Brief Form Post #43 — January Afternoon Saunter along the Beaverdam Creek Boardwalk
Brief-Form Post #43
I am pleased to add the 43rd of my GBH Brief-Form Posts (Less than five minutes to read!) to my website. I get wordy 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.
On January 17, 2025, fellow retired forester Chris Stuhlinger and I visited Beaverdam Creek Boardwalk, a National Natural Landmark at Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge near Huntsville, Alabama. Accept this Post as a visual photo essay, rich with dormant season imagery and light on science-based interpretation. Take a relaxing saunter through the forest with us. Flow with our boardwalk pace; view our stroll as a forest bathing. I offer this brief-form post with 16 photos and five less-than-one-minute videos, keeping my narrative intentionally abbreviated.
The tupelo stand pulls us in…and up!
I recorded this 58-second video tour among crowded stems, slanted sunrays, and mesmerizing crowns.
The boardwalk ends at Beaverdam Creek flowing toward Limestone Bay and Lake Wheeler.
I never tire of the endless reflections afforded the patient viewer and the soulful thinker. The placid water surficial images reward me visually and fill me with spiritual and emotional fuel.
I recorded this 58-second video of sunshine filling the tupelo forest.
Some tree seeds (like maple) are wind-blown. Oak trees rely upon squirrels for seed dispersal. Birds scatter cherry seeds. Tupelo seeds lie thick on the forest floor, awaiting winter rains filling the swamp to lift them into floating mats, transporting them downstream.
I recorded this 58-second video of Beaverdam Creek at the boardwalk’s terminus.
Leonardo da Vinci recognized the true Nature of water 500 years ago:
Water is the driving force of all nature.
Tree Oddities and Curioisities
Persimmon trees occupy a wide range of site types, from well-drained uplands to the bottomland forests adjacent to the tupelo swamp. Their dark blocky bark, complemented by the regimented horizontal yellow-bellied sapsucker drill holes, fascinates me, pleasing my eyes and warming my heart. Visual delicacy made all the more sweet by fall persimmon fruit suitable for all manner of wildlife as well as human wanderers.
Shouting a subtle do-not-touch alert, this thick mane of poison ivy air roots suffices even absent the “shiny leaves of three” growing season warning.
The ancient tupelo trees populating the swamp are declining, decay advancing at pace (perhaps faster) than the annual rate of stem diameter increment. Life and death spar, advance, and retreat in our north Alabama forests. This magnificent tupelo forest will one day yield to the inevitable undefeated forces of Nature.
However, there will be no end…only a new beginning…a cycle without completion.
Fungal Friends
Decay and decomposition carry the burden of cleanup, recycling organic matter from carbon residue to the stuff of new life. Stinking orange oyster fungus is just one species of fungus performing the forest floor heavy lifting!
This 47-second video captures its magic.
I can’t resist more photos of stinking oyster mushrooms, its moniker worthy of repeated exposure.
These standard white/pearl oyster mushrooms are one of my culinary favorites. Collection of any sort within the protected National Natural Landmark is prohibited. Taking photos is permissible!
Here is my 23-second video of the edible oyster mushrooms.
The towering tupelo trees throughout our forests, the hollowing aging trunks, the seed mats, and the vibrant decomposing fungi remind us that life and death are at play
Closing
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. A single trek along a forested trail discloses only a brief moment in time, obscuring the decades prior and the future ahead, isolating us from the scope and scale of the grand forest cycle of life. Henry David Thoreau captured the sentiment I felt as we explored the Wonder of decay and renewal:
Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.
