March 16, 2023 I co-led (with Mike Ezell, AL State Parks Naturalist Emeritus) a Nature walk at Joe Wheeler State Park for members of the Huntsville LearningQuest class that had just completed a seven-week course on the State Parks of North Alabama. This Post presents the additional visual accents gifted by the spring sky and clouds above us.

We chose a spectacular spring day, when images of clouds and sky amplified the beauty, magic, wonder, and awe of Nature.

A fitting sky send-off as the group gathered by the lodge (left). I wondered whether I could have chosen a better sky. I think not!

Mike led us into the mature upland hardwood forest. Nothing could have expressed greater promise for a woodlands stroll than the beckoning mid-spring blue sky.

The lake complements the sky, reflecting the blue-white, the wind-textured surface blending the blue and white into a single hue. Almost a slate blue-gray. I’ve learned over these seven-plus decades that I’m pretty good with only a few basic colors: the red/orange/yellow/green/blue/indigo/violet (ROY-G-BIV) of the rainbow. Beyond that, I’m somewhat lost. My spouse can distinguish hundreds. During the spring, when multiple shades of green paint the fields and forests, I see green, but without my Munsell Color Chart (I used it many decades prior to characterize and classify soil), I can only go from light green to dark green, and throw in an occasionally verdant or vernal to sound more sophisticated!

The sky and clouds likewise blessed us as we passed near the lakeside cottages. I just can’t focus on scenery without including the firmament.

Nothing spectacular in these views through the forest, beyond the bluff, to the wind-swept and sun-blessed Lake Wheeler, yet the images lift my spirit and soothe my soul. Another six weeks, with full foliage, the impact lessens, the view obscured. Or a deep cloudy, drizzly day when water and sky blend into one, and the trees seem to stand alone, lost in the foreground with no sense of scale or perspective.

The sky came to life from this nearby bluff position, the line of sight more northerly, capturing the emerging spring greens of the hillside flank tracing down to the water.

A sky-view into the dominant canopy crowns would not be available when leaves emerge in another month. These are in fact regal forest sentries, reaching skyward (no, heavenward!). What a life…every day awakening, arms outstretched to the great beyond, caressing the breeze, basking in sunshine, inhaling Nature’s essence, accepting the freshness of morning fog, and thrilling to the wet kisses of welcome raindrops!

I’ve been fixated and mesmerized by sky and clouds since I left my Mom’s apron. How could I possibly contemplate the woodland saunter at Joe Wheeler State Park without seeing and appreciating the universe of sky and clouds above!?

John Muir tied the Wheeler hike package tightly…and perfectly:

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.

The woodland hike; Lake Wheeler; the lakeside bluffs; the mature hardwood forest; the exquisite sky and clouds above — all of it hitched and stitched.

Albert Einstein’s words inspire me to view the spring morning, the natural laws that guide our world, and the endlessly changing sky above with eyes peering from my very soul:

Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.

I’m fascinated with Nature’s firmament…and with her incomparable beauty, magic, wonder, and awe!

Alabama State Parks Foundation

Thoughts and Reflections

I offer these observations:

• Once you have tasted the essence of sky, you will forever look up. (Leonardo da Vinci)
• The sky is the daily bread of the eyes. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
• Exquisite sky and clouds magnify the inspiration of a spring woodland saunter.

Inhale and absorb Nature’s elixir. May Nature Inspire, Inform, and Reward you!

If only more of us viewed our precious environment through the filters I employ. If only my mission and vision could be multiplied untold orders of magnitude:

Steve’s Three Books

I wrote my books Nature Based Leadership (2016), Nature-Inspired Learning and Leading (2017), and Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits: Stories of Passion for Place and Everyday Nature (2019; co-authored with Dr. Jennifer Wilhoit) to encourage all citizens to recognize and appreciate that every lesson for living, learning, serving, and leading is either written indelibly in or is powerfully inspired by Nature.

I began writing books and Posts for several reasons:

• I love hiking and exploring in Nature
• I see images I want to (and do) capture with my trusty iPhone camera
• I enjoy explaining those images — an educator at heart
• I don’t play golf!
• I actually do love writing — it’s the hobby I never needed when my career consumed me
• Judy suggested my writing is in large measure my legacy to our two kids, our five grand kids, and all the unborn generations beyond
• And finally, perhaps my books and Blogs could reach beyond family and touch a few other lives… sow some seeds for the future

All three of my books (Nature Based Leadership; Nature-Inspired Learning and Leading; Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits) present compilations of personal experiences expressing my (and co-author Dr. Wilhoit for Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits) deep passion for Nature. All three books offer observations and reflections on my relationship to the natural world… and the broader implications for society. Order any and all from your local indie bookstore, or find them on IndieBound or other online sources such as Amazon and LifeRich.

I am pleased to offer the eighth of my new GBH Brief Form Posts to my website (Less than three-minutes to read! Not including viewing the short video). I tend to get a bit long-winded with my routine Posts. I don’t want my enthusiasm for thoroughness and detail to discourage readers. So I will continue to publish the brief Posts regularly.

Brief-Form Post on Special Observations at Blevins Gap 

February 11, 2023, I co-led some 20 Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) hikers on the Certain Trail at the Land Trust of North Alabama’s Blevins Gap Nature Preserve.

We returned along the West Bluff Trail, enjoying the view to the southwest from the transmission line looking over south Huntsville..

I recorded this 2:48 video from the east side of the ridge as we reached our turn around point.

Nature’s Mysteries

I’ll highlight two of the unusual features I photographed. Prevailing winds rise ~800 feet from the valley floor, racing across the West Bluff Trail. A basic principle of physics, the Venturi effect, increases the rate of airflow around trees, which at their base scours the ground of accumulated leaf litter.

The Venturi effect describes how the velocity of a fluid (in this case, the air) increases as the cross-section of the container it flows in decreases.

Source: online Energy Education.

I remain always on the alert for tree form oddities and curiosities. This 15-inch diameter hickory presented a gaping mouth 90 degrees from the horizontal, like a giant snapping turtle clinging to the trunk, ready to thrust forward to nab a hiker! The oddity results from an old branch wound infected with bacterial, viral, or fungal agents spurring the tree to callous over the scar even as the infection decays from within.

Albert Einstein often pondered such mysteries (oddities and curiosities):

• The most beautiful gift of nature is that it gives one pleasure to look around and try to comprehend what we see. 

Inhale and absorb Nature’s elixir. May Nature Inspire, Inform, and Reward you!

NOTE: I place 3-5 short videos (15-seconds to three minutes) on my Steve Jones Great Blue Heron YouTube channel weekly. All relate to Nature-Inspired Life and Living. I encourage you to SUBSCRIBE! It’s FREE. Having more subscribers helps me spread my message of Informed and Responsible Earth Stewardship…locally and globally!

January 31, 2023 I visited Huntsville, Alabama’s Goldsmith-Schiffman Wildlife Sanctuary early afternoon following a night of steady rain. Saturated forest and field, streams and the Flint River running full, and deep overcast gave the Sanctuary an air of solemn spirituality. This Post offers observations, reflections, and photographs relevant to the lichens, mosses, and fungi I encountered.

Some people have no conception of the exquisite beauty, magic, wonder, and awe of the presumed lesser things of Nature, like lichens, fungi, and mosses. Aldo Leopold, mid-20th century conservationist extraordinaire, offered timeless wisdom, to which I turn often:

The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant, “What good is it?” If the land mechanism as a whole is good, then every part is good, whether we understand it or not. If the biota, in the course of aeons, has built something we like but do not understand, then who but a fool would discard seemingly useless parts? To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering.

Who would not be entranced by the pure beauty of a beech trunk, thoroughly wetted by the overnight stem flow, draped with moss and painted with crustose lichen?

Exquisite Mosses

Gray and dessicated in summer dry periods, the exquisite moss luxuriously carpeted both standing live and dead trees.

Life abounds across the seasons…and across every surface above ground. Mosses dominate bark surfaces generally from five feet down, where deep shade and more saturated air prevails in summer. Our native mosses flourish on mild winter days…as well as wet summer periods. I recall hiking the coastal rainforests of the Pacific Northwest and southeast Alaska, where thick moss drapes entire trees, enabled by constant moisture and cooler growing seasons.

The mosses of northern Alabama’s forests prefer elevated media, whether downed woody debris or boulders, rock ledges, or stumps. The leafy forest floor generally discourages moss, my assumption of cause being the rapid and continuous seasonal turnover of leaves and litter. Micro-organisms, insects, grubs, and other critters densely populate this biologically active re-incorporation zone. I believe the mosses prefer a more stable environment. Another factor may be that the decomposers and consumers in the litter find stationary mosses attempting to colonize forest litter quite digestible.

I recorded this 2:29 video to visit in real time with the mosses:

I could go on and on with moss-draped trunks, but I must bring the portfolio to closure. I call the trunk draperies as moss tree skirts. If you have a better term or scientifically accurate descriptor, please let me hear from you. Until then, I shall stick with moss tree skirts.

A final regal skirt carries a train that reaches onto the mineral soil apron surrounding the base.

Hallelujah to the magnificent moss draperies that adorn our north Alabama forests, especially in our moisture-enriched riparian hardwood forests!

Likin’ the Lichens!

Okay, I can’t resist playing with the word lichen. So many people have abused my predilection for proper English by observing that they are really likin’ this organism! Well, truth be told, I am the one most frequently abusing our language via deliberate puns and what I call grandpa humor. So, blame the corny subtitle on me. I do in fact like and appreciate the two horizontal lichen stripes on this yellow poplar along the Flint River.

Mosaics of unfathomable beauty…lichens and mosses patterned intricately on the wet bark of American beeches.

Author Bill Bryson observed this of lichens:

Consider the Lichen. Lichens are just about the hardiest visible organisms on Earth, but the least ambitious.

I deeply admire Bryson’s writing of outdoor adventures in our modern world. However, I can’t accept his lichen wisdom.

Online definition of ambition:

Having or showing a strong desire and determination to succeed

What organism so wildly successful at colonizing such inhospitable surfaces as bare rock and smooth vertical beech bark could be judged to be absent ambition? What does a lichen care about ambition? Unfailingly successful, lichens could conquer virtually any lifeless new surface exposed following a blistering wildfire or volcanic eruption. Who needs ambition when you can eke sustainable life from a seemingly sterile substrate?

Albert Einstein abhorred attributing such human tendencies as ambition to Nature:

I have never imputed to Nature a purpose or a goal, or anything that could be understood as anthropomorphic. What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism.

I think da Vinci would have commended lichens, having said:

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

Artistic simplicity–Nature’s purpose is not to please our eyes, yet she excels at lifting us with her beauty, magic, wonder, awe, and inspiration. I’m really likin’ these lichens…instruments encouraging human fulfillment.

A final frame that requires no weak and feeble narrative.

Lichens alone do not populate the surfaces of trees.

Fabulous Fungi

I knew the fungi during my undergraduate days as a subset of the plant kingdom. Shortly thereafter (perhaps the year I earned my forestry BS), those who ruled the life classification world awarded fungi a kingdom to call their own. I also learned fungi in courses on tree pathology. Consider Dutch elm disease, chestnut blight, Fomes annosus (root rot) of white pine, beech-bark disease, heart rot of living trees, and others too numerous to list. Fungi were pathogens for those of us learning how to maximize timber value from the forests we would manage. I opened my own eyes to a broader view beyond those days of restricted educational focus, restricting my look then at the perceived malevolent fungal agents of tree diseases. Don’t we all, mercifully, adopt a broader view of all dimensions of life…our own and the organisms sharing planet Earth with us!

Here is a sampling of the ubiquitous fungi hosted by dead and down woody debris. In contrast to the disease organisms, these benevolent fungi are saprophytes consuming dead cellulose and lignin. Hypoxylon canker of oak, a crust fungus commonly found on branches that have fallen to the forest floor, consumes only dead wood. I would have identified it as a lichen had not iNaturalist, backed by Mushrooms of the Gulf Coast States, declared its true identity. I remain a dedicated lifelong learner.

Crowded parchment fungus and brown-toothed crust fungus added color and diversity to the fungi I photographed. Such a rich kingdom of life occupying the forest floor, which even as it is fascinating is also easy to avoid our notice. I have learned to look, see, appreciate, and understand what most people either ignore or simply fail to look.

Jelly fungi are even harder to spot. However, to the wild edible mushroom enthusiast, our local amber jellies are a tasty treat…a culinary delight. I collected a handful in a plastic bag, enjoying them the next morning in a breakfast omelette. Don’t try this at home unless you are 100 percent certain of identity.

I remain a student of traditional forestry, still enamored by tall, fat commercial grade select hardwood species. Having been trained and weaned on timber production, I can’t help myself. However, I’ve grown far beyond the bounds of my original forestry (timber) focus, venturing into dimensions of forestry and natural resources management to encompass all of Nature’s beauty, magic, wonder, awe, and inspiration!

Thoughts and Reflections

I offer these observations:

• If the land mechanism as a whole is good, then every part is good, whether we understand it or not. Aldo Leopold
• Miracles of Nature lie everywhere in plain sight!
• Always a sucker for big, tall, straight trees, I’ve matured to appreciate the endless beauty, magic, wonder, and awe of lichens, mosses, and fungi.

Inhale and absorb Nature’s elixir. May Nature Inspire, Inform, and Reward you!

If only more of us viewed our precious environment through the filters I employ. If only my mission and vision could be multiplied untold orders of magnitude:

Steve’s Three Books

I wrote my books Nature Based Leadership (2016), Nature-Inspired Learning and Leading (2017), and Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits: Stories of Passion for Place and Everyday Nature (2019; co-authored with Dr. Jennifer Wilhoit) to encourage all citizens to recognize and appreciate that every lesson for living, learning, serving, and leading is either written indelibly in or is powerfully inspired by Nature.

I began writing books and Posts for several reasons:

• I love hiking and exploring in Nature
• I see images I want to (and do) capture with my trusty iPhone camera
• I enjoy explaining those images — an educator at heart
• I don’t play golf!
• I actually do love writing — it’s the hobby I never needed when my career consumed me
• Judy suggested my writing is in large measure my legacy to our two kids, our five grand kids, and all the unborn generations beyond
• And finally, perhaps my books and Blogs could reach beyond family and touch a few other lives… sow some seeds for the future

All three of my books (Nature Based Leadership; Nature-Inspired Learning and Leading; Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits) present compilations of personal experiences expressing my (and co-author Dr. Wilhoit for Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits) deep passion for Nature. All three books offer observations and reflections on my relationship to the natural world… and the broader implications for society. Order any and all from your local indie bookstore, or find them on IndieBound or other online sources such as Amazon and LifeRich.

February 11, 2023, I co-led some 20 Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) hikers on the Certain Trail at the Land Trust of North Alabama’s Blevins Gap Nature Preserve. The west flank of the Cumberland Plateau abuts Huntsville, Alabama, rising from the 800-foot city-occupied valley floor to 1600 feet at Monte Sano State Park just north of Blevins Gap. The Plateau, a physiographic region of generally flat sandstone and limestone sedimentary layers uniformly uplifted and now deeply eroded to what appears to be mountainous terrain, stretches far to the east into north Georgia. From Plateau overlooks at the Park and along Certain Trail, other ridge lines to the east are at the same elevation as the respective view-point. Such successive plateau summits describe an accordance of summits. The distant ridges (plateau tops) constitute the same sedimentary rock layer as where the viewer stands. The former continuing plateau from point to point has long since eroded over eons.

Gatherings

We gathered at the 1200-foot elevation trailhead for a group photo before ascending to the ridge at 1500 feet and heading south along the crest.

We anticipated cloudy skies with rain forecast to intrude by mid-afternoon, when we planned to have finished. Always keeping an eye to the heavens, not wary of impending foul weather but keeping alert for photo-worthy firmament, I spotted some unusual cumulus reaching into the overarching altostratus. Perhaps the odd clouds portended the coming torrents that were to drop 1.83-inches the coming evening and night.

Only some light rain fell as we returned to the parking lot.

Ascending Certain Trail

Limestone ledges provided a little variety as we climbed through the northeast facing slope. The direction a slope faces is termed the aspect, thus we ascended a northeast aspect. Here in north Alabama, as well as where I conducted my doctoral field research on soil/site productivity in northwest Pennsylvania and southwest New York, aspect is critically important in determining the quality or richness of a forest site. Aspects of north through east are the most productive. In contrast, south and west facing slopes are least productive. Differences are attributable to solar incidence, heat, and soil moisture…all interrelated. The net result of this discussion of aspect is that we ascended through a relatively vigorous stand of mixed hardwood.

Trees reached 90+ feet, some standing above 100 feet.

Ascending Certain Trail, we occasionally paused to rest or examine some facet of Nature.

We passed a large windthrown chestnut oak, whose roots had clung steadfastly to the soil when toppled. The resultant immense soil mound tells me that the tree was then very much alive. Trees that are standing dead do not bring up a soil mound when they fall. This tree is decaying. Already all but its larger branches are gone, incorporated into the soil. Its roots, too, have decayed into the mounded soil. In time, the trunk, too, will decay into duff and become one with the soil. At that point, the pit (where the roots and soil pulled from the ground) and mound (the soil pile) will remain, distinguishable as the very familiar hummock and hollow micro-topographic feature across our north Alabama forests.

Within 150 vertical feet of the ridgetop we encountered a spring emerging from the rocks, its slippery mud slowing our advance. Surfacing for only 30-40 feet of trail, the spring sank back below the surface.

We seniors marched steadily through the now upland forest. The fallen chestnut oak we earlier encountered was not the only stem succumbing to wind or mortality. The ground in this view is littered with dead and down woody debris. A dead hardwood separates the second and third hikers from the rear. Once again, I remind readers that life and death dance continuously in our north Alabama forests. The carbon cycle is never-ending.

Overlook

I neglected to capture a photo from the east-facing powerline overlook. I am forced instead to insert this view to the south, parallel to the ridge, that I snapped January 2021 when I hiked the same route. The February 11, 2023 view would have shown a more leaden sky as the system reached northward.

A few hundred feet beyond the transmission line, we turned around, choosing the parallel West Bluff Trail, which hugs the west rim of the narrow plateau summit. I recorded this 2:49 video at the turnaround.

From the west side of the power line overlook, the views below are to the WSW and W, respectively. Unlike the eastward view, the Cumberland Plateau does not extend westward ridge after ridge.

Rising from Huntsville into this western flank of the Cumberland Plateau reminds me of the central Appalachians where I grew up, departing for college and professional pursuits. My home town lay at the western extent of the Ridge and Valley Province of the ancient Appalachians and, somewhat ironically, at the east flank of the Allegheny Highlands, yet another eroded plateau.

Reveling in What Lay Hidden in Plain Sight

The summit at Blevins Gap, as well as summits across the Cumberland Plateau, consists of a very resistant sandstone cap. While we admired the limestone ledges as we ascended, sandstone lies exposed along the ridge. Lichens don’t seem to differentiate, finding purchase and sustenance on the barren surface of either.

The sandstone derived plateau top soils are less fertile than the slopes we climbed. Trees are shorter on top owing to a combination of exposure to wind, less fertile parent material, seasonal moisture deficits (no moisture draining down from land upslope), and a constant wind that redeposits leaf litter from west to east with the prevailing breezes.

Always enchanted by tree form oddities and curiosities, I photographed the unusual face on the hickory below left. An old branch stub is now growing layer after layer of woody tissue to callous over and partition the old wound and the decay fungus working within. The decay extends all the way to the ground (below right).

I often imagine a bit of fantasy when wandering our forests. I identified (I’m sure no one else paid notice or engaged in the same level of amusement) what I termed an oak tree portal, a two-inch diameter opening where a long ago branch died, decayed, and left an opening into what I thought might be another world…a kingdom of elves, fairies, and ogres residing in a separate dimension of time and space. Why else would a two-inch portal five feet above the ground, on the western flank of the Cumberland Plateau, be shrouded in moss and lichen?

Some would insist that this is an Indian marker tree, shaped by Native American scouts, pointing the way to some special landmark. However, Native Americans have not inhabited our region for 150 years. This stem is likely far less than 80-90 years old. As I’ve described in other Posts, a branch or top from a nearby tree bent and broke a small sapling long ago. The sapling sent a shoot upward from 18 inches beyond the gloved hand. Surely, this is a tree form curiosity, but not an Indian marker tree.

Another curiosity caught my eye. Many of the larger trees gave the impression of having had the leaves raked from around them. I don’t recall having seen this phenomenon before. We were standing at the west bluff, where the prevailing westerly winds lift up the west slope and across the ridge. I deduced that the explanation for the leaf-bare areas around the tree bases is the Venturi Effect. The Venturi effect is named after its discoverer, the 18th-century Italian physicist Giovanni Battista Venturi. In inviscid fluid dynamics, an incompressible fluid’s velocity must increase as it passes through a constriction in accord with the principle of mass continuity. (Wikipedia)

The wind (moving air…an incompressible fluid) must accelerate as it passes a constriction (the tree). The accelerated wind is strong enough (literally a natural leaf blower) to clear the fallen leaves.

I felt disappointment that I had fallen behind the other hikers and could not make the observation to the crew I was supposed to be co-leading. I suppose that’s the price I pay for photographing curiosities and recording videos.

Even a two-hour woods-stroll can reveal Nature’s beauty, magic, wonder, awe, and inspiration.

Thoughts and Reflections

I offer these observations:

• The young of all ages can enhance any forest venture with a dose of imagination and fancy.
• With eyes wide open, Nature enthusiasts can enjoy secrets hidden in plain sight.
• May Nature always Inspire, Inform, and Reward you!

Inhale and absorb Nature’s elixir. May Nature Inspire, Inform, and Reward you!

If only more of us viewed our precious environment through the filters I employ. If only my mission and vision could be multiplied untold orders of magnitude:

Steve’s Three Books

I wrote my books Nature Based Leadership (2016), Nature-Inspired Learning and Leading (2017), and Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits: Stories of Passion for Place and Everyday Nature (2019; co-authored with Dr. Jennifer Wilhoit) to encourage all citizens to recognize and appreciate that every lesson for living, learning, serving, and leading is either written indelibly in or is powerfully inspired by Nature.

I began writing books and Posts for several reasons:

• I love hiking and exploring in Nature
• I see images I want to (and do) capture with my trusty iPhone camera
• I enjoy explaining those images — an educator at heart
• I don’t play golf!
• I actually do love writing — it’s the hobby I never needed when my career consumed me
• Judy suggested my writing is in large measure my legacy to our two kids, our five grand kids, and all the unborn generations beyond
• And finally, perhaps my books and Blogs could reach beyond family and touch a few other lives… sow some seeds for the future

All three of my books (Nature Based Leadership; Nature-Inspired Learning and Leading; Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits) present compilations of personal experiences expressing my (and co-author Dr. Wilhoit for Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits) deep passion for Nature. All three books offer observations and reflections on my relationship to the natural world… and the broader implications for society. Order any and all from your local indie bookstore, or find them on IndieBound or other online sources such as Amazon and LifeRich.