Brief-Form Post #26: Beaver Dam Serenity at Goldsmith-Schiffman Wildlife Sanctuary!
I am pleased to add the 26th of my GBH Brief Form Posts (Less than three minutes to read!) to my website. 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 publish these brief Posts regularly.
Brief-Form Post on my November 14, 2023, Visit to the Beaver Dam along Hidden Spring Creek at Huntsville’s Goldsmith-Schiffman Wildlife Sanctuary!
I visited Huntsville, Alabama’s Goldsmith-Schiffman Wildlife Sanctuary on November 14, 2023, with Dr. Marian Moore Lewis, author of Southern Sanctuary. We paused for a few minutes to enjoy the sights and sounds at the beaver dam along Hidden Spring Creek at the iron and concrete bridge just downstream of Jobala Pond. I focus this photo essay on the beaver dam.
I learned long ago that there is grandeur in Nature’s seemingly small wonders and that many items of Nature’s magic lie hidden in plain sight.
Here is the 0:34 video I recorded at 10:32 AM.
Still photographs capture single elements of Nature’s beauty, magic, wonder, and awe. Yet even as a picture is worth a thousands words, a video may exceed the power of a photo by the same magnitude. A thousand is to one as a million is to a thousand. I will continue to supplement my photo essays with short videos!
Amazingly, observers had recorded only one and one-half inches of rain over the prior nine weeks, yet Hidden Spring Creek seemed to carry a normal late summer flow. That evidence suggests that a rich and ample aquifer supplies Hidden Spring and its outflow creek.
Had I not chosen to visit the Sanctuary during the trailing end of an extended drought I would not have appreciated how robust Hidden Spring is.
I cherish the special Nature of the entire Sanctuary…and I anticipate tossing a bag chair over my shoulder so that I can sit quietly at the beaver dam, luxuriating in its gurgling, observing bird and other life nearby, and watching clouds and shadows slip across the cerulean firmament.
I accept the challenge of distilling these Brief-Form Posts into a single distinct reflection, a task far more elusive than assembling a dozen pithy statements. Today, I borrow a relevant reflection from John Muir, one of the truly great minds of conservation and environmental antiquity:
- A river is water in its loveliest form; rivers have life and sound and movement and infinity of variation, rivers are veins of the earth through which the lifeblood returns to the heart.
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!
Nature-Inspired Life and Living; Nature-Buoyed Aging and healing!
