more polished piece of nature writing.

Each chapter has practice exercises. These suggestions can sometimes be done rather quickly but there are some exercises that take more time that you will need to plan for if you are doing this as part of a writing course.

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Teaching high school students? This book would be a wonderful supplement to a high school writing course , a creative writing course , or as an extension of an advanced nature study course.

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• Contains a complete anthology, index, and list of creative writing programs to investigate.
• 15 chapters that can be complete writing units taking a week or longer to complete.

I am going to be pulling this off my reference shelf whenever I feel I need to freshen up my nature writing.

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by Barb McCoy, founder of the Outdoor Hour Challenges

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Some results uranium dioxide powder structure investigation

• Processes of Obtaining and Properties of Powders
• Published: 28 June 2009
• Volume 50 , pages 281–285, ( 2009 )

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• E. I. Andreev 1 ,
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• V. V. Martynov 3 &
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Features of the macrostructure and microstructure of uranium dioxide powders are considered. Assumptions are made on the mechanisms of the behavior of powders of various natures during pelletizing. Experimental data that reflect the effect of these powders on the quality of fuel pellets, which is evaluated by modern procedures, are presented. To investigate the structure of the powders, modern methods of electron microscopy, helium pycnometry, etc., are used. The presented results indicate the disadvantages of wet methods for obtaining the starting UO 2 powders by the ammonium diuranate (ADU) flow sheet because strong agglomerates and conglomerates, which complicate the process of pelletizing, are formed. The main directions of investigation that can lead to understanding the regularities of formation of the structure of starting UO 2 powders, which will allow one to control the process of their fabrication and stabilize the properties of powders and pellets, are emphasized.

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Investigation of the Properties of Uranium-Molybdenum Pellet Fuel for VVER

L. A. Karpyuk, V. V. Novikov, … O. A. Bakhteev

Investigation of the Influence of the Energy of Thermal Plasma on the Morphology and Phase Composition of Aluminosilicate Microspheres

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Evaluation of the Possibility of Fabricating Uranium-Molybdenum Fuel for VVER by Powder Metallurgy Methods

A. V. Lysikov, E. N. Mikheev, … D. S. Missorin

Patlazhan, S.A., Poristost’ i mikrostruktura sluchainykh upakovok tverdykh sharov raznykh razmerov (Porosity and Microstructure of Chaotic Packings of Solid Spheres of Different Sizes), Chernogolovka: IKhF RAN, 1993.

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Assmann, H., Dörr, W., and Peehs, M., “Control of HO 2 Microstructure by Oxidative Sintering,” J. Nucl. Mater. , 1986, vol. 140,issue 1, pp. 1–6.

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Andreev, E.I., Glavin, K.V., Ivanov, A.V. et al. Some results uranium dioxide powder structure investigation. Russ. J. Non-ferrous Metals 50 , 281–285 (2009). https://doi.org/10.3103/S1067821209030183

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