For many, New Years is a time for making resolutions. For me, it’s a great time for reflecting on what I’ve accomplished in the past year and setting intentions and goals for the new year to come in terms of nature study.  Below is a run down of how I did on my 2019 goals and what I hope to accomplish in 2020.

My goals for 2019 included:

1. Post to Seashore to Forest Floor regularly. — I managed to post new blog content approximately 3 or 4 times a month, for a total of 40 blog posts in 2019. This wasn’t quite as frequent as I had hoped, but I’m glad I was able to maintain regular content updates nonetheless.

2. Maintain the “perpetual nature journal” I started in 2018. — This goal was inspired by Lara Gastinger’s perpetual nature journal. As, with last year, I missed a number of the weeks, but the benefit of this journal format is that if I miss a week, it’s completely fine, as I will be able to add to that page in future years when I come back around to it. All told, I completed an entry in 37 out of 52 weeks (3 weeks of which are shown below).

3. Continue to coordinate the Upper Cape Naturalists Club and an adult naturalist course through the Green Briar Nature Center in Sandwich. – I succeeded at both. In its second year, the naturalist club continued to meet approximately twice a month and has more than 70 members. I also continued to partner with Green Briar to organize a monthly adult natural history class, which ran from May through December. 

4. Attend Mass Aububon’s Creating a Year List 2019 Birding Program, a monthly birding program run out of their Long Pasture sanctuary in Barnstable. – This was an incredibly enjoyable program, bringing me to birding hotspots all over Cape Cod, as well as elsewhere in Massachusetts. If you’re at all interested in birding, MassAudubon is currently accepting registration for their 2020 Program. 

5. Create a daily nature journal to keep track of my everyday nature experiences and observations. – This was perhaps the goal I was least confident about keeping. Doing something every day is a hard task to set for yourself. But I did it! And I love the amazing and detailed record I ended up producing. Three of the weekly pages I created are shown below.

6. Take at least one kayak trip each month. – I was on track to meet this goal through September, having made it out for at least one kayak trip a month for the first 9 months of the year (yes, even in January and February!), but scheduling conflicts and inclement weather foiled my plans for October, November and December. 

For 2020, I plan to continue posting to the blog and drawing in my perpetual nature journal regularly. I will also continue coordinating the Upper Cape Naturalists Club. But I also have two additional nature study goals I hope to achieve:

1. Complete Level I of the Wilderness Awareness School’s Kamana Independent Study Program. – I’ve been eyeing this program for years, but always seemed to have another major commitment or undertaking that I was involved in, causing me to wonder if I had the appropriate time and resources to devote to the program. But this year I’m going to give the Level I program a try, which should only take 6 to 8 weeks to complete. If it goes well, I may also continue with the Level II version of the program. 
2. Do more nature journaling. – I recognize that this is a vague goal. But having participated in Inktober this year, and then creating artwork for family members for Christmas gifts, I’m rediscovering how much I enjoy drawing on a regular basis. Nature journaling is a great way to combine my love of nature with my love of drawing, making it seem like a perfect fit.

Do you have any nature study goals? If so, I’d love to hear about them. Share them in the comments below.