Our Cycles of Gaia project has always been about creating tools to anchor the passage of time to the local ecosystems which we live in and depend on. We’ve distributed hundreds of posters which depict the botanical activity happening beyond the walls they hang on, along with a K-12 curricula to engage with and learn from these cycles. But it quickly became clear that the project needed a component that could travel outside, and assist its users in finding direct connection with the natural world. Thus, the new Cycles of Gaia Perpetual Nature Journal was born!
The journal maintains the foundational concept of the calendar: a cyclical record of ecological patterns here in the Northeast U.S. However, as a journal, it invites you to insert yourself into that flow, and record your own observations on its pages.
Like our calendar, it portrays the year as a circle. This time we separated it into 52 weekly pages, and bound it together with a ring. The present moment is always atop the stack of pages, and when it passes, you spin it around the ring to the back, and wait for it to resurface in a year. Rather than using a typical book cover that denotes a beginning and an end, the pages are encased by a rigid sleeve.
Nature journaling offers a way to direct your attention toward your immediate surroundings. The act of sketching or describing an observation helps to slow down your mind, and attend to the many fascinating details that are often overlooked–the way a bud unfurls, the patterns of a tree’s branches, the veining of a leaf. By doing so, you get to know the living beings in your company and build a record of your experiences together.
Give nature journaling a try! And if you’d like to start the practice in a unique book which is formatted to represent the cycles of an ecological year, support our Kickstarter campaign. And if you think others would resonate with the project, please share it with them as well!
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