Celebrating Vitamin ‘N’: Little Mountain Annual Learning Showcase at Monte Sano State Park!

A Board Member of the Little Mountain Forest School in Huntsville, Alabama, I attended the school’s Annual Learning Showcase on Sunday afternoon, April 19, 2026, at Monte Sano State Park, where 60 students are enrolled and attend classes in the outdoor forest classroom. Come along with me as I reflect on the forest school concept, its philosophy, and the pioneering thinkers and practitioners who promote it. If you want to learn more about LMFS, visit the website: https://www.littlemountainforestschool.org/

A massive chestnut oak framed the plateau-top pavilion, gathering site for the showcase.

An American giant millipede welcomed my wife and me as we exited our car. Just one of many creature teachers who share their woodland classroom.

The Biker’s Pavilion at Monte Sano is ideal for hosting a Little Mountain Forest School event, launching a hike down the Sinks Trail to the forest haven I dub The CathedralForest, or for resting a few minutes after a vigorous woodland saunter.

LMFS participants connect to the land, its essential richness, and the stories it lives and relates.

“Here is the Earth; here is the sky,

Here are my friends, and here am I.

We explore with our hearts.

Learning together on Cherokee lands.”

I am a lifelong student of weather, climate, atmospheric physics,and the dynamic envelope of atmosphere that surrounds, protects, and sustains us. I’ve been keeping weather records since elementary school. Sunny skies, persisten rain, wild thunderstorms, or wind-driven snow, I loved every dimension, mood, or effect. I embraced the science and artistry of understanding, appreciating, and relishing weather and its interplay with Place, Life, and Nature. As my life and career tracked along a forestry vector, wonderful weather trekked along every step of my incredible journey. If only a single LMFS enrollee catches a mere germ of my deep weather fascination and incurable addiction, my investment serving on the LMFS Board is amply rewarded.

I neglected to photograph the scientific rain gauge that staff recently placed near the outdoor classroom. It’s the real thing. I still recall with memory-giddiness many years ago when Mom gifted young me a rain gauuge. A high quality scientific instrument? Through today’s lens it was cheap plastic, but to very young Steve…priceless! And now, to very old Steve, tears are suddenly blearing the keyboard, as I realize the momentous impact left by thoughtful, caring, and knowing educators, including parents.

I recorded this 52-second video to capture the mood and moment of the Learning Showcase.

Students designed and fashioned the festive classroom entryway.

I sub-titled my third book, Stories of Passion for Place and Everyday Nature. This sign speaks volumes of this Special Place…Thank You for Respecting Our Space!

And, what a very SPECIAL Land Acknowledgement!

John Muir would have appreciated the LMFS classroom.

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where Nature may heal and cheer and give strength to body and soul alike.

Such a great place to hide and abide…and not a molecule of plastic or a line of digital code! Richard Louv observed:

Nature is imperfectly perfect, filled with loose parts and possibilities, with mud and dust, nettles and sky, transcendent hands-on moments and skinned knees.

I see limitless beauty, magic, wonder, awe, and inspiration in the mundane and common of everyday Nature.

My former Antioch University New England colleague David Sobel remarked,

You can’t bounce off the walls If there are no walls: outdoor schools make kids happier—and smarter.

Signs proclain Belonging and Grateful (left) and Creative (right).

Mindfulness and Resilience (left) and Kindness, Reciprocity, and Empathy (right).

An artists’ workbench keeps essentials (soil, dirt, water, measuring flasks, buckets…) at the ready. No need to worry about messing up the floor!

This is an all-weather classroom for more than sixty kids. Richard Louv heralded a movement:

Humans are hard-wired to love and need exposure to the natural world. Researchers have found that regardless of culture people gravitate to images of nature, especially the savannah. Our inborn affiliation for nature may explain why we prefer to live in houses with particular views of the natural world.

Just beyond the woods at left, an overlook provides a vista to the E/NE into a valley 800 feet below the Monte Sano plateau summit. A youngster in the frameat right chooses to gain another three feet!

I recorded a 60-second video sweeping through the forest.

I would have loved learning in such an outdoor setting!

Alabama State Parks Foundation

Thoughts and Reflections

I offer these observations:

• You can’t bounce off the walls If there are no walls: outdoor schools make kids happier—and smarter. (David Sobel)
• Nature is imperfectly perfect, filled with loose parts and possibilities, with mud and dust, nettles and sky, transcendent hands-on moments and skinned knees. (Richard Louv)
• Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where Nature may heal and cheer and give strength to body and soul alike. (John Muir)

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 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

I was just six days past left shoulder replacement revision surgey when Judy drove us to the the LMFS Annual Learning Showcase.