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In 2016 I’m doing a 365 Nature project. Each day of the year I will post something here about nature. It may be any format, a photo, video, audio, sketch or entry from my nature journal. It could be a written piece. Each day I will connect to nature in some way and share it here by the end of that day. You can keep up-to-date by subscribing to the RSS feed or be notified by email. See all the 365 Nature posts.

June is also 30 Days Wild and I’m participating again this year.


I spent most of the day today sitting. First in the car through Seattle’s miserable traffic, and then in a writing class. I’m in Bellingham this weekend for a writer’s conference and while I’m hoping to improve my writing skills I’m also hoping to get outside during breaks and see some of the nature here in northern Washington. Today the session went until five and I had little time to explore, but I did find a park to walk around. The center of the park was filled with playfields and a playground, but at least I got some fresh air.

After requiring myself to get outside and experience nature over the last 174 days, I find when I’m unable to connect and get outside I start to get very anxious. Today I almost felt like I couldn’t calm down or be peaceful until I’d had a walk tonight. As I walked along the concrete path, I repeatedly spotted insects on the walkway. There were several lady beetle larvae, a couple of shiny beetles, many harvestmen and a few roly poly bugs. I can only guess why they were there, perhaps gathering the last warmth from the concrete before the sun went down.

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Kelly Brenner

Kelly Brenner

Kelly Brenner is a naturalist, writer and artist based in Seattle. She is the author of THE NATURALIST AT HOME: Projects for Discovering the Hidden World Around Us and NATURE OBSCURA: A City’s Hidden Natural World from Mountaineers Books, a finalist for the Washington State Book Awards and Pacific Northwest Book Awards. She writes articles about natural history and has bylines in Crosscut, Popular Science, National Wildlife Magazine and others. On the side she writes fiction.

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