This post is part of the Soul Foraging spring series, a nature-based creative practice for women ready to reconnect with their stories.
This Soul Foraging practice invites you to let nature and memory meet, to notice what a spring walk can surface, and to bring that noticing into a simple, intuitive mixed media collage. It's a practice rooted in mixed media art, nature-based healing, and creative wellness.
There's something about early spring that makes memory feel closer to the surface.
Maybe it's the light lasting longer in the evenings, the way it catches differently now. Or the birdsong that's crept back in, that first morning you noticed it had returned. The ground is softening here on the Anishinaabeg lands where I live and create, and there's a particular quality to the air that I only notice in April. Something opening.
Nature has a way of surfacing things we forgot we were carrying.
A certain smell, a familiar sound, the way the early green looks pushing through, and suddenly something from years ago is right there, present and clear, like it was waiting for the season to bring it back.
Maybe you're in a season where you need something quieter. Something that doesn't ask too much, but still feels like it's moving you forward. This practice began for me in exactly that kind of moment, when language felt too small, and I needed another way in.
This post is an invitation to do the same. To let a memory surface on a spring walk, to gather what feels connected to it, and then bring those two things — now and then — into a small piece of mixed media collage.
You don't need to understand the memory. You just need to be willing to notice.
I want to share something a little personal here.
When anxiety rises, when my chest feels tight and my breath comes shallow, stepping outside is often the first thing I do. Rain, snow, it doesn't matter. I bundle up if I need to and I head out.
The air always feels different out there.
Fresher. Cooler. Sometimes full of the particular scents of the day, damp earth, last night's rain, something green and new.
Something about the outside air helps me breathe a little slower. A little deeper. I take my time. I consciously let my breath lengthen while I'm out there, tuning into what I can smell, what I can hear, what I can feel against my skin.
I am always a little more okay when I come back in.
I share this not as advice, but simply because it's true for me. And because I think there's something worth naming in it, that going outside isn't always about inspiration or creativity or noticing beautiful things. Sometimes it's just about remembering how to breathe again.
And from that place, that slightly more okay place, the noticing tends to follow.
🌿 Soul Foraging Prompt: The Gathering Walk
Before you head outside, take a moment to let one memory surface. It doesn't need to be significant or carefully chosen, just whatever comes when you think of yourself somewhere in nature. A childhood place. A particular afternoon. A quiet moment that stayed with you longer than you expected.
Hold it loosely. You're not going to analyze it or retell it. Just let it come with you.
Then go for a walk.
It could be a favourite trail, your backyard, a path through the neighbourhood, anywhere you can move slowly and look around. As you walk, keep that memory somewhere in the background of your awareness, like quiet music.
As you move, look for things that could belong to that memory, not literally, but by feeling.
A stone that has the same weight as something you remember. A colour that matches the mood of it. A sound or a smell that takes you somewhere close to it. A texture that feels right, without you knowing exactly why.
Collect three to five things. Or if you'd rather not take anything from where you are, photograph them or pause and make a small sketch. The gathering itself is part of the practice, it asks your hands and your eyes to get involved before your mind has a chance to overthink it.
When you get home, arrange what you've gathered somewhere you can see it. Then sit with one question:
What did I gather that I didn't expect?
Often what we're drawn to carries meaning before we have any words for it. That's not something to push toward, just something to stay open to. This is where intuitive art and creative healing begin.
🎨 Creative Invitation: A Layered Mixed Media Collage
Gather a few simple materials. Paper scraps, old book pages, tissue paper, fabric, paint, whatever you have nearby. Nothing needs to be special or new.
Think about layering tissue paper over a painted book page, or letting a torn edge of something translucent sit over something darker underneath. What shows through, and what stays hidden, is part of the story. This is one of the quiet pleasures of mixed media collage and art journaling — the layers do work that a single mark can't.
Using your gathered objects (or the memory of what you collected) as your starting point, begin building a small collage that holds the feeling of your memory.
Not an illustration of it. Not a reconstruction. Just a response to it.
As you work, you might:
Choose colours that come from the memory rather than from what looks good together
Layer something from now, a piece of paper in a spring green, a torn edge from today's walk, over something that represents the past
Let textures do some of the speaking, especially where words feel like too much
If a word or phrase surfaces, let it in, tuck it under a layer, or let it rest on top
Leave some edges rough and unfinished. Memory rarely arrives in clean lines.
There's no right outcome here. The process itself is the creative healing practice, giving form to something felt before it's fully understood.
This little journal page came together in one short sitting at my art table, made entirely from what was already there, waiting.
I hadn't cleaned up from my last session (sometimes that turns out to be exactly right), so the materials chose themselves. A page from a vintage wildflower journal as the base. Layers of used teabag paper, a scrap of lace, a piece of handmade paper. I don't usually work with red, but this small piece of deep red handmade paper simply asked to be included, and I listened.
A feather I'd stamped onto rice paper. A leaf skeleton. A splash of green ink. I had words from a magazine saved for some future project, "the great outdoors," but then a small quote appeared right there beside my journal page, and it felt more true. So I used that instead.
The whole piece was guided by what felt right, not what was planned. Anything that carries a trace of your time outside, your gathering walk, your noticing, that's what belongs here.
🌸 Creative Check-In
When you sit quietly with what you've made, take a moment to notice your response.
What memory did spring bring back to you, and what does it feel like to give it a little space on the page?
You don't need to analyse what surfaced or make sense of why that particular memory came. This isn't about reaching conclusions. It's simply about noticing what arrived, and being quietly curious about it.
In my work, I've seen again and again how what we're drawn to, in nature, in colour, in texture, often carries meaning before we have language for it. The collage doesn't need to explain anything. It just needs to hold it for a while.
In the original Soul Foraging journey, I shared a memory that came to me on a walk, one that led me to stack stones as a quiet tribute to my father. I hadn't planned to make anything. The walk brought something forward, and my hands found a way to hold it. That kind of making, the unplanned kind, is often where the most honest creative healing happens.
That's what this practice offers. Not answers, but a place to begin.
If you feel drawn to take this a little further, I've opened up the beginning of Soulful Stories as a free Creative Taster, a quiet, guided space to start creating and discovering your own visual story, using materials you likely already have. Step in whenever it feels right.
🌿 What's Coming Next
In the next post, we'll slow down even further and begin to create a kind of map. Not a map of any physical place, but of your inner landscape. It's a collage-based activity that takes the quiet chaos we all carry and starts to give it shape and colour. A way of seeing what's actually there.
Continue the Journey
If you're finding your way into this series, the previous post, Soul Foraging: A Nature-Inspired Mixed Media Collage Practice, is a good place to visit. It's where we first explored how what we notice in nature can become the beginning of something creative.
Take your time with whatever surfaces. There's no need to make sense of it all at once, just let it settle.
I'd love to know what you noticed. Feel free to leave a comment below, or share your work and tag me on Instagram (@delightrogers_art).
I live and create on the traditional lands of the Anishinaabeg peoples, lands that remain under their original stewardship. I honor their enduring connection to this place and their care for it over generations.
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