October 15, 2022, I spent the afternoon (and the following morning) visiting Auburn University’s Solon Dixon Forestry Education Center, where I had last been in 1984 when I served as Alabama Land Manager for Union Camp Corporation. My visit served as a celebratory reunion. Rhett Johnson, who hosted my 1984 tour and served as Solon […]
I revisited Hays Nature Preserve November 3, 2022, with Joel Donelan, Director of Education for Huntsville, Alabama’s Green Team. We focused our hike from the Flint River picnic area looping along an old slough then circling back to the parking lot. This photo-essay offers observations, reflections, and photo-highlights from a delightful autumn morning in a […]
Nothing beats a sunrise along water. Staying overnight October 19, 2022 at the Joe Wheeler State Park Lodge near Rogersville, Alabama, I walked to lakeside at the next day’s dawn. A chilly fall morning rewarded me with a full dose of lake mist and brightening sky inspiration…the alchemy of fog wisps, first light, bordering trees, […]
October 8, 2022, I co-led an OLLI (Osher Lifelong Learning Institute; University of Alabama at Huntsville) hike along the Flint Creek Trail, Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge near Decatur, Alabama. The day proved picture perfect with brilliant blue sky and unseasonably chilly. I enjoy leading these hikes; our OLLI members are mostly retirees, eager to learn […]
This post offers 44 minutes of sunrise inspiration at Alabama’s Lakepoint State Park and Eufaula National Wildlife Refuge October 15, 2022. An equinox stroke eliminated my planned March 2022 trip to Lakepoint State Park for a quarterly Alabama State Parks Foundation Board meeting. I vowed to visit the Park once I recovered and summer had […]
In concert with my October exploration of Alabama’s Lakepoint State Park and the Eufaula National Wildlife Refuge, I slipped over to Georgia’s Providence Canyon State Park October 14, 2022. I found a paradoxically attractive consequence of man’s irresponsible and poorly informed treatment of fragile soils for crop production. Scarred by agriculture in the mid-19th century, […]
October 2022 I enjoyed my first visit to Alabama’s Lakepoint State Park near Eufaula. I found the Park’s forests and Lake Eufaula shoreline delightful, rich with Nature’s beauty, magic, wonder, and awe. See my focus on the Park’s managed loblolly pine forest, intersected with pleasant trails. A Park and a Refuge An equinox stroke eliminated […]
Wednesday afternoon August 24, 2022, fellow mushroom forager Dr. Bernie Kerecki (MD) and I bushwhacked through a riparian hardwood forest just north of the Tennessee River in Madison, Alabama. We stayed alert for chanterelles, oysters, chicken of the woods, hen of the woods, black-staining polypores, cauliflower mushrooms, wood ear jelly, and lions mane, all of […]
John Muir aptly observed, In every walk with Nature one receives far more than he seeks. So, too, every time I explore a new (for me) north Alabama natural area I receive far more than I seek. Chris Stuhlinger, a fellow retired forester, and I co-lead a series of monthly hikes for the Osher Lifelong […]
July 9, 2022, the State Champion shingle oak at Joe Wheeler State Park succumbed to the forces of age, decay, and gravity…gently in its sleep. This Post serves as a reflective obituary and memorial. Nothing in Nature is static. Permanent is a human construct. Across my career I’ve held several interim or acting positions, wherein […]