A living monograph of reflection and ecological writing as thinking.
This is my attempt to bring something to the page that I've lived for over a decade but never fully articulated: what it means to think with notebooks and nature—not as metaphor, but as practice.I hold a PhD in applied ecopsychology. I've kept journals for years. I've lived in three states in the last ten years—Texas, Wyoming, Washington—and in each place I've built a garden, walked the local trails, learned the seasonal rhythms. I've hiked the hill country, skied the mountain slopes, wandered the Pacific Northwest forests. Each landscape has shaped how I think. Each notebook holds fragments from a different ecology.And I've gone looking for the research that explains why this works.What I found: thinking isn't just internal. It's ecological. It emerges through relationships—with places, with notebooks, with seasons, with the rhythms of attention and return. The notebook becomes part of the cognitive system. Nature participates directly in thought. The fragments cohere over time into something that couldn't have been planned.This site holds that ongoing work.
Blog →
Fragments, reflections, observations as they emerge
Glossary →
Concepts in plain language, grounded in experience, linked to research
Sources →
The scholarship this work draws on
The glossary is evolving. The fragments are ongoing. The framework is emerging as I write it.
Kathleen Donchak, Ph.D., 2025