Nature Revelations at the Jack Daniel’s Distillery in Lynchburg, TN

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December 30, 2021, Judy and I visited the Jack Daniel’s Distillery in Lynchburg, Tennessee. We did not anticipate the Nature-based lessons, revelations, and inspiration associated with distilling this golden elixir. Because the internet is flush with the story of this world famous distillery, I offer only that Jasper Newton “Jack” Daniel founded the Jack Daniel’s Distillery in 1866 in his hometown of Lynchburg, Tennessee, where it still operates. His Old No. 7 earned a gold medal at the 1904 World’s Fair.

Owing to serendipity and fortuity, Mr. Daniel chose a perfect birthplace for a would-be distiller. The region is underlain by limestone, which ensures that its waters are limestone-filtered, perfect for making whiskey. The limestone filtering removes iron, yielding a sweeter tasting mineral water. An article in Kentucky Bourbon Country states, Whiskey made from water containing iron would turn black, which is absolutely unappealing. As you will see later, the region is also blessed with forests stocked with two tree species essential to the Jack Daniel’s recipe: white oak and sugar maple.

 

Streamside Location

 

A stream flows in front of the distillery visitors center, supplying ample water for essential tasks (cleaning and washing; not distilling) associated with the primary distilling process.

 

The stream also provides an aesthetic appeal and setting worthy of an international tourist destination. The primary pedestrian entrance crosses the waterway on a suitably attractive bridge.

 

The upstream view (left) and downstream perspective reward the visitor with a touch of Nature demanding a stop on the bridge to absorb the magic of the place.

 

Although I did not see direct evidence, I am certain that legal professionals at the distillery demanded placing this warning to absolve the company of any visitors devoid of common sense foolishly venturing too close to the flowing water, which on the day we visited stood at bankful from recent heavy rains. However, note in the expanded view that the sign does not caution about the risks of falling into the water to be swept away and drowned. Einstein observed an underlying truth respecting those who may venture too close to the slippery banks:

The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.

I suppose we might next see McDonald’s placing warnings on coffee cups about the liquid within being hot! No, wait a minute, that’s been in place for a decade or more.

Pardon my interupting this Post with a personal awareness and responsibility side-rant.

Source of Pure Water

The surface stream is a supplemental attraction to the real water star — the sweet-water, limestone-filtered aqua that originates from a cave central to the JD Distillery site. The flow is reliable year-round. Lynchburg, Tennessee receives an average annual rainfall of 57 inches, evenly distributed across the seasons.

 

I find nothing any more remarkable in Nature than fresh springwater rising from the ground, sheltered by natural limestone walls on three sides, creating a welcoming mossy canyon, filled with the pleasant sound of gurgling release.

 

I see the winter landscape, enjoy the sense of life beginning, and imagine the comfort and coolness within on a mid-summer afternoon.

 

I relished experiencing the stream and the springhead.

Distillery Fungus

I had envisioned before our visit that we would find a stream and a spring. What I did not anticipate was a black fungus covering vegetation, rocks, and material infrastructure throughout the distillery proper and its grounds.

From the Indiana State Department of Health online:

What is Baudoinia compniacensis?

Baudoinia compniacensis, also known as Distillery Fungus, Whiskey Fungus, and Warehouse Staining Fungus, is a black fungus that is velvety or crust-like and can reach 1-2 cm in thickness. While it is black in color, this is not Stachybotrys, often referred to as black mold.

Where is Baudoinia compniacensis found?

Baudoinia compniacensis is found throughout North America, Europe, and Asia. It has the ability to withstand a large range of temperatures but requires high relative humidity and periodic rain. The fungus can grow on a variety of surfaces, including plants, brick, metal, stainless steel, concrete, and plastic.

The fungus thrives in places where fermentation occurs, such as bakeries and bogs. Distilleries for whiskey, scotch, vodka, brandy, and rum are affected by the fungus too because ethanol is off-gassed in the making of distilled spirits. Baudoinia compniacensis uses the ethanolic vapor to initiate germination and to express proteins in the fungus that allow the fungus to tolerate high temperatures. The fungus can be found at other places where ethanol can off-gas into the environment uncontrolled, including bakeries and bonded warehouses.

Are there human and animal health risks from Baudoinia compniacensis?

Research conducted by ISDH Environmental Public Health Division did not find any reports of
health risks from short or long term exposure to Baudoinia compniacensis.

That off-gassing occurs during the open-tank distilling process is not surprising. However, another important question might be: Why do the supposedly liquid-tight casks leak? The oak barrels are not equivalent to stainless steel vessels. The seams are solid, yet not without some slight permeability…enough for some molecules to escape, especially during the multi-year aging process in warehouses. Huge Star Wars size warehouse cluster dot the countryside around Lynchburg. They, too, are blackened, giving a cold stark, otherworldly feel to the sites.

The casks would leak beyond tolerable were it not for the God-given characteristic of the white oak tree group. The white oak group’s wood pores and vessels clog with tyloses once the tree grows new conductive rings. That is, only the relatively recent rings transport water and nutrients up from the roots and sugars and carbohydrates down from the summer crowns to the roots. The tyloses block the transport mechanism, assuring relative impermeability. Oaks in the red oak group have open vessels from bark to the tree’s core.

So, white oak is essential, whether the distillery is producing whiskey, bourbon, or Scotch. I learned also, that the JD process requires charcoal made from sugar maple to filter JD whiskey during the fermentation step. I won’t attempt to explain the special taste and fragrance imparted by the sugar maple charcoal.

The combination of oak barrel aging and sugar maple charcoal filtration imbue JD with its unique taste and coloration, valued world-wide. I knew in advance that white oak was the species required for the casks, just as it is for wooden ships. I was not aware of the requirement for sugar maple charcoal.

Near the spring stand the blackened trunks of hackberry (left) and sugar maple, trees that aside from the coating seem healthy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our tour guide told us that the distillery fungus aided revenuers during prohibition in locating stills. Blackened tree trunks told the tale and revealed the location. These boxelders, along a walkway outside a building housing mix tanks, are likewise blackened.

 

As are these ornamental hollies. The holly foliage is yellowed (chlorotic) and obviously suffering from the thick coating.

 

The black distillery buildings appear to be from a dystopian world arising after armegeddon! I felt like I was on the set of some disaster movie…until I reminded myself that this was nature at play.

 

The loss of ethanol from out-gassing (ethanolic vapors), apparently an unavoidable result of distilling and aging, is referred to as the angels’ share. I am hopeful that JD or some other distilled libation is, in fact, available when we reach the angel stage of our existence!

 

Holiday Spirits

 

Our visit between Christmas and New Year’s coincided with the time of Holiday Spirit, in form here of a festive tree of JD casks.

 

The antique JD delivery truck transported loads of Seasonal Spirits. The same cargo for the later model (right).

 

 

 

 

 

According to our guide, because Lynchburg is in a dry county, the distillery store sells souvenir JD bottles that just happen to be filled with the various JD products. I purchased several of the souvenir bottles, from which I have been occasionally sipping.

 

So much of what sustains and rewards us results from our wide partnership with Nature, whether agricultural production, energy generation, or seafood harvesting. We are often reminded that we are one with Nature. The JD Distillery tour opened my eyes to how inextricably we are linked with the natural world. I had not anticipated that my tour would result in a Post communicating another tale of Nature-Inspired Life and Living.

I’ll close with a few apt quotations from notable persons, from Abe Lincoln to Johnny Carson, all with an abiding affection for liquid sunshine:

Mark Twain:

Too much of anything is bad, but too much of good whiskey is barely enough.

It was a place of sin, loose women, whiskey and gambling. It was no place for a good Presbyterian, and I did not long remain one.

Winston Churchhill:

The water was not fit to drink. To make it palatable, we had to add whisky. By diligent effort, I learned to like it.

Johnny Carson:

Happiness is having a rare steak, a bottle of whisky, and a dog to eat the rare steak.

Abraham Lincoln:

Tell me what brand of whiskey that Grant drinks. I would like to send a barrel of it to my other generals.

George Bernard Shaw:

Whisky is liquid sunshine.

W.C.Fields:

Drown in a cold vat of whiskey? Death, where is thy sting?

I wonder whether any of these gentlemen thought about the Nature of whiskey?

Thoughts and Reflections

 

I offer these observations:

  • I had not anticipated the Nature-based lessons, revelations, and inspiration associated with distilling this golden elixir.
  • Understanding Nature spirited me to see and learn far more than most visitors.
  • Knowing the Nature (and science) of whiskey distilling amplified my appreciation of the finished product!

Inhale and absorb Nature’s elixir. May Nature Inspire, Inform, and Reward you!

 

Note: All blog post images created & photographed by Stephen B. Jones unless otherwise noted. Please circulate images with photo credit: “©2022 Steve Jones, Great Blue Heron LLC. All Rights Reserved.”

Another Note: If you came to this post via a Facebook posting or by an another route, please sign up now (no cost… no obligation) to receive my Blog Post email alerts: http://eepurl.com/cKLJdL

And a Third: I am available for Nature-Inspired Speaking, Writing, and Consulting — contact me at steve.jones.0524@gmail.com

 

Reminder of my Personal and Professional Purpose, Passion, and Cause

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:

Mission: Employ writing and speaking to educate, inspire, and enable readers and listeners to understand, appreciate, and enjoy Nature… and accept and practice Earth Stewardship.

Vision:

  • People of all ages will pay greater attention to and engage more regularly with Nature… and will accept and practice informed and responsible Earth Stewardship.
  • They will see their relationship to our natural world with new eyes… and will understand more clearly their Earth home.

Tagline/Motto: Steve (Great Blue Heron) encourages and seeks a better tomorrow through Nature-Inspired Living!

 

Steve’s Three Books

I wrote my books Nature Based Leadership (2016), Nature-Inspired Learning and Leading (2017), and Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits: Stories of Passion for Place and Everyday Nature (2019; co-authored with Dr. Jennifer Wilhoit) 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.

I began writing books and Posts for several reasons:

  • I love hiking and exploring in 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 actually 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 grand kids, 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

Steve's Books

 

All three of my books (Nature Based Leadership; Nature-Inspired Learning and Leading; Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits) present compilations of personal experiences expressing my (and co-author Dr. Wilhoit for Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits) deep passion for Nature. All three books offer observations and reflections on my relationship to the natural world… and the broader implications for society. Order any and all from your local indie bookstore, or find them on IndieBound or other online sources such as Amazon and LifeRich.

 

48 Hours: from Tornado Warnings to Winter Storm Warnings (Trial 2)

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The Madison, Alabama (my home) weather span of 29 hours and 46 minutes, from New Year’s Day at 4:32 PM to January 2, at 10:18 PM, shifted from tornado watch to severe thunderstorm and tornado warnings to winter weather advisory to winter storm warning! I’ve said often that I could not thrive living where weather is constant and dull. The rapidity of change thrills me. The combination of the scale, scope, and power of change humbles and inspires me. This Post chronicles those nearly 30 hours with photos, observations, and reflections.

I have a lifelong fascination with weather. I wrote extensively about my weather addiction/obsession in Nature Based Leadership (2016), the opening paragraph of Chapter Seven, Snow in the Arc Light:

My elderly mother (now deceased) tells me that her older sister, Geraldine, tried to frighten the toddler me of thunderstorms. Perhaps she feared them herself. Although I do not remember at all, Mom says Geraldine would exclaim with a sense of alarm, “Dark clouds, rain hard, Stevie; time to hide.” Nor do I recall ever being frightened by lightning, thunder, ominous clouds, wind, or any other manifestation of nature’s more threatening moods. Instead, Aunt Geraldine may have unintentionally ignited my lifelong love affair with weather, even adverse conditions.

The two-day period I present in this Post offered considerable grist for my weather mill. New Year’s Day (2022) we reached a high of 75 degrees in Madison, Alabama, as a strong cold front approached from the northwest. Severe thunderstorms and two tornado-warned cells crossed Madison County, my home, that evening. January 2, 2022 offered an early morning high of 57 degrees. The temperature fell into the upper 30s by late afternoon as a low pressure system formed along the trailing cold front. Rain changed over to wind-driven snow by 8:30 PM as the temperature fell to 30 degrees. I’ll walk you through that wild period with photographs and reflections.

January 1, 2022 Tornado Watch to Warning

New Year’s morning (6:24 AM) dawned calmly with alto-cumulus backdropping the hardwood forest at the entrance to my development.  Forecasters hinted at the evening potential for servere weather. By 3:48 PM (below right), the sky hinted that change was imminent…and the NWS had placed us under a tornado watch.

 

Looking west at 4:32 PM, darkening and thickening clouds portended the line of thunderstorms then radar-visible crossing from northeast Mississippi into Alabama.

 

The first storms arrived two hours later, when cell after cell charged from west to east across the Madison area. Two of the individual storms generated tornado warnings. The first one passed far enough to the north that we did not retreat to our shelter. We had less confidence of the second storm’s track, moving east at 55 miles per hour, so we entered the shelter, staying there for ten minutes until the warning sirens stopped wailing. Fortunately, neither tornado-warned storm dropped a twister.

January 2, 2022 Evolving Wnter Storm Warning

Our morning temperature reached 57 degrees, far too warm for me to anticipate much in the way of wintry precipitation, yet the NWS had issued a winter weather advisory. As temperatures fell into the upper 30s and the radar-indicated rain shield expanded over Mississippi and Arkansas, the NWS upgraded the advisory to a winter storm warning. That caught my interest! With the onset of rain at 6:30 PM, I paid more attention to our real time temperature, the nature of falling precipitation, and the radar-depicted rain/snow line.
I noticed our rain transitioning to wet snow at 8:30. The changeover was complete at 8:59 when I snapped these two images. Moderate snow had begun coating all but our stone pathways, which still held heat from the warmer days. The temperature had fallen to just above freezing.

 

 

By 9:50 and 9:51 PM, we had dropped below 32 degrees as snowfall intensified.

 

At 10:18 heavy wind-driven snow covered all surfaces, including the street in front of our home.

 

Ten minutes later, once again in the backyard, the snow had accumulated to two inches, which is equal to our annual average snowfall.

 

At the same time, even our stone walkways are covered with snow.

 

I went to bed shortly thereafter.

Pre-Dawn January 3

 

I snapped these photos at 4:46 AM, long after the snow had ceased. Five inches coated our landscaping. Although still full darkness, the camera captured the reflected light quite well with a three-second exposure.

 

I am a confessed snow fanatic, especially here in the south where it is a rarity. At the time I took these photos, the temperature in Fairbanks, Alaska, where we lived from 2004-08 was 39 degrees below zero, with a snowpack 34 inches deep. One might wonder how I could get so excited about these rather tame Madison, Alabama winter conditions. The answer is simple — this is the best I can hope for in northern Alabama. One of my favorite places in the US is Grand Teton National Park, yet visiting Alabama’s Cheaha State Park fills me with wonder and appreciation. My ratings for scale, scope, and grandeur shift with where I happen to be. I’ve been to Yosemite’s giant sequoias, Callifornia’s redwoods, and the giant douglas firs of Oregon and Washington, yet October 2021, I stood in awe at The Big Tree in Alabama’s Bankhead National Forest.

 

As I write these words on January 7, all traces of snow are gone. In contrast, the Fairbanks snowpack may be all gone by the end of April. Each year we lived there, dirty residual piles of snow remained the fourth of July where the city had dumped snow removed from city streets and parking lots during the long winter. I loved living there, yet I also love living where a single snowstorm can drop 2.5 times the average annual snowfall and the ground be clear within five days!

By Dawn’s Early Light

Dawn brought cloudy but brightening sky (7:15 AM), revealing the snow/wind-coated northwest faces of tree trunks and shrubs.

 

Like so much in the realm of my Nature observation, capturing images is less about my photography prowess (for goodness sake, I use an iPhone!), and much more about getting into the out there, being observant, and understanding what is important to me, whether a snowy landscape, fresh mushrooms, spring wildflowers, or a special forest setting.

Sun Brings Glory

All of the prior images could pass for black and white. Once the skies cleared, color emerged, sharp and brilliant in the light-flooded snow- and sky-scape (11:32 AM). Note that already the stone pathways are once again snow free due to the combination of sun hitting from above and the stones’ warmth melting from below.

 

I publish these photo-essays around the theme of Nature-Inspired Life and Living. Some might wonder how photos and reflections from a suburban landscape can be considered Nature. I submit that Nature is where we seek it, even if that means right here in my backyard. The severe weather and snow do not know whether they are affecting urban or wildland. Moreover, I didn’t care. I do indeed find Nature’s beauty, magic, wonder, and awe wherever I happen to be. In my younger Nature-purist days, I would have scoffed at my present relative view of Nature. I would have demanded wildness. Today, I take what I can whether at home or in nearby wildlands. Who can argue with the beauty and magic of this snowy landscape.

 

 

These two images span 29 hours and 46 minutes, from New Year’s Day at 4:32 PM to January 2, at 10:18 PM, from tornado watch to winter storm warning! I said often that I could not thrive living where weather is constant and dull. The rapidity of change thrills me. The combination of the scale, scope, and power of change humbles and inspires me.

 

 

 

I will long remember those 29 hours. The period temporarily sated my weather obsession/addiction, yet I will continue to watch for the next episode. I vow to find and appreciate Nature’s beauty, magic, wonder, and awe wherever I am.

 

Thoughts and Reflections

I offer these observations:

  • I am a confessed snow fanatic, especially here in the south where it is a rarity.
  • I could not thrive living where weather is constant and dull.
  • I submit that Nature is where I seek it, even if that means right here in my backyard.

Inhale and absorb Nature’s elixir. May Nature Inspire, Inform, and Reward you!

 

Note: All blog post images created & photographed by Stephen B. Jones unless otherwise noted. Please circulate images with photo credit: “©2022 Steve Jones, Great Blue Heron LLC. All Rights Reserved.”

Another Note: If you came to this post via a Facebook posting or by an another route, please sign up now (no cost… no obligation) to receive my Blog Post email alerts: http://eepurl.com/cKLJdL

And a Third: I am available for Nature-Inspired Speaking, Writing, and Consulting — contact me at steve.jones.0524@gmail.com

 

Reminder of my Personal and Professional Purpose, Passion, and Cause

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:

Mission: Employ writing and speaking to educate, inspire, and enable readers and listeners to understand, appreciate, and enjoy Nature… and accept and practice Earth Stewardship.

Vision:

  • People of all ages will pay greater attention to and engage more regularly with Nature… and will accept and practice informed and responsible Earth Stewardship.
  • They will see their relationship to our natural world with new eyes… and will understand more clearly their Earth home.

Tagline/Motto: Steve (Great Blue Heron) encourages and seeks a better tomorrow through Nature-Inspired Living!

 

Steve’s Three Books

I wrote my books Nature Based Leadership (2016), Nature-Inspired Learning and Leading (2017), and Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits: Stories of Passion for Place and Everyday Nature (2019; co-authored with Dr. Jennifer Wilhoit) 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.

I began writing books and Posts for several reasons:

  • I love hiking and exploring in 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 actually 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 grand kids, 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

Steve's Books

 

All three of my books (Nature Based Leadership; Nature-Inspired Learning and Leading; Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits) present compilations of personal experiences expressing my (and co-author Dr. Wilhoit for Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits) deep passion for Nature. All three books offer observations and reflections on my relationship to the natural world… and the broader implications for society. Order any and all from your local indie bookstore, or find them on IndieBound or other online sources such as Amazon and LifeRich.

 

 

Mid-October Fungi Ramble in The Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge Riparian Forests

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October 22, 2021, the day after I measured 0.76″ of autumn rain, I couldn’t resist the siren’s song of the Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge riparian forest. Because mushrooms, some familiar and some not, greeted me in abundance, I focused my attention on admiring their diversity, beauty, and role in the forest’s dance of life and death. Fungi are the forest’s primary decomposers, along with bacteria and invertebrates. Forest organic matter transits continuously across time…within the soil; in the mass of living trees; in the flux of leaves and fine roots that senesce, breakdown, and reincorporate annually; in the downed woody debris that more slowly breaks down; and in the decomposer organisms themselves.

Mushrooms are the fleshy (not always) spore-bearing reproductive structures of fungi. Without their presence above ground or on the surface of their woody, decaying food sources, fungi would busy themselves within the decaying host or, in the case of mycorhizae, on or within the fine roots of commensual plants…invisible to hikers, naturalists, or poets who frequent our forests.

Most fungi spores are wind-born. A University of Hawaii online reference reported that Ganoderma applanatum, the artist fungus (also native to north Alabama), which has a perennial fruiting body (a conk), may disperse 5.4 trillion spores over a six month period. The same reference said that a typical cubic meter of air may contain 10,000 – 20,000 spores. Blown to within 30 degrees of horizontal, the hickory below is not yet dead, but is certainly weakened and in distress. Imagine the millions of spores that have already found its surface…seeking an entrance court to begin the infection and decay cycle.

HGH Road

 

Standing death accommodates oak bracket fungi sustenance. How much longer will this snag maintain structural integrity before it crashes to the forest floor?! The cycle is endless. The forest sequesters carbon, yet it does not have unlimited storage capacity. Eventually these riparian forests reach an equilibrium, when they create and store carbon at a rate equal to decay, return to soil, and recycling within the always renewing forest.

HGH Road

 

Although I don’t normally like to cite Wikipedia, sometimes that source offers the simplest descriptions: Inonotus dryadeus (syn. Pseudoinonotus dryadaeus), commonly known as oak bracket, warted oak polypore, weeping polypore, or weeping conk, is an inedible species of fungus belonging to the genus Inonotus, which consists of bracket fungi with fibrous flesh. Most often found growing at the base of oak trees, it causes white rot and decay of the trunks. It secretes an amber liquid which weeps from tubes in its upper surface.

HGH Road

 

This colony of pinewood gingertails occupies a well decayed, moss-covered length of woody debris. The literature indicates that this species is not poisonous, but is bitter with no value as an edible.

HGH Road

 

I failed to identify this loblolly pinecone mushroom. So, I shall dub it the loblolly pinecone fungus! I am sure that it, in fact, has a name.

 

The iNaturalist app identified this as common funnel, Infundibulicybe gibba. However, when I dug into my various books and online references my confidence waned. I have so much to learn. For the moment, I will stay with the common funnel moniker.

Infundibulicybe gibba (also known as Clitocybe gibba) is a hardwood mushroom that features a pinkish-tan cap that becomes fairly deeply vase-shaped by maturity. Its pale, crowded gills run down the stem, which is pale in comparison to the cap. It grows solitary or in small troops on the soil in broad-leaf woods (iNaturalist).

HGH Road

 

 

 

In contrast, I am confident that this more distinctive fungus is coral pink merulius, a lovely bit of color on the otherwise barren forest floor.

HGH RoadHGH Road

 

Here are two edibles for which I have identification confidence: ringless honey and oyster.

 

This coral-toothed fungus, about three inches end-to-end, is the first one I’ve encountered. Its structure reminded me of lion’s mane. Like lion’s mane, coral-toothed fungus is considered a culinary delight when young, white, and soft.

Coral Tooth Fungus is one of many irregular clump fungus species, arising from a basal attachment with multiple coral-like branches, ending in fine pendant comb-like spines branching from a central point, 50-200 mm wide. Entire fruiting body white to cream and surfaces smooth (projectnoah.org).

HGH Road

 

This lion’s mane, the only one I spotted during this hike, is about four inches across and is already yellowing. I must apologize for the poor quality photo. I can offer no excuse. Lion’s mane and coral-toothed musrooms are aesthetic marvels. I love their clean luster and complex toothed structure. I would enjoy seeing them even if they were inedible!

HGH Road

 

 

A New Plant for Me

I discovered several small patches of sparse-lobed grapefern or southern grapefern. I know that I’ve seen them before, yet had not taken the time to identify. These specimens had recently produced fertile fronds extending well above the leaves.

HGH Road

 

I think back fifty-plus years when I spent many an October afternoon hunting squirrels in the central Appalachians. I considered myself an avid outdoorsman, yet I cannot dredge up a single memory of noticing mushrooms. Today I still watch for the bushytails. I no longer hunt, but I do enjoy watching them forage and frolick both on ground and within the canopy. However, they are not my primary focus. I am not sure I have a primary focus most days. Instead, I look for all manner of beauty and curiosity hiding in plain sight as I wander the forest. This day, I admit, because the forest seemed rich with them, mushrooms drew my attention. I was not foraging for edibles. My camera served as my collecting bucket.

Thoughts and Reflections

 

I offer these observations:

  • Fungi are the forest’s primary decomposers, along with bacteria and invertebrates.
  • Organic matter transits within the forest across time — in living and dead tissue, and in the soil.
  • Occasionally, focus your woods-walk attention on forest fungi: their diversity, beauty, and role in the forest’s dance of life and death.

Inhale and absorb Nature’s elixir. May Nature Inspire, Inform, and Reward you!

 

Note: All blog post images created & photographed by Stephen B. Jones unless otherwise noted. Please circulate images with photo credit: “©2022 Steve Jones, Great Blue Heron LLC. All Rights Reserved.”

Another Note: If you came to this post via a Facebook posting or by an another route, please sign up now (no cost… no obligation) to receive my Blog Post email alerts: http://eepurl.com/cKLJdL

And a Third: I am available for Nature-Inspired Speaking, Writing, and Consulting — contact me at steve.jones.0524@gmail.com

 

Reminder of my Personal and Professional Purpose, Passion, and Cause

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:

Mission: Employ writing and speaking to educate, inspire, and enable readers and listeners to understand, appreciate, and enjoy Nature… and accept and practice Earth Stewardship.

Vision:

  • People of all ages will pay greater attention to and engage more regularly with Nature… and will accept and practice informed and responsible Earth Stewardship.
  • They will see their relationship to our natural world with new eyes… and will understand more clearly their Earth home.

Tagline/Motto: Steve (Great Blue Heron) encourages and seeks a better tomorrow through Nature-Inspired Living!

 

Steve’s Three Books

I wrote my books Nature Based Leadership (2016), Nature-Inspired Learning and Leading (2017), and Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits: Stories of Passion for Place and Everyday Nature (2019; co-authored with Dr. Jennifer Wilhoit) 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.

I began writing books and Posts for several reasons:

  • I love hiking and exploring in 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 actually 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 grand kids, 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

Steve's BooksHGH Road

 

All three of my books (Nature Based Leadership; Nature-Inspired Learning and Leading; Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits) present compilations of personal experiences expressing my (and co-author Dr. Wilhoit for Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits) deep passion for Nature. All three books offer observations and reflections on my relationship to the natural world… and the broader implications for society. Order any and all from your local indie bookstore, or find them on IndieBound or other online sources such as Amazon and LifeRich.

 

 

 

A Naturalist’s View of the Narrows in Cumberland, MD

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The Narrows

 

September 10, 2021, I hiked the six-mile out and back paved section of the Greater Allegheny Passage rails-to-trail through the Narrows in western Maryland. The Narrows reach 1,000 feet to cliffs and rimrock above Wills Creek, which flows into the Potomac River in Cumberland. My purpose with this Post is to chronicle the late summer flowering plants trailside within the gorge. See my December 14, 2021, Post on Cumberland and the Narrows at the intersection of human and natural history: https://stevejonesgbh.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=9653&action=edit&classic-editor=1

Early September (the tenth) at 39.65 degrees north latitude lies at the juncture of late summer and early autumn, still too warm for fall, yet, offering days of occasional warm sun and comfortable nights. Forest green prevails on slopes of the Narrows; summer wildflowers remain vibrant and colorful along the trail. These two views look upstream into the Narrows.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The view downstream at the far end likewise shows only a bit of forest yellowing.

 

The same holds true at mid-point. The date of peak fall color is closely aligned with the average date of first freeze, which for Cumberland is October 16. Peak fall foliar color for Cumberland is mid-October.

 

 

 

 

Late Summer and Early Fall

Nature of the Narrows

Wingstem stood in full flower all along the trail. Powdery mildew on leaves, below right, portend the end of its season.

 

Evening primrose rivaled the wingstem’s golden hues but fell short of the wingstem’s abundance.

 

Dayflower proudly displayed its deep sky-blue flowers.

 

Long a favorite of mine, common milkweed, which had long since flowered, carried its seed pods in full view, counting on a drying sun to split its husk and await the autumn breezes for seed dispersal. I remember with fondness holding such dispersal-ready pods aloft and blowing the seed fairies into the wind. I suppose even today I would still enjoy such human-assisted dispersal with a sense of youthful mirth!

Narrows

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The cycle of seed dispersal, overwintering in suitable soil, spring germination, summer growth, flowering, pollination, and fruiting continues year after year. So, too, does the monarch butterfly cycle of life spin year after year in harmony with its primary host, the common milkweed. The maturing monarch caterpillar still feeds. Soon it will form its chrysalis. Available internet sources elucidate the complex life cycle of this insect that is fully interdependent with our common milkweed.

 

The large milkweed bugs below, likewise feeding on their milkweed host, include both nymph and adult forms. The milkweed bugs have only three life cycle stages: egg, nymph, and adult.

 

I’ve never been a fan of jimsonweed, and the West Virginia Cooperative Extension online source justifies my predisposition:

Jimsonweed is a weed of concern for both humans and livestock, owing its poisonous nature to certain alkaloids present in all plant parts, especially in the seeds. It belongs to the nightshade family (Solanaceae) and possesses a disagreeable odor… Jimsonweed thrives in cultivated fields, overgrazed pastures, and waste lots. Animals typically stay away from this distasteful weed while foraging; however, accidental poisoning has occurred when desirable plants or water are in short supply during the hot summer months. Children who are attracted by its large, showy flowers have occasionally been poisoned by accidental consumption of the nectar or petals.

 

Japanese knotweed is yet another obnoxious interloper, described by Penn State Extension online:

Japanese knotweed (Fallopia japonica) is an invasive perennial and noxious weed in PA.

 

However, were I unaware of its aggressive invasive nature, I might consider its luxuriant flowers and attractive pendulant seedheads as a real looker. Funny how where we stand depends upon where we sit. We all gauge beauty through our own filters, whether conscious of them or not.

 

I spotted just one colony of oriental bittersweet. Its yellow fruit caught my eye. Once again, however, my appreciation waned as I recognized it…and quadrupled when I looked it up in an online Penn State source:

Oriental bittersweet (Celastrus orbiculatus) was introduced to the United States in the 1860s from east Asia. This woody, deciduous, perennial vine has since naturalized and become an extremely aggressive and damaging invader of natural areas. Oriental bittersweet chokes out desirable native plants by smothering them with its dense foliage and strangling stems and trunks. In some areas, it forms nearly continuous blankets along entire stretches of woodlands. Despite its aggressive nature and capacity to replace native plant communities, it is still sold and planted as an ornamental.

Bittersweet

 

Looking back (through the trestle at the far end of the Narrows), I pondered the fact that on this shrinking planet (relative…not literal) we are realizing that no ocean is wide enough in these days of intercontinental travel to constrain a species to its place of origin. Just as the railroad carried people, seeds, and diseases across North America a century ago, planes and ships ply the oceans and airways incessantly. Will we eventually journey through space introducing Nature and human nature, elements good and not-so-good, interplanetary and intergalactically? I have heard speculations that long-ago space travelers planted the seed of life on Earth, and that all Earth life derived from that spawn. I don’t know about that. However, I do know that all life on planet Earth is precious, and that our one Earth, alone in the vast darkness of space, sustains us. We have a life and death obligation to practice informed and responsible Earth stewardship.

 

The view back through the trestle symbolizes 250 years of European westward expansion and settlement, as well as 13,000 years of American Indian occupation. For me, the three-mile (each way) out-and-back hike retraced my own 70-year life-journey that began downstream where Wills Creek emptied into the Potomac River. I thought, too, about how Nature is rewilding an abandoned railroad right-of-way…a linear wound…through this gorge steeped with history. I contemplated how Nature seems oblivious to whether she naturalizes and re-wilds with native plants or invasive species.

Thoughts and Reflections

 

I offer these observations:

  • Nature, in time, heals all wounds.
  • We all gauge beauty through our own filters, whether conscious of them or not.
  • The older I grow, the deeper my appreciation for Nature’s simplest of marvels.

Inhale and absorb Nature’s elixir. May Nature Inspire, Inform, and Reward you!

 

Note: All blog post images created & photographed by Stephen B. Jones unless otherwise noted. Please circulate images with photo credit: “©2021 Steve Jones, Great Blue Heron LLC. All Rights Reserved.”

Another Note: If you came to this post via a Facebook posting or by another route, please sign up now (no cost… no obligation) to receive my Blog Post email alerts: http://eepurl.com/cKLJdL

And a Third: I am available for Nature-Inspired Speaking, Writing, and Consulting — contact me at steve.jones.0524@gmail.com

 

Reminder of my Personal and Professional Purpose, Passion, and Cause

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:

Mission: Employ writing and speaking to educate, inspire, and enable readers and listeners to understand, appreciate, and enjoy Nature… and accept and practice Earth Stewardship.

Vision:

  • People of all ages will pay greater attention to and engage more regularly with Nature… and will accept and practice informed and responsible Earth Stewardship.
  • They will see their relationship to our natural world with new eyes… and will understand more clearly their Earth home.

Tagline/Motto: Steve (Great Blue Heron) encourages and seeks a better tomorrow through Nature-Inspired Living!

 

Steve’s Three Books

I wrote my books Nature Based Leadership (2016), Nature-Inspired Learning and Leading (2017), and Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits: Stories of Passion for Place and Everyday Nature (2019; co-authored with Dr. Jennifer Wilhoit) 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.

I began authoring books and Posts for several reasons:

  • I love hiking and exploring in 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 grand kids, 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

Steve's BooksNarrows

 

All three of my books (Nature Based Leadership; Nature-Inspired Learning and Leading; Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits) present compilations of firsthand experiences expressing my (and co-author Dr. Wilhoit for Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits) deep passion for Nature. All three books offer observations and reflections on my relationship to the natural world… and the broader implications for society. Order from your local indie bookstore or find them on IndieBound or other online sources such as Amazon and LifeRich.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Side Highlights on My Hike to Sipsey Wilderness Big Tree

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October 30, 2021, I hiked to the Big Tree in Alabama’s Sipsey Wilderness, Bankhead National Forest. This Post offers photos and reflections on the special sidelights I saw along the way. See my previous related Post offering reflections on the rough and bouldered terrain, torturous blowdowns, and the majesty of the Big Tree: https://stevejonesgbh.com/2021/12/08/an-eleven-mile-bucket-list-hike-to-the-sipsey-big-tree/

Once more I remind readers that much of Nature’s beauty, magic, wonder, and awe lies hidden in plain sight. My referenced prior Big Tree Post focused on the more obvious surroundings: deep canyons; shear rock faces; boulder tumbles; too-dense blowdowns; ancient forests; streams and waterfalls. However, I’ve learned that by paying attention to only the obvious we miss so much that merits noticing. This was my first hike with Randy, Tara, and Jonathan. I believe that I helped open their eyes to features, both large and small scale, that they normally do not see. Among those things they had not previously been aware, we stopped to admire all manner of fungi along our route.

Destination

The Big Tree did not disappoint. I shall carry its image, serenity, and sacred spirit with me forevermore. I felt small, insignificant, and humble in its presence. At the same time, inspiration enveloped me. In fact, because of the aura of The Tree, a certain essence permeated the entire route…and all we saw, discussed, and encountered along the way.

Big Tree

 

Magic peeped through the canopy, as a black birch in fall regalia declared autumn to those of us trekking along the forest floor. A golden skylight welcoming us, a glowing beam of promise penetrating the deep forest gloom that those less enchanted with the forest might perceive. Rain-soaked foliage, muted drippings, and saturated air — such is the solace of sheltered canyon forests in these humid climes. For me, forest gloom is an oxymoron. Even on the darkest, cloudiest days, the sun bursts above the clouds. So, too, does the birch proclaim that all is well within and beneath the canopy.

Big Tree

 

I consider myself easily impressed by Nature’s visual (as well as auditory and olfactory) gifts. I want to remain so, effortlessly spellbound by Nature’s ordinary, everyday wonder…all elements sublime upon close inspection. Albert Einstein expressed it well:

There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.

I view every walk in Nature as a sequential inventory and catalog of miracles. Nothing in Nature is ordinary to the observant and curious mind. Einstein implored us to look deeply into Nature:

Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.

Special Treats

Shear rock faces appear barren and bereft of life…unless we seek hidden treasures. Judy and I fell in love with oak leaf hydrangeas as ornamental landscape plantings when we lived in Auburn, Alabama 1996-2001. I learned during our tenure there that the Sipsey Wilderness is the epicenter of Hydrangea quercifolia‘s natural range. We saw hundreds (thousands?) of individuals along our trek, each one special in its own way. Yet, none rose to the glory of the individual below, perched thirty feet above us on a narrow rock ledge, centered in the magnified photo (right). Nature does indeed abhor a vacuum. Any port in a storm will do. Our moderate climate with its ample and reliable rain provides a generally superb growing environment. Throw in a deep, sheltered canyon…and life abounds, even in a seeming-inhospitable crag.

Big Tree

 

We stumbled upon just two small colonies of weak-leaf yucca, a plant I have not seen often in the wild. Its name derives from the fact that its foliage will bend and fold with just its own weight.

Big Tree

 

Fungi Panoply

Two-thirds of an inch of rain had fallen during the three days prior to our hike. Mild conditions had prevailed. Our friends in the fungi kingdom flourish in this kind of early fall weather. We found this mossy, dead and down woody debris covered in pear-shaped puffballs, each one about an inch in diameter. Their meat still pure white, these would have been at peak bite-size edibility, lightly flowered and simmered in butter! Because we were in a formal Wilderness, we foraged nothing. Puffballs are the fruiting bodies (spore-producing organ) of the decay fungi working within the dead log.

Big Tree

 

I thought for sure I had encountered a mushroom (two photos below) not much different from the puffballs. In fact, here’s what I wrote before investigating more carefully: “Similarly structured and functioning, these wolf’s milk mushrooms likewise occupied a dead and down log. The pinkish colors demanded our attention!” Boy, was I due for an awakening — here’s what I found online at TexasMushrooms:

Lycogala epidendrum, commonly known as wolf’s milk, groening’s slime is a cosmopolitan species of myxogastrid amoeba which is often mistaken for a fungus. The aethalia, or fruiting bodies, occur either scattered or in groups on damp rotten wood, especially on large logs, from June to November. These aethalia are small, pink to brown cushion-like globs. They may excrete a pink paste if the outer wall is broken before maturity. When mature, the colour tends to become more brownish. When not fruiting, single celled individuals move about as very small, red amoeba-like organisms called plasmodia, masses of protoplasm that engulf bacteria, fungal and plant spores, protozoa, and particles of non-living organic matter through phagocytosis.

Quite simply, what I had assumed was another mushroom is a slime mold. My copy of Mushrooms of the Southeast reports:

Wolf’s milk is one of the most widely distributed and well-known slime molds. The fruiting bodies resemble small puffballs. If an immature fruiting body is squeezed or broken open, a slimy pink substance with the consistency of toothpaste oozes out.

Nature presents novices like me a lifetime of learning every time I venture into the wild.

Big Tree

 

My fellow travelers, I believe, could be converted into forest fungi (or slime mold) enthusiasts. They found exquisite beauty in this violet-toothed polypore, another decay fungi, this one sporting a mushroom absolutely unlike either of the two organisms above.

Big Tree

 

Alongside the violet-toothed polypore, we found another mushroom, this one identified by iNaturalist as agaricomycetes. I was pleased to have a positive identity…until I discovered a reference source offering this gem (paraphrased): agaricomycetes is a class of fungi that includes 17 orders, 100 families, 1147 genera, and 20,951 species. Well, it appears I have much to learn!

Big Tree

 

Mosses

I recall in days past hiking the muskeg of southeast Alaska, exploring the Tongass National Forest, and wandering the 400-year-old stand at Heart’s Content Natural Area in northwest Pennsylvania. Mosses abound in water-rich temperate forests. As we trekked the relatively flat riparian forest before reaching our vehicles, we found tree skirt moss rivaling the thick drapes hanging from Sitka Spruce on the lower slopes of Mount Verstovia in Sitka, Alaska (see photo under the two images immediately below) and the other areas I mentioned. These special places are life-rich, luxuriant ecosystems, as are the quiet canyons of our Sipsey Wilderness.

Big Tree

 

Moss-draped Sitka spruce near Sitka, Alaska June 2006.

 

Once again, magic, beauty, wonder, and awe lie within plain sight no matter where I wander. A volume of miracles awaits discovery.

Tree Form Curiosities

 

I asked Tara to rest on this full-basal beech burl to demonstrate scale. Note it moss skirt. I’ve yet to meet a burl that did not intrigue me…nor stand as an object of my fascination.

Big Tree

 

This birch took root atop a boulder, grasped the stone tightly, and reached to mineral soil for life-sustaining nutrients and moisture. How many of us humans have sought secure anchorage, temporary or long-term…whether physical, emotional, or spiritual? I know I have.

Big Tree

 

Sometimes, we take root on quarters that prove only temporarily hospitable, leaving us with no options but to find alternative means of surviving and succeeding. We’ve met and admired human survivors of such circumstances. Black birch, I have discovered, are masters at overcoming what to us appear as bad decisions. This individual, with its flaming yellow/orange foliage suspended over the creek, perseveres.

Big Tree

 

As does this individual perched 20 feet above mineral soil.

Big Tree

 

Bigleaf magnolia boasts the largest simple leaves of any tree native to North America. Josh provided scale for this one.

Big Tree

 

A rather contorted bigleaf magnolia rewarded us. Always on the lookout for wildlife, I was pleasantly surprised to find a hiker-tolerant, bigleaf magnolia antelope along the trail. Einstein observed:

Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.

Imagination hikes every trail at my side…and in my heart.

Big Tree

 

Nature never fails to reward those dedicated to finding gifts that lie hidden in plain sight.

 

Thoughts and Reflections

 

I offer these observations:

  • Nature presents novices like me a lifetime of learning every time I venture into the wild.
  • There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle. Albert Einstein
  • Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better. Einstein

Inhale and absorb Nature’s elixir. May Nature Inspire, Inform, and Reward you!

 

Note: All blog post images created & photographed by Stephen B. Jones unless otherwise noted. Please circulate images with photo credit: “©2021 Steve Jones, Great Blue Heron LLC. All Rights Reserved.”

Another Note: If you came to this post via a Facebook posting or by another route, please sign up now (no cost… no obligation) to receive my Blog Post email alerts: http://eepurl.com/cKLJdL

And a Third: I am available for Nature-Inspired Speaking, Writing, and Consulting — contact me at steve.jones.0524@gmail.com

 

Reminder of my Personal and Professional Purpose, Passion, and Cause

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:

Mission: Employ writing and speaking to educate, inspire, and enable readers and listeners to understand, appreciate, and enjoy Nature… and accept and practice Earth Stewardship.

Vision:

  • People of all ages will pay greater attention to and engage more regularly with Nature… and will accept and practice informed and responsible Earth Stewardship.
  • They will see their relationship to our natural world with new eyes… and will understand more clearly their Earth home.

Tagline/Motto: Steve (Great Blue Heron) encourages and seeks a better tomorrow through Nature-Inspired Living!

 

Steve’s Three Books

I wrote my books Nature Based Leadership (2016), Nature-Inspired Learning and Leading (2017), and Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits: Stories of Passion for Place and Everyday Nature (2019; co-authored with Dr. Jennifer Wilhoit) 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.

I began authoring books and Posts for several reasons:

  • I love hiking and exploring in 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 grand kids, 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

Steve's BooksBig Tree

 

All three of my books (Nature Based Leadership; Nature-Inspired Learning and Leading; Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits) present compilations of firsthand experiences expressing my (and co-author Dr. Wilhoit for Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits) deep passion for Nature. All three books offer observations and reflections on my relationship to the natural world… and the broader implications for society. Order from your local indie bookstore, or find them on IndieBound or other online sources such as Amazon and LifeRich.

 

 

 

Cumberland, Maryland: My Hometown…at the Intersection of Human and Natural History

/in , /by

Rugged Central Appalachians

 

The second week of September 2021, I returned to my hometown of Cumberland, Maryland, nestled along the Potomac River in the central Appalachians. I left Cumberland for my junior year of forestry undergraduate studies out of state in 1971. Over the course of 13 career-related interstate moves, family visits brought us back to western Maryland an average of twice annually. We missed those ancient Appalachians. Each time we entered the familiar landscape we felt the homing beacon, like a tractor beam, drawing us closer with a felt sense of urgency. Such was the case in September, when I managed, like I always did, to seek some visceral comfort in local wildness. Here’s a November 2019 Potomac River vista from a Green Ridge State Forest overlook just 30 miles downstream from Cumberland.

C&O Canal

 

These rugged old mountains, long since eroded from their alpine, high elevation youth, nevertheless proved to be a formidable obstacle to the teeming coastal plain and piedmont residents eager to exploit and settle the fertile lands of the Ohio frontier and beyond. The Potomac River valley provided a corridor for reaching Cumberland, which served as a launching platform for ascending and crossing over the Allegheny Front. Thick forests blanketed the hills, providing abundant sawtimber, fenceposts, fuelwood, and charcoal. The inhabitants aggressively harvested, milled, and sometimes cleared the forests for field and pasture. Today the hills are once again heavily forested with naturally regenerated second growth (below left, a 90-year-old second-growth forest in the Tionesta Natural Area on the Allegheny Plateau in Pennsylvania). Photo below right from New Germany State Park (September 2021), located 20 miles west of Cumberland.

Tionesta

US Forest Service file photo.

 

 

 

 

 

Rocky Gap State Park (below left) is a high-end resort (hotel and casino) and wildland recreation destination just ten miles east of Cumberland. Evitts Mountain (beyond the lake) offers a pleasant view to the west (below right) from its 2,200-foot summit at the MD/PA line (both photos from a September 2020 hike).

Rocky Gap

 

 

 

 

 

Geography funneled population through the Potomac River valley, concentrating mid-eighteenth-century development at the base of the Allegheny Front in Cumberland. Nature and natural resources shaped the settlement, prompted its industrial development, and now defines the area and much of the current recreation-based economy.

A Foothold at the Base of the Allegheny Front

The city and surrounding area tell a rich 270-year story at the intersection of human and natural history. The text below is posted on an interpretive sign near the preserved railroad station downtown.

 

The city itself, an industrial hub when I grew up in the 1950s, is today a tourist destination. The once terribly polluted Potomac is now fishable and swimmable. The air is clean, absent smoke from multiple now-dormant coal-fired factories. Colonel Washington ventured west into the area multiple times. These were God-fearing people, who built consequential frontier churches that stand proudly yet.

 

The rolling hills, populated with steeples, welcome visitors.

 

Our visit coincided with Annual Heritage days.

Heritage Days

 

Cumberland’s interpretive signs tell its story well.

 

The Potomac River flows on from Cumberland (view upstream below left — see the steeples!). Downstream (below right) the river separates West Virginia (right bank) from Maryland, where I’m taking the photo.

 

Cumberland is the western terminus of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. See my previous Post on reading the landscape along the canal: https://stevejonesgbh.com/2019/11/20/a-taste-of-mid-september-nature-at-the-co-canal-national-historic-park/. And another Post describing the Nature of the Canal’s Paw Paw Tunnel and vicinity just 30 miles downstream of Cumberland: https://stevejonesgbh.com/2019/12/23/at-the-nexus-of-human-and-natural-history-paw-paw-tunnel/. The heavy wooden canal boats plied the 184.5 miles from Georgetown (Washington DC) until bankruptcy and the tremendous Potomac River flooding of 1924 forced the locks to close forever. Nature provided the flooding. Competition from the railroad furnished the other facet of the double whammy.

 

My maternal grandfather, a WWI combat veteran, drove trains from his base here at the Cumberland station. This rehabilitated steam engine makes tourist runs occasionally west, up the long grade to Frostburg, Maryland. Fall leaf season is particularly active.

 

 

 

 

 

In combination, the railroad, canal, and National Highway brought people and commerce, and their westward itch to Cumberland. The road and railroad carried them beyond the Cumberland highland-launching platform.

Reaching for the Fertile Frontier Beyond

 

Fertile lands to the west beckoned, including these lush fields in eastern Ohio. The frontier and the promise of riches and a new life stretched nearly without end to the Mississippi River and beyond.

 

Crossing the Allegheny Front: Through the Narrows

 

The Allegheny Front presented challenges. Wills (north side) and Haystack Mountains (in combination, the Wills Mountain anticline) rise immediately to the west of Cumberland, 1,000 feet above the Potomac River. Nature helped in facilitating the crossing of these ridges. Cumberland, as the interpretive sign above states, is situated at the confluence of Wills Creek and the Potomac. Wills Creek passes through a water gap separating Wills and Haystack. The creek did not cut through the 1,000′ barrier. Instead, mountain building lifted the terrain through the creek, which cut and eroded through the rising land.

The photo point below left is at the Narrows rimrock on Wills Mountain, 1,000 feet above Wills Creek, flowing from right to left. The aerial view below right shows the exposed rimrock photo point (opposite side of view). Cumberland sits to the right. The Western Maryland and B&O Railroad lines bordered the creek and the National Road.

Alt US 40 Cumberland Narrows.jpg

Both images from available online sources

From the abandoned WM bed on the Haystack side, I snapped this view upstream into the Narrows showing the creek (at this end modified for flood control), the concrete National Road bridge, and a train approaching on the still very active B&O side.

 

The Narrows is a remarkable natural geologic feature, another element of the array of attractions bringing tourists to Cumberland.

 

The old WM line is now the Great Allegheny Passage Rails to Trail (https://gaptrail.org/) connecting Cumberland to downtown Pittsburgh. I’ve biked it from Pittsburgh to Cumberland; I can attest to the website’s description:

Starting in Cumberland, MD and ending in downtown Pittsburgh, the Great Allegheny Passage is a spectacular 150-mile nonmotorized path that soars over valleys, snakes around mountains, and skirts alongside the Casselman River, Youghiogheny River, and Monongahela River on a nearly-level, crushed-limestone surface. Tracing old footpaths and railroad corridors through the wilderness, it offers glimpses into the country’s westward expansion and industrial might. When paired with the connecting C&O Canal Towpath, it makes long-distance trail travel possible between Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C.

I’ve also biked the connecting C&O Canal’s 184.5 miles to Georgetown. Ironic, I suppose, that the very severe terrain that stalled western expansion instigated magnificent road, canal, and railroad engineering and construction that now serve as a recreational attraction. A compelling story is written indelibly at the intersection of human and natural history, now preserved in a manner that will intrigue and captivate generation after generation!

 

I walked six miles that recent September afternoon. The view below is looking downstream along the GAP Trail into the Narrows toward Cumberland. Such views echo my own life stories from the Cumberland area and trigger deep and pleasant nostalgia. I thought of my grandad piloting his train through the Narrows. Of Dad driving our 1959 Plymouth through the Narrows heading for a Sunday picnic. Of the many times returning to Cumberland and walking or biking this very trail. Of the Narrows telling the tales of Native trade routes, European settlement and conflict, floods and torrents, and a few hundred million years of mountain building and erosion.

 

I turned around at this steel trestle that crosses Braddock Run, which empties into Wills Creek here at the upper end of the Narrows. On the left, only 147 miles to Pittsburgh; on the right, my three-mile return through the Narrows to Cumberland.

 

I mentioned the National Road — again, I welcome and relish the signage.

 

Watch for a subsequent Great Blue Heron Post on the Nature of the Narrows developed from this same trek.

Thoughts and Reflections

 

I offer these observations:

  • Compelling stories are written indelibly at the intersection of human and natural history.
  • My journeys into the Nature of my younger days trigger deep and pleasant nostalgia.
  • I have a profound passion for Place and Everyday Nature.

Inhale and absorb Nature’s elixir. May Nature Inspire, Inform, and Reward you!

 

Note: All blog post images created & photographed by Stephen B. Jones unless otherwise noted. Please circulate images with photo credit: “©2021 Steve Jones, Great Blue Heron LLC. All Rights Reserved.”

Another Note: If you came to this post via a Facebook posting or by another route, please sign up now (no cost… no obligation) to receive my Blog Post email alerts: http://eepurl.com/cKLJdL

And a Third: I am available for Nature-Inspired Speaking, Writing, and Consulting — contact me at steve.jones.0524@gmail.com

 

Reminder of my Personal and Professional Purpose, Passion, and Cause

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:

Mission: Employ writing and speaking to educate, inspire, and enable readers and listeners to understand, appreciate, and enjoy Nature… and accept and practice Earth Stewardship.

Vision:

  • People of all ages will pay greater attention to and engage more regularly with Nature… and will accept and practice informed and responsible Earth Stewardship.
  • They will see their relationship to our natural world with new eyes… and will understand more clearly their Earth home.

Tagline/Motto: Steve (Great Blue Heron) encourages and seeks a better tomorrow through Nature-Inspired Living!

 

Steve’s Three Books

I wrote my books Nature Based Leadership (2016), Nature-Inspired Learning and Leading (2017), and Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits: Stories of Passion for Place and Everyday Nature (2019; co-authored with Dr. Jennifer Wilhoit) 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.

I began authoring books and Posts for several reasons:

  • I love hiking and exploring in 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 grand kids, 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

Steve's Books

 

All three of my books (Nature Based Leadership; Nature-Inspired Learning and Leading; Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits) present compilations of firsthand experiences expressing my (and co-author Dr. Wilhoit for Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits) deep passion for Nature. All three books offer observations and reflections on my relationship to the natural world… and the broader implications for society. Order from your local indie bookstore, or find them on IndieBound or other online sources such as Amazon and LifeRich.

 

Maryland’s New Germany State Park — Returning after 51 Years

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During my freshman/sophomore and sophomore/junior undergraduate summers I worked for the State of Maryland Forest Service performing forest inventory on the Savage River State Forest. Forest Supervisor Warren Groves had arranged housing in a still-functional CCC-constructed cabin at New Germany State Park, a stunning recreation setting surrounded by the State Forest. The Forest’s 55,000 acres reside in Garrett County, at Maryland’s western tip. New Germany stands at 2,500 feet elevation atop the Allegany divide separating the Chesapeake Bay watershed to the east from the Ohio/Mississippi basin to the west. I spent those two inventory summers in forestry student heaven, learning as much under Warren’s applied-science tutelage as I did in those first four semesters in classrooms and labs.

September 9, 2021, I hiked once again in the park, investing a glorious afternoon in woods I had not entered in 51 years. Take a nostalgic virtual hike with me via my photographs and reflections.

Mill and Lake

My hometown of Cumberland, MD lies one county to the east (Allegany) at 700 feet elevation along the Potomac River. I embraced those summers in the noticeably cooler climate afforded by the 1,800 feet vertical difference. My return trip gifted me with the incredibly clear and comforting afternoon (below right). The Swauger mill is long since gone. The interpretive sign and the footer outline of its foundation (just as it was in 1970) remain.

 

New Germany Lake now seems much smaller, although I am sure it is not, one-half century since those great summers of forestry indoctrination and learning. Funny how time and experience alter scale.

 

 

 

I normally leap right into Nature with these Posts, yet I could not resist the special nostalgic look back, nor could I ignore the intersection of human and natural history that defines the Park. The view below looks north (upstream) to the dam.

 

Atop the dam (below left), the bridge crosses the spillway. View is east to the Martin House, where in 1970 the superintendent resided (my recollection). From the east end of the foot bridge, the recreation hall sits to the west of the spillway. The recreation building may or may not have been part of long-range planning in 1970.

 

The physical facility in its current manifestation is impressive, having changed a great deal since those long-ago summers.

The Forest

Like virtually every acre of Maryland forestland (or for that matter, the vast majority of eastern US forestland), the Park’s forests are heavily influenced by European settlement and attempted domestication. I emphasize attempted…so much of the more rugged land, long since abandoned, has re-wilded, erasing the scars of intense human activity (including careless agriculture on vulnerable, erosion-prone sites) and today appearing to most people as wilderness. I recall several features of Savage River State Forest within which the Park is located:

  • Eighty-six square miles of State Forest wildness then seemed large beyond my comprehension.
  • Occasionally our forest inventory transects crossed old, barbed wire fences and remnants of stone walls, suggesting past agriculture on the more gently rolling lands.
  • We frequently passed through white, red, and Scotch pine and Norway spruce plantations established by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s or during the USDA Soil Bank program of the 1950s. Both programs planted trees on old worn-out farmland.
  • Daily, it seems, we observed old American chestnut stumps from salvage logging when the blight, introduced to America from Asia in 1904, raced across the central Appalachians, devastating forests dominated by chestnut.

What is now the dam site and Park core, Broadwater’s farm along Swauger Mill Lake, looked like many other farmsteads in the 1930s. Served by the Village of New Germany Post Office (1883), the farmscape shows rolling pasture, fenceline trees, and on the distant hilltop, a woodlot that evidences frequent cutting for fenceposts, firewood, and other products.

Photo from the New Germany Past and Present self-guided walking tour pamphlet.

Try to imagine the imminent transformation that this then-marginal farmland was about to undergo. From the same pamphlet:

One of the nation’s CCC camps was located in the area that is now New Germany State Park. In the spring of 1933, approximately 125 “CCC boys” arrived at the camp, ready for work. For the first year, the “boys” lived in army tents, while they worked constructing the barracks, mess hall, and other buildings for the camp… Once they finished building the camp, the “boys” went to work on a number of projects at New Germany and the surrounding area.

Among many other projects, they swarmed the immediate adjacent fields planting the conifers I observed scattered across the State Forest. They likely planted the white pine below.

 

Swauger Creek flows from the mill dam through the hemlock forest. I walked southwest on Turnpike Trail, remembering creekside hemlocks much larger than those standing before me. However, that cannot be. The trees today were there 51 years ago and, because I know they have consistently added annual growth rings, they are actually larger now. I wondered whether my then inflated sense of the magic of this special place, within the context of a dream-summer forestry experience, had etched a memory of greater scope and scale than the real stand along the creek in 1970-71. My own now-matured and deeply experienced forest-assessment knowledge and skills are better honed and less influenced by perceived associated aura (the distinctive atmosphere or quality that seems to surround and be generated by a person, thing, or place). Regardless, the deep shade, the handsome rhododendrons, and the gurgling stream lifted me back to those halcyon days of focused learning, new adventure, and the thrill of becoming a young adult.

 

I thought of an apt Leonardo da Vinci quote: In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes; so, with present time. The creek itself had not changed, yet I had traveled 51 years, and here I stood again. Fifty-one years hence the stream will still appear unchanged. My journey will have ended, and yet the stream flows seaward, endlessly. Even the forest will ebb and flow, some trees dying, others replacing them, yet the forest will sustain.

 

Downstream of where I turned to the right toward Hemlock Trail, I spotted a trail bridge crossing Swauger Creek, yet another element of the Park’s charm.

 

Hemlock Trail is aptly named, the trail passing through an unusual upland hemlock stand (below left). Black cherry (my trekking pole leaning against it below right) also occasionally shared the main canopy with the hemlock.

 

Because nothing in Nature is static or permanent, individual trees are dying. The standing well-decayed snag below left, and the taller dead spar below right are now bird, mammal, and insect hotels, staying erect until the decay fungi reduce the structural integrity beyond a threshold, when they will crash or slump to the forest floor.

 

Below left a cluster of windthrown trees create a crown opening sufficient to allow sunlight to reach the ground, stimulating a thicket of birch regeneration. Below right a more recent windthrow opening will spark another patch of reproduction. Over time, the forest will shift to a mosaic of small stands.

 

Spiritual Reflections

I enjoy reading the forested landscape. Every tree and every parcel tells its tale. I am slowly learning the language of interpreting the story. Some elements of the tale are strictly biological science and physics. Other facets are more spiritual. I subscribe to Father Richard Rohr’s Daily online Mediation: From the Center for Action and Contemplation. I appreciate his view of our spiritual relationship to Nature. He often offers words that express what am I feeling more cogently than I could muster. The text below is from Week Forty-One (10/12/21): Contemplating Creation; Sensing Nature:

Fr. Richard explores how a creation-centered spirituality offers a natural openness to the type of sensing that comes from contemplation:

Creation spirituality reveals our human arrogance, and maybe that’s why we are afraid of it. Maybe that’s why we’re afraid to believe that God has spoken to us primarily in what is. Francis of Assisi was basically a hermit. He lived in the middle of nature. And if we want nature to come to life for us, we have to live in the middle of it for a while. When we get away from the voices of human beings, then we really start hearing the voices of animals and trees. They start talking to us, as it were. And we start talking back. Foundational faith, I would call it, the grounding for personal and biblical faith.

I have been blessed to spend several Lents living as a hermit in nature. When we get rid of our watches and all the usual reference points, it is amazing how real and compelling light and darkness become. It’s amazing how real animals become. And it’s amazing how much we notice about what’s happening in a tree each day. It’s almost as if we weren’t seeing it all before, and we wonder if we have ever seen at all. I don’t think that Western civilization realizes what a high price we pay for separating ourselves from the natural world. One of the prices is certainly a lack of a sort of natural contemplation, a natural seeing. My times in the hermitage re-situated me in God’s universe, in God’s providence and plan. I had a feeling of being realigned with what is. I belonged and was thereby saved! Think about it.

So, creation spirituality is, first of all, the natural spirituality of people who have learned how to see. I am beginning to think that much of institutional religion is rather useless if it is not grounded in natural seeing and nature religion.

We probably don’t communicate with something unless we have already experienced its communications to us. I know by the third week I was talking to lizards on my porch at the hermitage, and I have no doubt that somehow some communion was happening. I don’t know how to explain it beyond that. I was reattached, and they were reattached.

When we are at peace, when we are not fighting it, when we are not fixing and controlling this world, when we are not filled with anger, all we can do is start loving and forgiving. Nothing else makes sense when we are alone with God. All we can do is let go; there’s nothing worth holding on to, because there is nothing else we need. It is in that free space, I think, that realignment happens. Francis lived out of such realignment. And I think it is the realignment that he announced to the world in the form of worship and adoration.

I found little to no time during my professional career for such realignment. Even now in retirement I am only just beginning to do so with purpose and focus. I still spend too little time simply sitting, observing, and contemplating in sylvan settings. I resolve to try harder. I want to achieve the state Father Rohr sought, repeating from above:

Nothing else makes sense when we are alone with God. All we can do is let go; there’s nothing worth holding on to, because there is nothing else we need. It is in that free space, I think, that realignment happens.

 

A Postscript of Sorts

Just as we all enjoy seeing an old friend who surprises us when we least expect him, I encountered an old forest friend that I had not anticipated, striped maple, ubiquitous across Savage River State Forest. From a USDA Forest Service online publication:

Acer pensylvanicum, also called moosewood, is a small tree or large shrub identified by its conspicuous vertical white stripes on greenish-brown bark. It grows best on shaded, cool northern slopes of upland valleys where it is common on well drained sandy loams in small forest openings or as an understory tree in mixed hardwoods. This very slow growing maple may live to be 100 and is probably most important as a browse plant for wildlife, although the tree is sometimes planted as an ornamental in heavily shaded areas.

The included range map does not show striped maple in Alabama. I don’t recall seeing the species even here in northern Alabama. So, I was glad to see my old friend at New Germany State Park.

 

Likewise, I reveled in seeing wood fern (Dryopteris intermedia), a species not extending into Alabama. Another species of the genus occurs in our state. So, another long-forgotten friend in western Maryland!

 

 

 

 

 

My third book, Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits: Stories of Passion for Place and Everyday Nature (co-authored with Jennifer Wilhoit), dives deeply into how and why making such reacquaintances stirs my soul. Nature reaches me through all five portals: mind, body, heart, soul, and spirit.

Thoughts and Reflections

 

I offer these observations:

  • Borrowing from Father Richard Rohr, alone in Nature, “All we can do is let go; there’s nothing worth holding on to, because there is nothing else we need.”
  • I feel deep passion for special places in Nature, whether recent acquaintances or revisiting 51 years later.
  • Wherever I roam, Nature inspires and rewards my heart, mind, body, soul, and spirit.

Inhale and absorb Nature’s elixir. May Nature Inspire, Inform, and Reward you!

 

Note: All blog post images created & photographed by Stephen B. Jones unless otherwise noted. Please circulate images with photo credit: “©2021 Steve Jones, Great Blue Heron LLC. All Rights Reserved.”

Another Note: If you came to this post via a Facebook posting or by another route, please sign up now (no cost… no obligation) to receive my Blog Post email alerts: http://eepurl.com/cKLJdL

And a Third: I am available for Nature-Inspired Speaking, Writing, and Consulting — contact me at steve.jones.0524@gmail.com

 

Reminder of my Personal and Professional Purpose, Passion, and Cause

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:

Mission: Employ writing and speaking to educate, inspire, and enable readers and listeners to understand, appreciate, and enjoy Nature… and accept and practice Earth Stewardship.

Vision:

  • People of all ages will pay greater attention to and engage more regularly with Nature… and will accept and practice informed and responsible Earth Stewardship.
  • They will see their relationship to our natural world with new eyes… and will understand more clearly their Earth home.

Tagline/Motto: Steve (Great Blue Heron) encourages and seeks a better tomorrow through Nature-Inspired Living!

 

Steve’s Three Books

I wrote my books Nature Based Leadership (2016), Nature-Inspired Learning and Leading (2017), and Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits: Stories of Passion for Place and Everyday Nature (2019; co-authored with Dr. Jennifer Wilhoit) 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.

I began authoring books and Posts for several reasons:

  • I love hiking and exploring in 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 grand kids, 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

Steve's Books

 

All three of my books (Nature Based Leadership; Nature-Inspired Learning and Leading; Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits) present compilations of firsthand experiences expressing my (and co-author Dr. Wilhoit for Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits) deep passion for Nature. All three books offer observations and reflections on my relationship to the natural world… and the broader implications for society. Order from your local indie bookstore, or find them on IndieBound or other online sources such as Amazon and LifeRich.

 

 

 

Pennsylvania’s Hickory Creek Wilderness

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September 7, 2021, I hiked the Hickory Creek Wilderness in the Allegheny National Forest (ANF) in northwest Pennsylvania, about 40 miles west of where I conducted my 1985-86 doctoral research on soil-site relationships in second-growth Allegheny hardwood forests. The Wilderness forests are typical of the greater ANF across the Allegheny Plateau, second-growth and dominated by black cherry, red and sugar maple, mixed oaks, cucumber, white ash, white pine, and hemlock. Decades of high deer populations have eliminated most understory vegetation (excepting hay-scented and New York fern), including advanced tree regeneration, and evidence a four-to-five-foot browse line. This was my first return to the forest type of my doctoral field work in 25 years!

Hickory CreekHickory Creek

 

 

 

 

 

General Stand Condition

I spend a lot of time exploring bottomland hardwood forests near my home in northern Alabama, where understories are often dense with woody vegetation. The Hickory Creek forest floor istypically barren, carpeted fern-green on either side of the well-defined trail.

Hickory CreekHickory Creek

 

The climate is moist temperate, nearby Warren, PA averaging 47″ precipitation annually, evenly distributed across the seasons. Moss quickly colonizes fallen woody debris. Much cooler than northern Alabama, average July high temperature is 80 degrees; average January low is 15 degrees. Annual average snowfall is 100 inches. The same data points for Huntsville, Alabama are: 55″ precipitation; 90 July high; 30 January low; two inches of snow on average.

Hickory Creek

 

Species Composition

Black cherry is the signature species on these second growth Allegheny Hardwood forests. Black cherry, prized for its wood’s beauty and ease of working, is commercially in high demand. Nowhere else does this species grow better and of higher quality than on the Allegheny Plateau. The twin beauty below sports at least three 16-foot sawlogs below the first branch.

Hickory Creek

 

Red oaks (below) are common and, like the cherry above, grow straight and tall. Notice that the red oak (below left) is a twin; below right is a triple. Oaks often regenerate from stump or root sprouting. The twin and triplet suggest that the 90-or-so-year-ago harvest triggered sprouting from the stump of the harvested oak mother trees. Perhaps multiple sprouts generated…only two and three, respectively, survived nine decades.

Hickory CreekHickory Creek

 

The chestnut oak below is also a double. All the oaks pictured reach high into the canopy. Multiple-stemmed main canopy trees are not unusual in these Allegheny forests, nor for our own northern Alabama upland and bottomland oaks. I am not suggesting that regeneration by seed (acorn) does not occur, nor that multiple stems derive from only logged stumps. Picture a healthy oak seedling clipped by a browsing deer. Oak resprouts vigorously after herbivory. Likewise, imagine a vigorous seedling or sapling charred by fire, killed from the root collar, then aggressively sprouting as a multiple-stemmed individual reaching skyward. Importantly, all stems in such clusters, whether in year one after sprouting or at age 90-years, are vegetatively reproduced, genetically identical, biological twins, triplets, etc.

Hickory Creek

 

Cucumber tree (below) is a common, albeit minor, stand component.

Hickory Creek

 

I found an occasional white pine. This individual stands as a dominant member of the main canopy. Unlike the barren (fern-covered) understory elsewhere, white pine regeneration (10-15-year-old saplings) offers promise within seed-fall of the mother tree.

Hickory Creek

 

Nearby a small grove of hemlock likewise supports advanced hemlock regeneration. White pine and hemlock are shade tolerant when young, enabling advanced regeneration to patiently await crown openings or major forest disturbance.

Hickory Creek

 

Tree Abnormalities

Red maple is another common Allegheny Hardwood component. This individual exhibited multiple woodpecker wounds (below left). The two close-up wounds below right appear to be kept active year after year. The larger wound is attempting to callous, yet both openings show recent and ongoing wounding.

Hickory Creek

 

This tortured red maple, damaged severely as a sapling, manages to add enough annual wood to stay erect. Nature’s resilience, persistence, and adaptation never ceases to amaze me. This individual will never reach the main canopy (it occupies the intermediate canopy, the best it will ever do), nor will it live as long as its over-topping neighbors. However, it retains life and, were a major blowdown event to level the forest, this tree will produce stump sprouts that may surge ahead of its neighbor’s new shoots, perhaps assuring its next life could be lived in the dominant canopy. I’m assuming that this deformed iteration is owing to early physical damage and does not reflect some genetic predisposition to poor form.

Note once more the fern-dense forest floor, the result of decades of excessive deer browsing, which persists across the Allegheny Plateau.

Hickory Creek

 

Excessive Deer Browsing

I did find woody regeneration within the fern cover, apparently hidden from browsing deer beneath the winter snowpack. Below left is blueberry, below right red maple.

Hickory Creek

 

As well as red oak (left) and American beech (right).

Hickory Creek

 

Their presence offers little promise of escaping the deer; however, they do evidence that seed is falling, germinating, and finding suitable soil to at least begin life. Over-browsing has presented a regeneration problem in these forests since well before I conducted my doctoral research in the mid-1980s.

 

 

Thoughts and Reflections

 

I offer these observations:

  • Every forest has its story, read from a snapshot in time, deciphered from the observer’s experience and understanding of Nature’s language.
  • Returning to a forest type I knew intimately a half century ago is akin to reminiscing with an old friend.
  • Special places, I’ve learned, reside deep in our mind, heart, body, soul, and spirit.

Inhale and absorb Nature’s elixir. May Nature Inspire, Inform, and Reward you!

 

Note: All blog post images created & photographed by Stephen B. Jones unless otherwise noted. Please circulate images with photo credit: “©2021 Steve Jones, Great Blue Heron LLC. All Rights Reserved.”

Another Note: If you came to this post via a Facebook posting or by another route, please sign up now (no cost… no obligation) to receive my Blog Post email alerts: http://eepurl.com/cKLJdL

And a Third: I am available for Nature-Inspired Speaking, Writing, and Consulting — contact me at steve.jones.0524@gmail.com

 

Reminder of my Personal and Professional Purpose, Passion, and Cause

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:

Mission: Employ writing and speaking to educate, inspire, and enable readers and listeners to understand, appreciate, and enjoy Nature… and accept and practice Earth Stewardship.

Vision:

  • People of all ages will pay greater attention to and engage more regularly with Nature… and will accept and practice informed and responsible Earth Stewardship.
  • They will see their relationship to our natural world with new eyes… and will understand more clearly their Earth home.

Tagline/Motto: Steve (Great Blue Heron) encourages and seeks a better tomorrow through Nature-Inspired Living!

 

Steve’s Three Books

I wrote my books Nature Based Leadership (2016), Nature-Inspired Learning and Leading (2017), and Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits: Stories of Passion for Place and Everyday Nature (2019; co-authored with Dr. Jennifer Wilhoit) 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.

I began authoring books and Posts for several reasons:

  • I love hiking and exploring in 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 grand kids, 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

Steve's BooksHickory Creek

 

All three of my books (Nature Based Leadership; Nature-Inspired Learning and Leading; Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits) present compilations of firsthand experiences expressing my (and co-author Dr. Wilhoit for Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits) deep passion for Nature. All three books offer observations and reflections on my relationship to the natural world… and the broader implications for society. Order from your local indie bookstore, or find them on IndieBound or other online sources such as Amazon and LifeRich.

Pennsylvania’s McConnell’s Mill State Park

/in , , /by

September 8, 2021, I hiked along Slippery Rock Creek at McConnell’s Mill State Park some 40 miles north of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. This Post focuses on the Nature of this geologic, environmental, and historic gorge in west central Pennsylvania.

Human and natural history intersect in nearly every wild place I’ve wandered in the eastern US. McConnell’s Mill State Park along the Slippery Rock Creek gorge is yet another example. Daniel Kennedy built the original grist mill at this site in 1852; fire destroyed the structure in 1868 and he rebuilt that same year. Thomas McConnell bought the mill in 1875. Officials dedicated the mill and surrounding property as McConnell’s Mill State Park in 1957. The Park encompasses 2,546 acres.

 

The covered bridge crosses the creek just 200 feet below the mill. A fine old structure, the bridge was built in 1874 and rehabilitated in 2016. I find something special…a sense of antiquity and comfort…in historic wooden covered bridges. May it stand for another 150 years!

 

The Gorge

The creek runs strong and true through the rocky (sandstone) gorge. Slippery Rock Gorge is a National Natural Landmark, so designated by the US Department of the Interior in 1972.

 

Exquisite beauty defines the trails along the creek, the forest rising from among the boulders. The trail surface is generally smooth and wide. I enjoyed being able to observe the creek and ascending side slopes without need for watching every footfall carefully. Toss in a handful of side-spring crossings and wooden stairs. The full effect is aesthetic and peaceful to the extreme.

 

Over the eons, boulders and fallen rimrock have populated the gorge bottom (below left). Bedrock in form of vertical faces lines the gorge in places. The gorge bottom is deeply shaded, very moist, and several degrees cooler that the forests and fields above. I felt sheltered, protected, and isolated from the world beyond the park. Here I was within an hour of Pittsburgh, yet this in every dimension appeared to be raw wildness.

 

The Gorge and its history warrant far more discussion than I have given it. However, my purpose is not to offer a treatise, but to present a broad introduction to an amazing slice of Nature within reach of a major American city. I’ve discovered during my lifetime of Nature exploration that wildness and Nature’s beauty, magic, wonder, and awe are within easy reach no matter where we are in our great country… or across this magnificent planet Earth.

 

The Forest and its Trees

I have lately begun to deliberate in my own mind the distinction between old growth forest and old forest. My wanderings in the Heart’s Content Natural Area (400-year-old remnant forest) a day before this McConnell’s Mill hike, gave me a nearby frame of reference. I believe that this old gorge-bottom forest does not rise to the level of old growth. I’ll address the distinction in subsequent Posts.

Eastern hemlock (below left) and red oak (its back against the rock face below right) are common within the gorge.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yellow birch (below), common in the canyon, brings back fond memories of my northern woods’ adventures. Yellow birch does extend sporadically into northeast Alabama, but it is uncommon.

 

Black cherry’s range extends throughout Alabama, yet it seldom achieves the significance, quality, and stature it holds in the Allegheny highlands of SW New York, NW Pennsylvania, and in cove sites south into the Smokies.

 

Hemlock (below left) predominates in the gorge. Yellow poplar, like the two 30-inch stems below right, flourishes on these rich protected lower slopes.

 

American beech and sugar maple, two shade tolerant species, also thrive in such microsites.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All the trees I just introduced exceed my unofficial criterion of old. I estimate that many are at least 150 years. I stress “estimate.”

 

Life Among the Boulders

Ecology is the branch of biology that deals with the relations of organisms to one another and to their physical surroundings. One element of ecology worthy of Blog-pursuit is how trees in this gorge interact with the boulders and exposed bedrock that constitute the canyon floor.

The life span of even old trees here in the gorge may reach or occasionally exceed 300 years. The rock upon which this black birch clings is a million times that old, 300 million years. The rock’s flat top collects organic matter from above, upon which mosses and ferns grow, decay, hold moisture, and provide suitable substrate and microclimate for birch, hemlock, and other tree species to germinate, begin a life cycle, and knowingly extend roots down seeking mineral soil to sustain life beyond the seedlings stage. This birch reached literal paydirt at the rock’s base.

 

This hemlock is fully exploiting the soil and organic matter covering the large slab of sandstone 150 vertical feet above the creek. Somewhere in its (and the birch above) genetic code there are instructions for germinating and surviving on top of a boulder, slab, stump, or fallen log.

 

These two trios (in each case a yellow birch and two hemlocks) found purchase on the respective rock shelf. All three on both rocks seem healthy and vibrant.

 

The yellow birch below is employing a long root-arm to reach mineral soil. Yoda wisely proclaimed, Do or do not, there is no try. Birch has, over millennia of evolution, learned to send root-scouts to search for mineral soil and to secure the nutrients and moisture essential for sustaining life-success (i.e. living long and well enough to produce and disperse seed).

 

Nature does indeed abhor a vacuum. A fern and moss terrarium covers the rock top below left. Moss drapes the rock face below right. Life thrives within every available niche on the canyon floor.

 

A yellow birch long ago found a welcoming rock crevice and, as the tree grew, now embraces the constricting rock. Ferns have captured the high ground below right. Were the same rock exposed at the canyon rim above, the rock would not be such a favorable microsite for fern nor moss. The gorge micro-climate makes almost any surface suitable for life and living.

 

I nearly head-brushed this beech twig (below left) covered by beech blight aphids. From the InsectIdentification website:

Beech Blight Aphids can be found on the twigs, leaves and branches of a variety of deciduous trees, but the beech tree is a popular hangout. They are white and fluffy, as if small bits of cotton or white wool have been glued to their bodies. This hairy substance is actually made of strings of wax that the aphid secretes onto itself. The texture of the wax is thought to be unappealing to beetles and wasps that might eat it. It is also an efficient way of reducing the loss of water by providing a hydro-phobic barrier that prevents evaporation.

Beech Blight Aphids tend to be found in clusters and may at first be overlooked as a fungus or lichen. Like other aphids, they use their mouth parts to drain their host plant of its juices. They then produce a sticky, sweet substance called “honeydew” from the plant juices once they eliminate it. Honeydew is a sweet, attractive food source for ants and, therefore, it is likely to find ants in the vicinity of aphids in order to harvest the sap-like excretion.

Molding honeydew covers the litter trailside (below right) beneath the aphid-coated branch.

 

Late growing season flowers were notably scarce in the dense canyon shade. I found just a small patch of pale jewelweed.

 

Taking care not to contact this wood nettle plant, I snapped a photo. Also known as stinging nettle, its stems and leaves are covered with hairs containing caustic irritants. I did not wish to spoil my canyon explorations with caustic irritants!

 

I had previously visited the mill with my son and his family during deep winter when snow created a post card image of the mill and bridge, and the frozen and snow-covered creek above and below the dam. I can visualize a series of photo-essay Posts chronicling the seasonal shifts in the gorge. Because we live 700 miles south of where our son and his family reside, I will likely not pursue such a project. Nevertheless, I did enjoy my early fall hike along Slippery Rock Creek within the Slippery Rock Gorge, a National Natural Landmark, protected for all future generations.

Aldo Leopold talked with unusual resignation about protecting such wild places:

All conservation of wildness is self-defeating, for to cherish we must see and fondle, and when enough have seen and fondled, there is no wilderness left to cherish.

I believe he would be pleasantly surprised by how effectively, across America, we have taken his words as a call to action…identifying and protecting special wild places. Find one near you; visit it and support continuing Nature conservation.

 

Thoughts and Reflections

 

I offer these observations:

  • Whether in northern Alabama or west central Pennsylvania, special natural places warrant special protection.
  • We have taken Aldo Leopold’s call to action seriously, protecting special natural places across the country.
  • Wherever I roam, Nature inspires and rewards my heart, mind, body, soul, and spirit.

Inhale and absorb Nature’s elixir. May Nature Inspire, Inform, and Reward you!

 

Note: All blog post images created & photographed by Stephen B. Jones unless otherwise noted. Please circulate images with photo credit: “©2021 Steve Jones, Great Blue Heron LLC. All Rights Reserved.”

Another Note: If you came to this post via a Facebook posting or by another route, please sign up now (no cost… no obligation) to receive my Blog Post email alerts: http://eepurl.com/cKLJdL

And a Third: I am available for Nature-Inspired Speaking, Writing, and Consulting — contact me at steve.jones.0524@gmail.com

 

Reminder of my Personal and Professional Purpose, Passion, and Cause

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:

Mission: Employ writing and speaking to educate, inspire, and enable readers and listeners to understand, appreciate, and enjoy Nature… and accept and practice Earth Stewardship.

Vision:

  • People of all ages will pay greater attention to and engage more regularly with Nature… and will accept and practice informed and responsible Earth Stewardship.
  • They will see their relationship to our natural world with new eyes… and will understand more clearly their Earth home.

Tagline/Motto: Steve (Great Blue Heron) encourages and seeks a better tomorrow through Nature-Inspired Living!

 

Steve’s Three Books

I wrote my books Nature Based Leadership (2016), Nature-Inspired Learning and Leading (2017), and Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits: Stories of Passion for Place and Everyday Nature (2019; co-authored with Dr. Jennifer Wilhoit) 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.

I began authoring books and Posts for several reasons:

  • I love hiking and exploring in 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 grand kids, 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

Steve's Books

 

All three of my books (Nature Based Leadership; Nature-Inspired Learning and Leading; Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits) present compilations of firsthand experiences expressing my (and co-author Dr. Wilhoit for Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits) deep passion for Nature. All three books offer observations and reflections on my relationship to the natural world… and the broader implications for society. Order from your local indie bookstore, or find them on IndieBound or other online sources such as Amazon and LifeRich.

 

 

Heart’s Content in NW Pennsylvania (Part Two)

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The Special Nature of an Old Growth Allegheny Hardwood Forest

 

September 7, 2021 I hiked and explored the Heart’s Content Scenic Area (a 400-year-old remnant of the original forest that covered the Allegheny Plateau when European settlers arrived in the 18th Century) in the Allegheny National Forest of northwest Pennsylvania. This preserved area is located just 40 miles west of where I conducted my 1985-86 doctoral research on soil-site relationships for second-growth Allegheny hardwoods. This was my first return to the Allegheny in 35 years!

I issued a first Post from this visit October 14, 2021, focusing on the origin chronology of the 90-100-year-old second growth forests of my doctoral research, and the species composition within this ancient forest: https://stevejonesgbh.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=9643&action=edit

This Post focuses on the special Nature of this ancient forest.

We have all read some of the earliest European settlers’ accounts of the deep forests greeting them when they arrived on our North American shores: forests dark and foreboding, foul and repugnant; teeming wtih wild beasts and savages. Perhaps some 17th century New England forests were dark and foreboding. Such is not the case today at Heart’s Content. The stand beyond the entrance sign below looks rather dark, yet, dappled sulight is penetrating the forest. The trail (below right) wends through patches of sunlight and deep shade.

Heart's Content

Heart's Content

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sunlight brightens the trunks of a massive hemlock (left) and red oak, both 3-4 feet in diameter.

Heart's Content

 

Large dead and down woody debris characterizes the forest floor. The hemlock log below left measures four feet at what would have been breast-high when the tree stood. Sunlight is spotlighting the log and dappling the diverse woody debris below right. Old growth characteristics in our eastern forests include some large individuals, a great deal of dead and down woody debris, scattered crown openings, ansd multi-tiered crown structure. The two photos evidence all elements.

Heart's ContentHeart's Content

 

The ancient main canopy individuals, across all species, reach straight and tall (see the hemlock and oak photos above) to their first branches, suggesting that for at least the stand’s first century-plus, full stocking provided sunlight only to the active high crowns. The white pine (left below) is typical of the ancient Heart’s Content individuals. The white pine below right stands near the parking area, likely planted nearly a century ago when officials dedicated the preserve. The differences in appearance are distinct, reflecting available sunshine during that first century following establishment. The old growth tree competed fiercely for sunlight above its elongating primary shoots, hemmed in on all sides by adjacent trees, the tip to some extent shaded. The planted white pine below right presents a form referred to as a cabbage pine. White pine weevils ruthlessly lay eggs in the terminal and lateral shoots that recieve full sunlight. Year after year, weevils infested the primary shoots of this pine, restricting the expression of single stem apical dominance. Each successive year resulted in compound forking, leading to its squat cabbage-like form. Dense lateral competition for most species “trains” the winners (those that out-compete their neighbors) to grow straight and true, striving vertically for the full sunlight above. The cabbage pine has no commercial timber value, yet, it contributes unlimited benefits: aesthetic, wildlife cover, and seed production for critter-consumption. I viewed it as a curioisity and a tool for learning and interpretation.

Heart's ContentHeart's Content

 

Nothing lives without end. The dance of life and death is continuous. Yes, the forest can live on and on, yet, individual trees die even as the forest persists. The massive hemlocks below fell from the canopy decades ago, slowly yielding their biomass to decay organisms, inexorably reincorporating into the forest floor, and from there recycling to living and emerging shrubs and trees.

Heart's Content

 

Mosses are abundant, carpenting and enshrouding downed debris. Fungi mycelium account for large quantities of biomass within the decaying woody debris. A few orange mushrooms dot the mossy log below right. Life and death embrace in the great circle of forest ecosystems, a reality more easily grasped in such ancient forests.

Heart's ContentHeart's Content

 

The 3-4-foot diameter hemlock and white pine below left (white pine in foreground) stood shoulder to shoulder across four centuries. The pine is recently dead, its bark still clinging. The pine has already begun its return to the soil. Its crown is needle-free. Fungi, I am certain, have already found entrance to the wood through unseen fissues in the dead bark. Within a few years, the bark will slough, mushrooms with decorate the trunk, the small branches will break and fall. In time, gravity will prevail and the tree will find the forest floor.

Heart's Content

 

The introduced emerald ash borer entered our eastern forests from Asia, first detected in Michigan in 2002, and now reported in 35 states, including Alabama. The pests’ mortality front is racing southward across Tennessee heading our way. The photo below right shows the canopy void from an original growth white ash. The borer does not show deference to the elderly. During my two days exploring forests in northwest and west-central Pennsylvania, I found no living ash.

Heart's Content

 

How tragic that our white and green ash will go the way of American chestnut (chestnut blight) and our emblematic elm (Dutch elm disease).

Heart's Content

Heart's Content

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Forest Curiosities

 

Not all disease organisms lead to imminent death. The American beech below has a circumferential canker, likely caused by viral, fungal, or bacterial action introduced by a physical injury. From forestpathology.org:

A canker is an infectious disease of the phloem and cambium on stems, branches or twigs of trees.  A patch of phloem and cambium is killed, the underlying wood dies as a result, and the killing often progresses over time. Cankers are often sunken if they grow slowly because the shoot continues to grow around it. Also, callus may be produced around the canker that makes it appear more sunken.

There are some diseases usually considered with other groups that are cankers, as well as injuries that can be confused with cankers:

  • Bacterial cankers.  These are covered with bacterial diseases.
  • Canker rots. Some basidiomycetes that decay wood in the stem may also kill patches of sapwood and bark. We consider most of them along with stem-decay fungi.
  • Stem rusts. These cause cankers, but we consider them separately with the rusts.
  • Foliage diseases, shoot and tip blights. Some of these kinds of diseases also can involve small cankers of twigs, branches, and even main stems; they are considered under foliage diseases.
  • Winter injury or sunscald. These kill patches of bark, and can be confused with cankers.  Also, canker pathogens can infect living tissues at the margins, so they can become cankers.

I am fascinated, as I have professed often in these Posts, with tree form oddities and curiosities, like the American beech below.

Heart's Content

 

If the white pine and hemlock earlier were standing shoulder to shoulder across the four centuries, the white pine and American beech below are in centuries-long warm ebrace. Yet another forest curiosity. Now for a not-so-warm commentary on the stupidity and ignorance of the human psyche. Why do we insignifcant, supposedly intelligent humans, behave as idiot pissants when confronted by a smooth-barked beech? Why, with pocketknife in-hand, do some ignorant oafs insist upon leaving the mark of their fleeting existence upon a tree in a 400-year-old forest cathedral? Why not strive to leave some small corner of the world better through wisdom, knowledge, passion, and hard work! As I frequently remind my grandkids, “You can’t fix stupid!”

Heart's Content

 

The eastern newt seemed quite content here in Heart’s Content, living and thriving among the decay, dampness, and nutrient-rich oasis of 400 years worth of bountiful life and its associated dead and down woody debris. How considerate (no arrogance and studpidity in this amphibian species) of the eastern newt to announce his neon-presence so splendidly!

heart's Content

 

I express my gratitude for those who preserved and donated the original 20 acres of old growth for preservation across time, so that we may believe, look, see, feel, and act in response. May we continue to be worthy and deserving recipients of the gift and foresight…and pass such benevolence on to future generations.

Thoughts and Reflections

 

I offer these observations:

  • We prepare most readily for the future when we understand the past.
  • So readily apparent in old growth, all forests engage in a continuous cycle of life and death.
  • Just as others before us preserved special places in Nature, we all must do our part to lay the foundation for generations yet to come.

Inhale and absorb Nature’s elixir. May Nature Inspire, Inform, and Reward you!

 

Note: All blog post images created & photographed by Stephen B. Jones unless otherwise noted. Please circulate images with photo credit: “©2021 Steve Jones, Great Blue Heron LLC. All Rights Reserved.”

Another Note: If you came to this post via a Facebook posting or by an another route, please sign up now (no cost… no obligation) to receive my Blog Post email alerts: http://eepurl.com/cKLJdL

And a Third: I am available for Nature-Inspired Speaking, Writing, and Consulting — contact me at steve.jones.0524@gmail.com

 

Reminder of my Personal and Professional Purpose, Passion, and Cause

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:

Mission: Employ writing and speaking to educate, inspire, and enable readers and listeners to understand, appreciate, and enjoy Nature… and accept and practice Earth Stewardship.

Vision:

  • People of all ages will pay greater attention to and engage more regularly with Nature… and will accept and practice informed and responsible Earth Stewardship.
  • They will see their relationship to our natural world with new eyes… and will understand more clearly their Earth home.

Tagline/Motto: Steve (Great Blue Heron) encourages and seeks a better tomorrow through Nature-Inspired Living!

 

Steve’s Three Books

I wrote my books Nature Based Leadership (2016), Nature-Inspired Learning and Leading (2017), and Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits: Stories of Passion for Place and Everyday Nature (2019; co-authored with Dr. Jennifer Wilhoit) 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.

I began writing books and Posts for several reasons:

  • I love hiking and exploring in 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 actually 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 grand kids, 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

Steve's Books

 

All three of my books (Nature Based Leadership; Nature-Inspired Learning and Leading; Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits) present compilations of personal experiences expressing my (and co-author Dr. Wilhoit for Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits) deep passion for Nature. All three books offer observations and reflections on my relationship to the natural world… and the broader implications for society. Order any and all from your local indie bookstore, or find them on IndieBound or other online sources such as Amazon and LifeRich.