Nature Journaling with John Muir Laws- Webinar recording

Enjoy this Coastside Land Trust webinar recording, as we welcome John Muir Laws. Laws explores how to use nature journaling to engage curiosity, enhance observation, and focus our attention, observations, and experiences in the field.
 John Muir Laws is a naturalist, artist, and educator who has dedicated his work to connect people to nature through art and science. Laws has written and illustrated several books including The Laws Guide to Nature Drawing and Journaling (2016), The Laws Guide to Drawing Birds (2012), Sierra Birds: a Hiker’s Guide (2004), The Laws Guide to the Sierra Nevada (2007), and The Laws Pocket Guide Set to the San Francisco Bay Area (2009). He is a regular contributor to Bay Nature magazine with his “Naturalists Notebook” column, and a research associate for the California Academy of Science. Laws is also the president and founder of the Wild Wonder Foundation , which is dedicated to encouraging nature connection and conservation through attention, curiosity, art, science, and community.

Learn more about John Muir Laws at www.johnmuirlaws.com. Here you can view tutorials and see his materials suggestions. You can also order his books and resources, and follow along with his upcoming events calendar.

Donate to support the Coastside Land Trust free webinar programs and the protection and stewardship of our shared open spaces.

Nature Journaling with John Muir Laws- Free community webinar

Nature Journaling With John Muir Laws

Free Community Webinar

Saturday, January 28, 2023

10:00am

Join the Coastside Land Trust for this free community webinar, as we welcome John Muir Laws. He will explore how to use nature journaling to engage curiosity, enhance observation, and focus our attention, observations, and experiences in the field.
 John Muir Laws is a naturalist, artist, and educator who has dedicated his work to connect people to nature through art and science. Laws has written and illustrated several books including The Laws Guide to Nature Drawing and Journaling (2016), The Laws Guide to Drawing Birds (2012), Sierra Birds: a Hiker’s Guide (2004), The Laws Guide to the Sierra Nevada (2007), and The Laws Pocket Guide Set to the San Francisco Bay Area (2009). He is a regular contributor to Bay Nature magazine with his “Naturalists Notebook” column, and a research associate for the California Academy of Science.

When it Rains it POURS

With all of this rain, these Junior Land Stewards garden plots of Wavecrest Open Space have been getting quite a drink. While the CUSD fourth grade seedlings are steadily growing in their greenhouses and cold frames, these rains are bringing the necessary moisture to prepare the ground for all the plantings the students will soon do. The Junior Land Stewards are preparing to plant their indigenous seedlings into their plots in early February.

Happy New Year from the Coastside Land Trust

Happy New Year. We are all thankful for the permanent protection of our shared open space lands. Thank you to our loyal supporters of 2022. We look forward to a year of continued dedication to the preservation, protection and stewardship of these lands.

Nature Journaling in the Junior Land Stewards Program

Nature journaling activities have been the focus of the Junior Land Stewards field trips this month. Such activities have included Sound Mapping, My Secret Plant, I notice/I wonder/It reminds me of, and Ecosystem Inspections. El Granada students hiked to Quarry Park while sharing in a history lesson with special guest (and CLT Stewardship Advisory Board member) Barbara Dye. They learned about their neighborhood, the Ocean Shore railroad, and Quarry Park itself. Farallone View students hiked through their neighboring Golden Gate National Recreation Area with Eric Zepeda, of the Golden Gate National Conservancy. They learned a great deal about the park and the local endangered species.

Thanks to a grant from the Land Trust Alliance, this year the Coaststide Land Trust has been offering nature journal training for the CUSD 4th grade teachers and the JLS high school field guides. Teachers are completing a three part series, of which they have already concluded two sessions. The goal of these workshops is to provide the tools and enrich instructional practices for teaching nature journaling within the classroom. Haley Paterson, Junior Land Stewards program manager shares, “It's also been wonderful for teachers to share their successes and challenges in nature journaling with each other and the CLT staff. Teachers have enjoyed meeting each other and participating in these relaxing and enriching development workshops.” 

Great Thanks To Our Stewardship Advisory Committee

Where would the Coastside Land Trust be without our Stewardship Advisory Committee? We have these dedicated, hard working people to thank for so many reasons…

The Stewardship Advisory Committee leads the the biological and other environmental monitoring of all of our properties and conservation easements. They document and report the yearly changes in this open space land through photographs and sustained reporting, and provide input for issues on the land that need attention.

They are responsible for the organization of our community work days, as well as some of their own work days - removing invasive plants and saplings, to maintain and support the health of the coastal prairie. Several members of this stewardship team also support and work alongside our youngest stewards within the Junior Land Stewards program.

Thank you to Barbara Lohman (chair), John Zimmer, Barbara Dye, Janet Leonard, Susan Dunn, April Ramos, Terry Sweeney, and Sara Polgar who serve on this Stewardship Advisory Committee, and are the backbone of so much of who we are, and the impact we have on the environment.

Giving Tuesday

Preserving the Coastside for present and future generations.

Donate on this Giving Tuesday to support the critical protection and stewardship of our shared open space land.

Giving Thanks

Giving thanks for you (today and every day), our loyal supporters and friends.

Planting Seeds

The Junior Land Stewards of Hatch, El Granada and Farralone View elementary school have been busy planting their indigenous plant seeds. They will be tending to these and watching them grow until February, when they will transplant them into their pollinator gardens. The list of plants is long and includes California buckwheat, seaside daisy, lizard’s tail, yarrow, yellow bush lupine, clarkia, bee plant, phacelia, prunella, Douglas iris, and sneezeweed.

Junior Land Stewards Prepare Their Plots

The Junior Land Stewards have been preparing their future planting plots. Led by their Half Moon Bay high school field guides, they have been removing invasive species, and sheet mulching to prepare their habitat restoration gardens for planting in the spring. They have also taken part in naturalist scavenger hunts where they have been looking for birds of prey, native and invasive plants, signs of the fall season, and places where wildlife might live.

Donate to support the Junior Land Stewards Program and the critical protection and stewardship of our shared open space land.

Thanks to the Sequoia Audubon Society

A humongous thank you to the knowledgable Sequoia Audubon Society guides who led us all on a really fantastic Wavecrest raptor walk. With a large number of guides, we were able to travel in small groups, and the raptor viewing was pretty incredible for all. This was surely a reminder of why the preservation of open space is so important.

Photo credit: Edward Wang

Donate to support this critical open space habitat- shared my many creatures (big and small).

Thanks to Team Zimmer

Great thanks to John Zimmer, Joe Ramos and Patrick Ryan, who volunteered and worked to remove the overgrowth of Eucalyptus saplings from the Coastside Land Trust’s Surf Beach property. A Herculean task, and we can all be grateful for their good work.

Junior Land Stewards Field Guide Orientation Continues

This group of Half Moon Bay High school students have continued honing their nature journaling practices in preparation for their role as Junior Land Stewards field guides. Students started with an introduction to "I notice, I wonder, It reminds me of", then chose a nature treasure and used prompts to document their observations. Through the process of observing, journaling and labeling the students came away with some great tools to use on our field trips

Donate to support the Junior Land Stewards program and the preservation, protection and stewardship of our shared open spaces.

Junior Land Stewards Field Guide Orientation In Action

On October 18th the Coastside Land Trust hosted Half Moon Bay High School Students from the AP Environmental and Agricultural Programs out at Wavecrest Open Space to prepare these students who will be acting as field guides for the Junior Land Stewards Program. This orientation featured four environmental presenters/ leaders. Barbara Dye spoke about native and invasive plants and their characteristics as well as habitat restoration. Ginny Marshall from Sequoia Audubon Society guided the students in a bird walk where they discovered and learned about the many birds that depend upon the coastal prairie. Sara Polar from the San Mateo County Resource Conservation District (and CLT board member) taught the students about land trusts, trail building, and land management. Ryan Seelbach, geologist and big wave surfer, gave an in depth view of coastal geology, erosion, and wave formation. This was a day of great learning and preparation for all involved.

Donate to support the Junior Land Stewards and the critical protection and stewardship of our shared open spaces.

Photograph credit: Barbara Dye

Nature Journaling Workshops for Junior Land Stewards Teachers

This week the classroom teachers working with the Junior Land Stewards program began their first of three nature journaling workshop trainings. They are training to facilitate this practice within the classroom and in the field. Within this first session, these fourth grade teachers from Hatch Elementary, El Granada Elementary and Farallone View Elementary came together to collaborate, share ideas, and become familiar with the tools and basic framework.

The Nature Journaling workshops are facilitated by Elexis Padron. They are funded by a grant from The Land Trust Alliance. This workshop was hosted by El Granada Elementary in the library. Great thanks to EG principal, Erin O'Connor Brown, and librarian Annemieke Baker for hosting us.

Half Moon Bay Pumpkin Festival Information and Community Table

Photo Credit: Aaron Burden

Happy Pumpkin Festival weekend! Stop by and see us at our CLT booth in the Bank of America parking lot, where we will be selling pumpkin seeds and cookies. We will be there all weekend, and would love to see you there to say hi, answer questions, and chat.

Coastside Land Trust Annual Report

Check out the Coastside Land Trust 2021 Annual Report. You will notice a new visual format this year, which we hope will delight you.

The Coastside Land Trust is dedicated to the preservation, protection and enhancement of the open space environment including the natural, scenic, recreational, cultural, historical, and agricultural resources of Half Moon Bay and the San Mateo County Coast for present and future generations.

MULCH Appreciated

Many thanks to Ramsey and Michael from the City of Half Moon Bay Public Works who took on the herculean task of bringing the mulch to Wavecrest Open Space, in preparation for this year’s Junior Land Stewards’ gardens. Many students and staff thank you both.

The Junior Land Stewards have begun their year of study

All seven 4th grade classes (representing Alvin Hatch, El Granada, and Farallone View elementary schools have begun their Junior Land Stewards (JLS) Program journeys. Students began with an introductory lesson on what they have to look forward to this year, which includes their upcoming work in the field and in the classroom. Coastside Land Trust educators were excited to learn what these future land stewards already know about their local environment. Students learned and practiced documenting their thinking through an “I notice, I wonder, It reminds me of " lesson with the John Muir Laws' Nature Journal Connection. High school field guides from the Advanced Placement (AP) Environmental Science and Advanced Agriculture classes were also briefed on how they can volunteer on JLS field trips. These first field trips will begin during the last week of October, and there is great excitement in the air!

Wavecrest Raptor Walk with Sequoia Audubon Society

Photograph credit: Barbara Dye

Wavecrest Raptor Walk

Saturday, November 5, 2022

10:00am -Noon

Come explore our local overwintering raptor population. Wavecrest is the single most important site on the San Mateo Coast for wintering raptors, which can be seen hunting in the property's broad fields. Raptors and other species rely on its expansive grasslands, wetlands, and roosting sites. Wavecrest is the place to see many raptors, including White-tailed Kites, Northern Harriers, Turkey Vultures, Sharp-shinned/ Cooper's/ Red- tailed/ Rough-legged Hawks, American Kestrels and Falcons.