Entries by Steve Jones

Rainbow Mountain Loop–Refuting the 55-Year Claim of a Static Forest!

I intended this to be one of my brief-form posts, but I recorded too many short videos to meet my less-than-five-minutes-to-read criterion! A colleague interested in our northern Alabama human and natural history recently observed that the forests on Madison, Alabama’s Rainbow Mountain Nature Preserve have not changed over the 55 years he has visited […]

Intergenerational Spring Saunter at Alabama’s Monte Sano State Park!

Alabama grandsons Jack (17 years) and Sam (11) accompanied me on April 19, 2025, as we traversed the Sinks and Wells Memorial Trails at Alabama’s Monte Sano State Park near Huntsville. Seven months beyond my second total knee replacement surgery and 21 months since my triple bypass, there’s little I will not attempt on local […]

March Coming in Like a Lamb at AL’s Lake Guntersville State Park!

I embrace every chance I have to explore a new trail and to experience the shifting seasonal woodland tides of northern Alabama…or wherever my roamings take me. Compelled to attend the February 28, 2025, dinner affair of the Annual Environmental Education Association of Alabama (EEAA) meeting at Lake Guntersville State Park, I arrived early enough […]

Bottomland Tree Oddities on the Goldsmith-Schiffman Wildlife Sanctuary!

On February 15, 2024, fellow retired forester Chris Stuhlinger and I sauntered through the eastside bottomland hardwood forest at Huntsville, Alabama’s Goldsmith-Schiffman Wildlife Sanctuary. Heavy flooding two days earlier submerged the forest in overflow from the adjacent Flint River. We decided to see whether the river had fallen back within its banks…it had, yet it […]