At the Cross Section of Nature and Holiday Festivity

I know the date is January 31, 2025! Thirty-six days after Christmas. Why am I posting a Christmas-themed Great Blue Heron photo essay?

• I published a full essay earlier this week focussed around a typical Nature-Inspired Life and Living theme.
• This essay has a mood that I want to persist year-round.
• Although this one presents 17 photos and three videos, it has little prose and is a quick read.

On November 16, 2024, Judy and I accompanied our daughter and her family on the Huntsville Botanical Gardens’ walking tour of the Annual Holiday Festival of the Lights. I did not anticipate that the evening would inspire one of my Great Blue Heron photo essays. Lo and behold, the Spirit of Christmas, the magic of lights, music, and Nature, and the emotion of being with family stimulated me to capture the overwhelming sense of Nature-Inspired Life and Living.

The photos and videos stand alone with little need for my prose. Just three months beyond the fifth of five surgeries since July of 2023, I felt deep seasonal gratitude for life, mobility, family, and healing. Evening darkness shielded my misty eyes from passersby!

 

I will not burden you with botanical narrative. These crepe myrtles glow with underlighting.

 

My 23-second video only feebly captures the moment.

 

My compliments to the spectacle along the walkways.

 

This 49-second video gives you an idea, even if not complete, of the beauty, magic, wonder, and awe.

 

My essay would not be complete without glimpses of our family.

 

Oakleaf hydrangea is my favorite native woodland shrub. Add a bit of red lighting and the foliage leaps from the dark understory.

 

A forester by training and experience, I wanted to levitate into the canopy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I marveled at the creativity and effort necessary to brighten entire trees!

 

Such an enchanted forest!

 

As the story on my Great Blue Heron website makes clear, the magestic bird is my deceased Dad’s avatar…his totem. Great blue herons frequently visit our neighborhood pond. Our home sits on the north shore. Dad visits often in form of this magnificent gangly bird.  These two heron images place an exclamation ending to this brief post.

 

The magic and wonder of this special Holiday-infused evening at the nexus of Nature and Christian Celebration will inspire me for all of my days. NC State University national basketball champion coach Jim Valvanao, on the speaking circuit after diagnosed with terminal incurable cancer, encouraged audiences to incorporate three necessary daily elements to assure a life well lived:

To me there are three things everyone should do every day. Number one is laugh. Number two is think — spend some time in thought. Number three, you should have your emotions move you to tears. If you laugh, think and cry, that’s a heck of a day.

The Festival of the Lights walk encouraged me to laugh with family, stimulated me to think about the blessings of recovering from multiple surgeries, and brought me to tears of relief for my good fortune, returning health, and precious family.

Thoughts and Reflections

 

I offer these observations:

• The magic and wonder of this special Holiday-infused evening at the nexus of Nature and Christian Celebration will inspire me for all of my days.
• To me there are three things everyone should do every day. Number one is laugh. Number two is think — spend some time in thought. Number three, you should have your emotions move you to tears. If you laugh, think and cry, that’s a heck of a day. (Coach Jim Valvano)

 

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 by 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 understand their Earth home more clearly.

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

 

Steve’s Four Books

 

I wrote my books Nature Based Leadership (2016), Nature-Inspired Learning and Leading (2017), Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits: Stories of Passion for Place and Everyday Nature (2019; co-authored with Dr. Jennifer Wilhoit), and Dutton Land & Cattle: A Land Legacy Story (2023) 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 four of my books present compilations of personal experiences expressing my deep passion for Nature. All four books offer observations and reflections on my relationship with the natural world… and the broader implications for society. Order any from your local indie bookstore, or find them on IndieBound or other online sources such as Amazon and LifeRich.

I began writing books and Posts for several reasons:

• I love hiking and exploring 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 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 grandkids, 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