This Is Where Field Notes Starts
One place. Four seasons. A year of returning. Field Notes from Hunting Island · Series Introduction · March 2026
ROOTS & RAINBOOTS NATURE CO.
This Is Where Field Notes Starts
One place. Four seasons. A year of returning.
Field Notes from Hunting Island · Series Introduction · March 2026
I want to tell you what this series is before you read another post in it.
Field Notes from Hunting Island is a naturalist’s log. Every post starts with something that
stopped me — on the boardwalk, on the beach, in the maritime forest, at the marsh edge at
low tide. A sand dollar with its spines still intact. A piece of driftwood carved into a maze
by an animal I’d never heard of. A yellow lab walking to the water’s edge at sunrise and just
standing there.
The posts are written for the adults — educators, caregivers, anyone who wants the real
story behind what they’re finding outside. Each one pairs with a free downloadable card for
ages 2–5, because the best nature education happens when a child can hold the science in
their hands.
But before the individual posts, before the cards, before any of the
observations — there is this. The thing that makes all of it possible.
Returning to the same place.
The research on children and the natural world is unambiguous on one point: it is not the
grandness of the experience that matters. It is the repetition. A child who visits the same
patch of ground across four seasons develops something that a child who visits a hundred
different places once does not. They develop a relationship. With a place. With the living
world. With the practice of noticing.
rootsrainboots@gmail.com · Field Notes from Hunting IslandROOTS & RAINBOOTS NATURE CO.
That’s what the Seasonal Rhythm Companion is built around.
WHAT’S INSIDE
The Seasonal Rhythm Companion is a full year of outdoor practice for caregivers and
children — four seasons, sixteen weeks, one spot. It asks you to choose a place and return to
it. That’s the whole practice.
Spring — Mud, Growth & Return
The season of finally. Petrichor, emergence, canopy, tendril. Four words to take outside,
four weeks of returning to see what’s changed.
Summer — Heat, Stillness & the Long Afternoon
The season of slowing down. Dappled light, camouflage, evaporation, nocturnal. Earlier
mornings, shaded spots, the particular patience of watching insects.
Autumn — Release, Color & the Practice of Letting Go
The season of endings that don’t feel like loss. Chlorophyll, decompose, dormant,
migration. The world demonstrating, effortlessly, that letting go is not the same as gone.
Winter — Stillness, Structure & What Remains
The hardest season to go outside — and the most rewarding for those who do. Silhouette,
frost, hibernation, evergreen. The bones of the landscape become visible.
Each week has three anchors: a nature vocabulary word to use outside, a sketching space for
your child or for both of you together, and a return visit to your spot — same questions
every time, because the answers change.
A NOTE ON HOW THIS ACTUALLY GOES
rootsrainboots@gmail.com · Field Notes from Hunting IslandROOTS & RAINBOOTS NATURE CO.
Some weeks you’ll fill every page. Some weeks you’ll go outside, stand quietly for four
minutes, and come back in. Both count. Both are the practice.
This companion does not ask you to perform enjoyment. It does not ask you to have a
perfect outdoor session or a child who cooperates or weather that behaves. It asks you to
show up. That is enough.
The season-opening rituals are short and honest about this. Spring asks you to notice what
you smell before you go back in. Winter asks you to stand still and count to thirty and notice
whether your body relaxes or stays braced. These are not performances. They are starting
places.
START HERE
The Seasonal Rhythm Companion is free. Download it, print it, take it outside. You don’t
need to start in spring. You don’t need to start at week one. You need a place and a
willingness to return to it.
→ Download the Seasonal Rhythm Companion — free
Then come back here. The Field Notes posts are the science behind what you’re finding
outside — the real story of the tides, the pelicans, the driftwood, the lichen on the branch.
Each one pairs with a free card your child can hold. The companion gives you the rhythm.
The cards give you the language. The place gives you everything else.
— Tamara
Roots & Rainboots Nature Co.
Certified Forest School Teacher (FSTI) · Shorebird Steward, Audubon SC · Camp Host
rootsrainboots@gmail.com · Field Notes from Hunting Island