The Forest Seer's Almanac: Seasonal Cycles and the Artist-Naturalist Archetype

The Forest Seer’s Almanac is a handcrafted collaboration of book-arts and the environmental sciences. Documenting my discoveries studying ecology and geology in the field, this book pays homage to the writings and sketches of early naturalists and the descriptive sciences. Watercolor illustrations and a curation of eco-poetry accompany essays tied to my experiences through the changing seasons. Each chapter relates empirical scientific research to archetypal symbols in nature while calling on environmental themes such as ecological succession, wildlife monitoring, and climate change. By bridging the arts, sciences, and other modes of processing the world, I aim to bridge a holistic understanding of humanity’s place in the natural order and the ethics of responsible land stewardship. 64 pages of writing and watercolor illustrations are handbound with twine to spalted maple covers using Coptic stitching method. The pages are scanned in color and reformatted for an E-book publicly accessible through the link: www.leighajeannette.com/almanac