Relating to nature through journaling

Text and photos by Cheryl Daigle

On August 3, 2023, I took a nature journaling workshop in Unity led by Cloe Chun. She gave us a writing prompt focused on addressing a plant or other natural object as if developing a personal relationship with it. This is what I wrote while sitting in a hemlock grove alongside the Hills to Sea Trail.

Fragile Fern
I was drawn to your delicate fronds, each leaflet with its intricate curves an imperfect expression — not symmetrical — each to its own design yet one and the same. Here you grew inside the nook between melded roots of this elder hemlock, a giant in these woods protecting you.

Mother Hemlock
Remnant of wilder days, how does it feel to be the elder of these woods? Or one of a few standing? I see how you reach for the sky. The sun pours into you, pierces through your gnarled branches. I see your gifts of life as you shade the forest floor. And, here at your base, a single fragile fern grows, providing anchor for a spider's lair, creating dappled light that shivers with the slightest breeze as the wind touches this knobby, lush, rooted expression of earth, in this particular grove, this particular place.

Amy Niemczura (left) and Cheryl Daigle during the journaling workshop. Photo by Cloe Chunn