Introducing Nature’s Richness to Residents of Wellpoint Assisted Living

May 7, 2020 I led a Facebook Live virtual tour along Big Cove Creek Greenway just north of Hays Preserve. Residences at Wellpoint, a new assisted living community just a mile from where I led the tour, produced the video.

My personal goal includes reaching out to multiple audiences… from K-12 across the lifespan to senior citizens, who like Wellpoint residents, wish to experience life fully well into retirement. My dedicated retirement mission: Employ writing and speaking to educate, inspire, and enable readers and listeners to understand, appreciate, and enjoy Nature… and accept and practice Earth Stewardship.

I am ever-more convinced that Nature is an essential variable in the equation for living meaningfully into the liberating stage of life called retirement. I speak from personal experience!

Please watch the 20-minute video: https://www.facebook.com/residencesatwellpoint/videos/1731492206989805/

Just a Sampling of What We Viewed

 

I strolled just 250 feet along the greenway during our 20 minutes, pointing out well over 25 plant species, many of them in flower. Without elaboration, below is a modest sampling.

Virginia pepperweed (Lepidium virginicum) and Philadelphia fleabane (Erigeron philadelphicus).

 

Floating primrose-willow (Ludwigia peploides) and Red Clover (Trifolium pratense).

 

Hop Trefoil (Trifolium campestre) and butterweed (Packera glabella).

 

Field madder (Sherardia arvensis).

 

Mimosa (Albizia julibrissin), an Asian import, and Japanese honeysuckle (Lonicera japonica).

 

Nature is amazing… and amazingly accessible. I found all this rich beauty, magic, wonder, and awe along a tiny segment of a paved greenway just a short van ride from an assisted living community. The campus will eventually house nearly 200 senior residents seeking some level of immersion in Nature. What a great audience to engage and involve in my Earth Stewardship venture.

Thoughts and Reflections

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. All three are available on Amazon and other online sources.

Here are the three succinct truths I draw from this Blog Post:

1. Each venture into Nature opens my eyes ever more keenly to discovering her secrets
2. Nature is an essential variable in the equation for living meaningfully into the liberating stage of life called retirement.
3. Nature hides richness within plain sight

Inhale and absorb Nature’s elixir. May Nature Inspire, Reward, and Heal 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:

Mission: Employ writing and speaking to educate, inspire, and enable readers and listeners to understand, appreciate, and enjoy Nature… and accept and practice Earth Stewardship.

Vision:

• People of all ages will pay greater attention to and engage more regularly with Nature… and will accept and practice informed and responsible Earth Stewardship.
• They will see their relationship to our natural world with new eyes… and will understand more clearly their Earth home.

Tagline/Motto: Steve (Great Blue Heron) encourages and seeks a better tomorrow through Nature-Inspired Living!

 

Steve’s Three Books

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 others 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.