Nature Journaling: A Prescribed Burn at Doak Field

Sometimes when you're out hiking, you come across something dramatic, like State Park workers restoring an overgrown field with a prescribed burn.  

We arrived at the field just in time to see this planned burn begin to remove overgrown vegetation, filling the sky with smoke, and consuming the dried grasses with roaring flames.

In just minutes, the area was cleared.

Now the land is reset and ready for grasses to replace the brambles and woody plants that had grown there.

During the excitement, we found an out-of-the-way spot, and I wrote a quick description to record the day's story.

And of course, a sketch is worth a thousand words.

I hope you get a chance to tell a story in your nature journal, complete with drawings!

Happy Creating!

Copyright Betsy Bangley 2024. All right reserved.

Field Restoration

I visited the Doak Field in Raccoon Creek State Park today, one day after a controlled burn, and wrote this in my journal:

A real nature journaling day -- warm enough not to wear gloves and the sun is coming out after the morning's rain.

Yesterday, I brought my journal out to this very field, but never wrote or sketched in it -- I intended to record the controlled burning of the field in sketches & words, but at a fire, every hand is put to work -- And I took up the fire rake.

Today, the fire crew has left the field to the bluebirds & me -- the smell of charcoal lies heavy on the wind and the field's blue-black stubble attracts robins & bluebirds to investigate. Are they finding barbecued woolly bear caterpillars or scorched ground beetles? Or are they just curious like me?

I do know that the male bluebird's wings look impossibly blue against the velvet stubble, like a chunk of flying ultramarine sky. Spring. And we are alive again -- the earth & I.

A new heat rises up from the charred grass stubble -- Gentle rain quenched the first fire -- now the sun's heat -- gathered, trapped & radiated by the black char -- causes scintillation in the air above the black earth. The heat of new creation -- will bring a rush of green life.

I hear --

• Phoebes in the woods
• Field sparrows in the open field
• Robins in the few trees of the field
• A flicker way off in the unburned field behind me.

Scenes from the controlled burn the day before:

The flames taking off at the start of the burn.  I'm the one in the bright orange sweatshirt.

Pat Adams, Environmental Educator, Raccoon Creek State Park.