Part of my “wonder journal” — a practice I am asking my environmental philosophy students to engage in this semester. Since I am asking them to do it, I am doing it as well. “The love of wisdom begins in wonder,” says Aristotle.

It is a little cumbersome, but I carry a bag with notebooks, pens and watercolors, and usually a field guide and a book or two — poetry, science, philosophy — and I allow myself (force myself, sometimes) to stop and wonder at something in nature, and to turn that wonder into words and images.

Handwritten journal entries feature dated notes detailing observations of nature and personal reflections.