Daughter Katy, her two boys (Jack, 9 and Sam, 3), Judy, and I headed over to Rock City near Chattanooga about dawn March 17. Sure, I had seen the promotional barns, bird houses, and bumper stickers most of my life: See Rock City! This was my first visit. Katy and Jack had been a few […]
March 7, 2017 Along Alabama State Route 69, from Jasper south to near Northport, forests dominate the landscape. We navigated rolling hills, long-abandoned, worn out and eroded, former agricultural land. Frequent vistas afford great views of the mixed pine/hardwood forests across local relief of a couple hundred feet vertical. Some of the timberlands appear intensively […]
As CEO, Great Blue Heron, LLC (stevejonesgbh.com), I am a founding Advisory Council Member, Edu-Alliance North America. Edu-Alliance Co-Founder Dean Hoke posted that the “Council just completed our first Member Retreat in Orlando. Thanks to Kenneth Salomon, Judyth Wier, Jay Noren, Steve Jones, Roger Brown, Allen Meadors, and Nancy Kathryn Hoke. Outstanding ideas & participation […]
A moisture-rich SSW feed from the Gulf of Mexico and an embedded disturbance delivered 1.2 inches from late morning through early afternoon today. Tropical showers with rumbles of thunder entertained us from time to time. Our lake is now at full pool, a good three to four feet higher than the disturbingly low level that […]
I’m pleased that our local library, the Madison Branch of the Huntsville-Madison County Public Library (https://hmcpl.org/branches/madison), will be hosting me for a book signing March 26, 2-3:00 PM. This will be my first book signing. I’ll speak for 15-20 minutes, allowing plenty of time for questions and discussion. Book Description Nature Based Leadership inspires, illuminates, […]
February 15, we returned to nearby Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge. Some three weeks had passed since our last trip. From mid-December through late January, visits rewarded us with thousands of sandhill cranes — feeding, dancing, cavorting, rattling, and bugling across the flats near the observation center. The center’s external microphones captured their cacophonous joy; speakers […]
This past Sunday, my nine-year-old grandson (Jack) and I visited a nearby nature preserve, our first visit to this location. Most of us conjure an image of raw, unblemished wilderness with the term “preserve.” Not so this Harvest Square Nature Preserve, an approximately 70-acre parcel donated by the developer of an adjacent commercial property. The […]
Our Alabama home sits in a development on a four-acre lake/pond. I say lake/pond because were we in Minnesota (Land of Ten Thousand Lakes) or Alaska (its number is two million!), ours would unquestionably be a pond. Quite frankly, I prefer the image, character, and significance that the term lake conveys. The Infoplease web site […]
Big Blue, the great blue heron that is resident to our small lake here in northern Alabama, is spending more and more time with us. Our home sits 50 feet above water level on the north shore. Our shore-line vegetation includes three willow clumps, which I have lopped to eight feet — that’s as far […]
Judy and I walked pre-dawn this morning. We often see Big Blue standing knee-deep at the neck that reaches north to near the road just east of our home. Illuminated by the street lamp, he stood there once more. I suppose we appeared too suddenly — he spooked to the south, quickly disappearing into the […]