Lessons from the Field

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Field notes, a historical perspective

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Field notes in the Americas by Constantine Samuel Rafinesque, ca. 1820s.

Explorers have been keeping hand-written field notes—with or without sketches—for hundreds of years, if not many millennia (on observing many rock art sites, I’ve been struck by the possibility that early humans were using rock and pigment to record their travels and nature information for hunting and gathering, and sharing their findings with others . . . such as at the large complex at the Neolithic Tweifelfontein in Namibia, which includes a large slab map showing water holes and game; see my field notes from this site at the bottom of this post).

A spread from my book Master of Field Arts showcasing the journals of Charles Darwin, Meriwether Lewis, and Thomas Orde-Lees—as well as a page from my humble journal during a weeklong biological survey of the Sierra los Locos, Sonora, Mexico in 2019. [Click to enlarge.]

Browsing the field notes of science explorers such as Charles Darwin (1809–1882), Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859), Edgar Mearns (1856-1916), and Constantine Samuel Rafinesque (1783-1840) gives us an incalculable wealth of knowledge of the lands they explored and the human cultures and nature they observed. Darwin’s branching tree of evolution (right) with the scribble “I think . . .” never fails to give me the chills.

From the journals of geographer-explorers such as Thomas Orde-Lees, a member of Shackelton’s Endurance crew on the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition in 1916, and Meriwether Lewis (1774-1805) and William Clark (1770-1838) from their Corps of Discovery, we discover new lands and learn first-hand the astonishing courage and skill needed to push the limits of human exploration.

Their meticulously detailed and illustrated field journals are priceless to humanity, as I mentioned, for their wealth of data, but also as roadmaps of human learning through exploration. Our boundless curiosity coupled with our ability to record what we see is one of the critical attributes that sets apart humans from other species.

Alexander von Humboldt’s journals from his Americas explorations ca. 1799–1800. (from https://humboldt.staatsbibliothek-berlin.de/work/?lang=en)

List of bird species observed by Edgar Mearns (1856-1916) at Fort Verde, Arizona, in 1884.

The Importance of Field Notes Today

Field notes are still critical tools for field scientists and explorers, and yet the practice is waning with the advent of computers and pocket devices with 12-mexapixel cameras. You could say that I have been on a mission for the last several years to not only help save the tradition of venerable classic field notes but to also spread the love of recording nature to everyone—from kids to grandparents. John Muir Laws (The Laws Guide to Nature Drawing and Journaling) says it best: “Keeping a journal of your observations, questions, and reflections will enrich your experiences and develop gratitude, reverence, and the skills of a naturalist.”

In these digitally cacophonous times that are robbing us of the ability to focus intently on one thing for very long, connecting with nature through careful observation and note-taking is more important today than ever in the past. Keeping a field journal may be the key to healing our digitally fractured minds.

I’ve been keeping field journals for almost 50 years, since I was eight years old and my Dad built me a Stevenson screen stocked with an array of weather instruments—every day at 4 pm I would head out with my notebook to record the daily weather and make notes and field observations. That—along with rockhounding expeditions with Dad and wildflower safaris with my Mom—cemented my lifelong love of nature observation, scientific discovery, and exploration (not to mention I’m still a weather nerd).

Grinnell’s narrative journal page from a 1910 field expedition to Pilot Knob. I followed his method starting in college—and still do, albeit with more drawings and color. I keep a small field notebook for jotting quick notes when I’m traveling or moving quickly, in addition to my larger narrative journal (see below).

When I started studying ecology and evolutionary biology in college, my field notes became serious records of natural history data using the Grinnell Method of scientific note-taking (a thorough documentation style, which included four components: a field notebook, a field journal, a species account, and a catalog of specimens; see right).

“Our field-records will be perhaps the most valuable of all our results. …any and all (as many as you have time to record) items are liable to be just what will provide the information wanted. You can’t tell in advance which observations will prove valuable. Do record them all!”

– Joseph Grinnell, 1908

About eight years ago I started adding sketches and watercolor to my field notes, adopting a more “journaling” style and yet still always including the critical metadata and nature data.

Sketches and data from my journals have been used in several books written by me and my husband, Jonathan Hanson. In 2020 I published Nature Journaling for a Wild Life, to encourage anyone who wants to begin keeping a field or “nature” journal, and in 2022 Master of Field Arts, a sort of “master’s degree” for the next level to becoming a lifelong naturalist and explorer.

Obviously we can’t all be Charles Darwins or Alexander von Humboldts, but we can explore the world around us and make observations and fall in love with the process of discovery.

Time and again I return to one of my favorite published journals of discovery, the superbly readable The Sea of Cortez: A Leisurely Journal of Travel and Research by longtime friends John Steinbeck and Ed Ricketts. Published in 1941, it is the full and shared vision of their scientific collecting expedition aboard the Western Flyer sailing out of Monterey. The book is part travel journal, part philosophical essay, as well as a nature journal and a catalogue of species Grinnell would highly approve of. Steinbeck described the purpose of the journey was

“to stir curiosity”

. . . but my favorite line from the book perfectly captures the larger context of exploration and observation (and recording those observations in our journals):

“It is advisable to look from the tide pool to the stars, and then back to the tide pool again.”

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Field notes page from our crossing of Botswana in 2019.

Above and below: Studying and documenting a large (and probably 1,000+ year-old) Welwitschia mirabilis in the Ugab River region of Namibia, 2019.

 

I love that my field journal—made for me by my husband over 25 years ago (and my companion on tens of thousands of miles of exploration and field work on five continents) so closely resembles the journal of Meriwether Lewis (right).

Resources for exploring historical and modern field notes:

Start with the Smithsonian Institution’s Field Book Project (scroll to the bottom of the page to access the archives links) at https://siarchives.si.edu/about/field-book-project

The goal of the Field Book Project is to promote awareness of and access to thousands of scientific field notes in the collections of the Smithsonian Institution Archives, and holdings at the National Museum of Natural History and the Smithsonian Libraries. It began in 2010 as an effort to bring to light these hidden collections with a goal to catalog 5,000 field books and provide online access to those records, a goal graciously funded by the Center for Libraries and Information Resources (CLIR). At this point, the Project has cataloged over 9,500 field books and digitized over 4,000.

Another rabbit hole to explore is the UC Berkeley Museum of Vertebrate Zoology’s Archives Field Notes collection: https://mvz.berkeley.edu/mvzarchives/

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This post is an update to my 2019 post, “The art of seeing instead of looking: reasons to keep a nature journal”.

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Alaska Explorations – Reflections on "pencil miles"

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We recently returned from the high and middle Arctic regions of Alaska—a research trip for Jonathan’s next fiction novel in his Clayton T. Porter series.

For two weeks solid I was able to explore new habitats, learn new species, and sketch and write extensively from early morning until late in the evening—a whopping 27 pages worth! And I can confidently say:

  1. Alaska is a superb natural treasure, as vast and wild and full of wildlife and rich cultural history as anywhere we’ve been in Africa . . . and . . .

  2. “Pencil miles” work, even in the short-term (thanks, Jack Laws).

I’ve posted below all the pages in chronological order.

It’s particularly interesting to note the changes from day one at the natural history museum at the University of Fairbanks, where I jumped into live sketching after several weeks hiatus from any journaling at all. I dove in (after writing the metadata, of course) with the 8-foot-tall stuffed grizzly . . . and it just went all wobbly wonky on me. Too many people around, too many people watching over my shoulder, I just couldn’t find my sketching ju-ju.

But I stuck it out. Then I took a deep breath and centered myself and concentrated on the walrus . . . and after zenning it out, I got it. My sketching started settling.

Over the course of the next 11 days watch how the quality progresses. I even tackled quite a few live-in-the-field animal sketches where I only saw the critter for a very short time. Into the second week, after struggling a little with pen-only live animal sketching, I adopted a purple-leaded pencil* to do these initial one- to two-minute gesture sketches, and left them as-is. Then later, using photos my husband shot as reference, I completed more detailed sketches in camp, using my gesture sketches as baselines. I really like the peregrine and muskox gestures.

I returned completely energized and excited to complete my next book (80% done), Master of Field Arts. I also will be offering several workshops:

* I don’t like graphite pencil for journal sketches because the soft pigment can smudge terribly on my pages. Jack Laws likes a non-photo blue pencil, which I tried but found I didn’t really like, perhaps because the blue pigment is rather hard and unexpressive. Recently I saw Jack using a purple-colored pencil, so I ordered purple refills for my mechanical pencil—and I really like it. Soft and expressive, light enough to not overpower the gestures but with enough character to create really pleasing gesture sketches.

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Studio trick adapted to the field

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After my Weather 101 workshop in June, and then enjoying Bethan Burton’s “Skyscapitos” class at the Wild Wonder Nature Journaling Conference, I’ve been tackling lots of little sky- and cloud-scapes in my journal. In fact we’ve started a semi-regular “Skyscapito Appreciation Society” for sharing our work and enlisting help with challenging skies (first meeting on Zoom July 16 at 4 pm Pacific / Arizona time).

But one of the challenges was how to cope with the speed with which you need to move to get nice sky washes and keeping your skies wet when dropping in darker colors . . . If I just drew a box, then I’d invariably slash outside the lines or go too slowly to try to get inside the lines and the washes would dry before I completed them, making blotchy skies.

So I started trying a studio trick: masking out my area with painter’s tape. It works like a charm! It creates a frame that you can splash up to and onto, and then when your are done, it peels off leaving lovely perfect edges.

I only had regular half-inch masking tape, and I found those rolls to be too big for my field kit (I’m all about keeping it minimal and light!). I found this .27” small rolls of tape on Amazon and they are perfect for field sketching. Small enough you don’t even know it’s in your bag, but super versatile and useful not just for skyscapitos but also marking out discreet scenes such as the hummingbird nectaring on a cholla blossom below.

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New series: Lessons from the Field

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One of the joys of field sketching in our nature journals are those moments when things just “click” and you love your notes, your sketches, the harmony of the page . . . and then . . . there are the times it just feels like a struggle.

These pages from a recent trip to a wildlife area in southeastern Arizona—an agricultural “wetlands” (it’s artificial) called Whitewater Draw—were the latter.

It was a beautiful day, and like most of the people visiting, we were there to see the Sandhill Cranes, which overwinter in the surrounding valley in the tens of thousands. I was looking forward to some great practice live-sketching birds—and ones that are mostly stationary, my favorite kind!

It was crowded, which is always a challenge to me whilst sketching. But the main challenge was just that my initial sketching felt stiff and difficult, a real struggle.

After a few moments I noticed a possible reason: the first bird I had chosen to sketch was facing to the right.

Thinking on it, I realized that I often find it really hard to sketch animals in that aspect. Going back over some of my other journal pages after I got home, I found many examples of live-sketching where the subject was facing right, and yes, those sketches were definitely a struggle. Hmmmmm…is this a real “thing?”

I did some preliminary research, and there was plenty of chatter on art forums of others who noticed the same thing . . . mostly beginners. So it’s not just me.

Thinking some more on this, I realized my crane sketch was the hardest, but the duck was easier—it started out hard, but then I quickly got it.

Why?

I now know why:

  • I was rushed when starting the crane drawing.

  • People all around, feeling “pressure” to get going, not taking my time.

  • And most important: I was drawing a bird. I should have been drawing shapes. By trying only to draw a bird, I was failing.

Look at the duck sketch. Much better and I did the overall shape really quickly and confidently. It just worked. Because:

  • I was drawing shapes, not a bird.

Going back to some of the art forum chatter, there are all sorts of theories about why some of us find it hard to sketch subjects facing right . . . one of the best theories was that if you are right-handed you have to draw the most important lines towards your palm, into it, and your fingers are cramped inwards—instead of the simple wrist motion to the side when drawing a left-slanted line.

I think it’s a combination of that plus the too-intent focus on the subject rather than shapes. With the duck I proved if you are just drawing shapes, you can overcome that cramped tendency by loosening up and drawing the shapes in a wrist-motion rather than obsessing on a beak or an eye.

Lesson from the Field: take your time to think about the act of sketching and consciously look for shapes rather than obsessing on the subject itself. Those few extra moments—maybe even just one minute—to find the shapes and talk yourself through them as you sketch will make it so much easier to be successful.