Non-Flowering Plants Atop the Mountain at Cheaha: EE AA Annual Conference

/in , , /by

This is the third of what will be four posts from my February 28-March 2 visit to Cheaha State Park. I joined some 120 environmental educators attending the annual meeting of the Environmental Educators Association of Alabama (EE AA). The group invited me to present the opening keynote address Thursday evening (2/28). I stayed for the entire conference, enjoying it immensely. This blog post presents the exhilarating diversity of non-flowering plants I encountered during the limited time I ventured outdoors at Cheaha in intermittent rain and nearly continuous fog. In the fourth post I will summarize and highlight my keynote address: Seeing and Translating Nature’s Infinite Storm of Beauty.

My first EE AA meeting post provided a broad conference and Cheaha overview: https://stevejonesgbh.com/2019/03/05/magic-and-wonder-on-the-mountain-an-inspiring-conference-at-cheaha-state-park/ (Magic and Wonder on the Mountain: An Inspiring Conference at Cheaha State Park). Last week’s blog post explored a conflicting set of  reactions and reflections to something we observed from the Rock Garden overlook during an interpretive hike: https://stevejonesgbh.com/2019/03/11/scars-upon-the-land-thoughts-stirred-by-a-view-from-cheahas-rock-garden/ .

I begin with a caveat; I am a tree guy. I fully understand the role that non-flowering plants play in our Alabama forests, yet I am convincingly inept at identifying beyond the simple characterization among lichens, mosses, and fungi. I can tell you that I took all of the photos in this post atop Mount Cheaha above 2,000 feet. The two below are views to the WNW (lower left) and N (lower right) from the Rock Garden and Bald Rock, respectively, snapped during one of two times when the views were not cloud- and fog-obscured.

Conditions atop Cheaha are harsh (wind and ice storms). Virginia pine (Pinus virginiana) and chestnut oak (Quercus prinus) dominate the upper elevation forest. Individuals are often battered and broken. Non-flowering plants colonize virtually all bark (dead and living trees) and stone surfaces. Cloudy skies following a rain-soaked morning seemed to intensify the lichen color and contrasts. In fact, the lichens brought vibrancy to the otherwise overwhelmingly drab and dormant scene.

Not just color, but intricate, delicate, and masterpiece-grade patterns, textures, and species admixtures. As I sorted these images I wondered whether anyone has assembled a coffee table quality collection of photographs (taken with a camera several quality steps above my iPhone), complete with detailed identification. I see and appreciate the exquisite beauty, yet that simply reminds me how little I know about these magnificent living organisms. As I enter my second year beyond full-time employment (believe me, university CEO gigs demand 24/7!), I am learning continuously, even as I am constantly learning how little I know about so many things that draw my interest. Non-flowering plants among many such topics. I am not sure, for example, whether the darker green (lower left) is a moss or alga. I believe the rock at lower right supports both crustose and foliose (at top of photo) lichens, with at least two species of the latter. I fear my knowledge is a millimeter deep and kilometers wide.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The foliose lichen below could be a toad skin lichen, one of the rock tripes, yet don’t take that as a firm identification! Or is it possibly a liverwort? Regardless, I find great fascination in examining the non-tree, non-flowering plant life atop Cheaha.

I mentioned the tortured tree forms, savaged by exposure and ice storms. These chestnut oaks epitomize their tough existence. Although one is a ‘V’ and the other a ‘4,’ both play host to lichen cloaks. Again, how drab they would be without their lichen garb.

I presume the fructose lichens below represent two species of distinct coloration. I’m also surmising that very slow tree growth and frequent moisturizing fog keep the lichens vibrant. Slow-growing trees severely minimize the rate of bark shedding, allowing lichen colonies to reach greater thickness and extent.

The tapestry of life begs inspection, study, and learning. The stem at lower left presents, again, both crustose and foliose. The old branch stub (lower right) reminds me of a ram’s head adorned in its lichen fur.

Lichen in combination with moss increments the aesthetic factor, in my view, a minimum of an order of magnitude. The wise person who first observed that nature abhors a vacuum could have been hiking atop Cheaha! Imagine, a bare rock providing such security, anchorage, and nourishment to a living work of art.

Our 11-year-old Alabama grandson said the lower left image appeared to him as a mountain lake (lichen) surrounded by deep forest (moss) sloping away. I can’t argue with his perspective. A true nature enthusiast must have a vivid imagination and be willing and able to see the beauty, magic, wonder, and awe hidden within. “The power of imagination makes us infinite” (John Muir). Reindeer and crustose lichen and moss populate the rock island (lower right). I considered what adventures (and dangers) I might encounter on the island if reduced to one-inch height.

Moss cushions gathered at the base of this chestnut oak (lower left). The fish moss (below right) confirmed for me that we were in the midst (or mists) of an extended period of excessive precipitation! The fish is perched (I couldn’t resist!) on a rock of roughly the same size among the leaf litter. Again, imagination is an essential vehicle for truly enjoying a walk in the woods. Recall Muir’s observation, too, that “In every walk in nature one receives far more than he seeks.”

What a treat to find witch’s butter (Tremella mesenterica) on a dead pine branch. This orange jelly fungus, like all the mosses and lichens proliferating atop Cheaha, seemed to relish the wet conditions.

A non-flowering plant specialist could spend hours examining and inventorying the life-richness occupying the standing dead oak sapling and the rock ledge: beard, foliose, and crustose lichens, little tan fungal bodies, and moss. A macro lens in capable hands (with expert knowledge) could reveal mysteries and magic far beyond my simple (and ignorant) aesthetic admiration.

Even we Nature enthusiasts too often focus at landscape scale, seeing only the hills and forests. We sometimes don’t see the trees for the forest, a flip on the old saw about not seeing the forest for the trees. And within the forest we may restrict our sight to the trees, missing the richness, for example, of Cheaha’s incredible palette of non-flowering plants. Imagine the poor soul who stops at the lower elevation scenic overlook (below) and has no hint of the diverse forest life within the forest captured by the few frames within this post. What would I have discovered if I had visited the Park, expecting blue skies and unlimited vistas, and bemoaned the rain and fog. My assumption is that we had few such disappointed visitors among my environmental educator colleagues. They represent the choir of Nature’s sanctuary. Their mission, and mine, is to spread the word and convert more citizens to understand, appreciate, and enjoy Nature… and accept and practice Earth Stewardship.

I witnessed and enjoyed spiritual lift from the grand scale (sunset the first evening on Cheaha below) to the witch’s butter on a dead pine branch to the cushion moss fish on the floor of an otherwise drab and colorless, bruised and battered stand of chestnut oak.

I urge all would-be naturalists and Nature enthusiasts to open your eyes and seek the beauty, magic, wonder, and awe that lie hidden within. To those willing to seek, Nature offers unlimited reward. “There’s gold in them thar hills” (Mark Twain), but not of the spending kind. The gold I saw is the inward-investing kind. Gather it through all five portals (body, mind, heart, soul, and spirit), store it internally, and harvest the dividends of enjoyment, satisfaction, and fulfillment!

 

Thoughts and Reflections

I wrote my books (Nature Based Leadership (2016) and Nature-Inspired Learning and Leading (2017)) and the two scheduled for 2019 (Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits: Stories of Passion for Place and Everyday Nature and Natural Elixir: Lifting Your Life through Nature’s Inspiration) 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. Both published books are available on Amazon and other online sources.

Here are three succinct lessons I draw from this Blog Post:

  • In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks (John Muir).
  • So much of Nature’s beauty, magic, wonder, and awe lie hidden in plain sight.
  • There’s gold in them thar hills (Mark Twain) — gold of the inward-investment kind!

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

 

Note: All blog post images created & photographed by Stephen B. Jones unless otherwise noted. Please circulate images with photo credit: “©2019 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: https://stevejonesgbh.com/contact/

And a Third: I am available for Nature-Inspired Speaking, Writing, and boutique 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 my own filters. 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.
  • Great Blue Heron clients will see their relationship to our natural world with new eyes… and will understand more clearly their Earth home.

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

 

Magic and Wonder on the Mountain: An Inspiring Conference at Cheaha State Park

/in , , , /by

An Adventure in Learning and Reflecting

Some 120 environmental educators (annual meeting of the Environmental Educators Association of Alabama — EE AA) met February 28 through March 2nd at Cheaha State Park. The group invited me to present the opening keynote address Thursday evening (2/28). I stayed for the entire conference, enjoying it immensely. I present some of my reactions and reflections in this Great Blue Heron post. In subsequent posts over the next several weeks I’ll pursue other themes:

  1. Seeing and Translating Nature’s Infinite Storm of Beauty: My Keynote Atop the Mountain
  2. Scars Upon the Land: Thoughts Stirred by a View from Cheaha’s Rock Garden Overlook
  3. Non-Flowering Plants Atop the Mountain: Observations While Attending the EE AA Conference

Developing these Great Blue Heron reflections is a labor of love. I get to visit natural attractions across the state (and beyond), from Gulf State Park mid-January (staying ocean-side) to Alabama’s highest point in the southern Appalachians (staying in a rustic Civilian Conservation Corps cabin just a few hundred yards from the summit):

Vegetation and scenery pay dividends whether Gulf coastal forest or mountain top:

And what an absolute privilege to rub shoulders with scores of environmental educators, fellow champions for informed and responsible Earth stewardship. For the first time over the course of my four-and-a-half-decade career, I have just recently drafted my own mission, vision, and motto:

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.

Motto: Encourage and seek a better tomorrow through Nature-inspired living.

Imagine my surprise and delight to find the EE AA mission: Enhance the abilities of formal and informal educators to connect people to the natural world in order to foster responsible stewardship.

I knew then that we would connect, and we did! We mission, share passion, purpose, and spirit. Whether college student or septuagenarian, the Earth stewardship thread connected us all.

Rather than provide a detailed description of the conference (for that, please visit the EE AA website), I will offer a few photographs and reflections. I’ll begin with the conference theme: Magic and Wonder Atop the Mountain. Visit my five previous GBH posts (from a two-day Cheaha visit mid-October 2018) to see my own observations on the magic and wonder of Cheaha State Park and the adjoining Talladega National Forest.

Touching Mind, Body, Heart, Soul, and Spirit

I arrived early enough Thursday afternoon (2/28) to check into cabin number five, stash my exhibit gear and books at the Bald Rock Lodge (conference headquarters), and walk the Bald Rock Trail, an ADA accessible boardwalk to the overlook. I suppose that because I grew up an outdoor enthusiast in the central Appalachians, I feel that the road leading up to Cheaha State Park is taking me home. As I walked the boardwalk, my heart pounded, but not from exertion. Instead, I experienced exhilaration with being back atop the mountain. I connected with all five portals: heart, mind, body, soul, and spirit. Each its own receptivity center. Each sending pleasant and lifting signals to my core. Feeling light, I floated along the trail. I admit (without reservation) to never having taken recreational drugs, preferring instead this natural elixir called Nature. Apropos, I’ve titled my third book (I’m selecting a publisher) Natural Elixir: Lifting Your Life through Nature’s Inspiration.

The forests atop Cheaha are not towering cathedral groves. Instead the harsh climate, thin soils, and shallow bedrock support mostly Virginia pine (ravaged 3-4 years ago by a severe ice storm) and chestnut oak, many weather-tortured and contorted (photos from the boardwalk).

Yet I see magic and beauty even in these savaged trees, bearing testament to Nature’s extremes on a peak (2,407′) that mountain snobs would deem a foothill, if not just a molehill! But I urge visitors to look more appreciatively, marvel at the co-stars of this hill-top drama. Life finds purchase and offers adornment on every rock and tree-bark surface. While a rolling stone gathers no moss, a stationary boulder atop Cheaha graciously harbors any and all lichen colonies. That morning’s rain brought deep color intensity and vibrancy to the abundant lichen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And moss likewise adorns every otherwise vacant surface at ground level, whether at the base of a tree or sharing a rock with its lichen companion. View the lower right photo as an alpine lichen lake surrounded by mountain slopes of moss forest. John Muir once wrote, “The power of the imagination makes us infinite.” I may not have felt infinite atop the mountain, yet I did feel the infinite beauty, magic, wonder, and awe of Nature. I sensed Nature’s infinite storm of beauty, also a term Muir employed 130 years ago.

Heart still pounding with delight, I reached the Bald Rock overlook. The infinite storm of beauty still surged, the Talladega National Forest stretching to the north and northeast, lower left and right, respectively.

The ebbing day saluted us with the last glimpse of blue sky we would see during the conference. A salute fit for kings! The dense-wedged stratus (lower left) reminded me of an Imperial Starship cruising from the south. Perhaps preparing to disembark a few alien environmental educators?

The interstellar educators did not register for the annual meeting, yet I did spot some forest oddities, suggesting that alien lifeforms may have been observing.

 

The Stage is Set: May the Learning Begin

I presented all of that to set the stage for the conference. Fact is, the conference theme did the same: Magic and Wonder Atop the Mountain. Not a person attending did not share the sentiments I expressed above in the Blog Post introduction. These are special people, blessed (they and I concur that theirs is a calling) and privileged to practice their craft and harness their passion in service to making tomorrow brighter through wisdom, knowledge, and hard work.

Again, rather than revisit the printed program, rehash the array of speakers, or review the topics, here is a collection of photos that reflect the intense emotion, deep passion, and unbridled enthusiasm characterizing conference participants. I like that both Renee Raney, Cheaha State Park Superintendent (lower left in the CCC-built lodge), and Mandy Pearson (lower right at the CCC-constructed reservoir), Cheaha Naturalist and EE AA President, are gesturing toward the heavens! Just part of the wonder and magic. Perhaps Mandy is acknowledging “Power to the Fog”! March 1st and 2nd, continuous fog enveloped the Park.

 

 

 

 

 

Ramona, 14-month-old daughter of two attendees, served as unofficial conference mascot. She helped entertain the audience during my Thursday evening address, forcing me to ad lib a time or two as she performed antics near the lectern. Ramona added levity and served as a not-so-subtle reminder that our focus is the future. That we are inspiring and enabling adoption of an Earth ethic to provide for seven generations hence… and beyond.

We found abundant evidence that animal life thrives atop the mountain. Our field trip groups found a salamander and snail, both organisms thrilled with February’s relenting rain and fog.

As the Conference theme expressed explicitly, we found wonder and awe atop the mountain wherever we looked, whether the view from The Rock Garden to Cheaha Lake and the Talladega National Forest beyond, or simply the exquisite moss fish (below right).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I reminded fellow environmental educators time and again that every object, dead or alive, atop the mountain has a story to tell. Our task as educators is to accept such as fact… to believe that a story awaits discovery. I view the lichen-painted boulder below and see an epic tail. The cast includes the rock and a Virginia pine. The rock cared little about, and likely never noticed, the tremendous ice storm that glistened the mountain a few winters back. The Virginia pine strained and groaned with the weight burden until physics prevailed, crossing a threshold that crashed the old soldier to the ground, and brought the twisted and crushed upper canopy to rest upon the rock, which paid little if any heed to the thundering impact. The rock and the mountain may know that the tree is but a fleeting occupant of the rock’s surface. Time and billions of microbes will soon-enough reduce the wood to humus and then soil organic matter, which will in turn furnish nourishment and substrate to yet another tree. The cycle will continue until the rock finds itself sediment deposited in the Mobile River delta, and perhaps some day rising to top another mountain millions of years hence. Time means nothing to an atom, a rock, or a mountain.

I witnessed great joy, inspiration, wonder, and magic atop Cheaha. I applaud the sense of enthusiasm, knowledge, and responsibility among the attendees. I congratulate their recognition and acceptance of the burden they bear for assuring a better tomorrow through wisdom, knowledge, and hard work. I am grateful that planners chose to invite me to give the welcoming keynote. I feel that I am an accepted member of the family. Our causes overlap. Our paths enjoy full harmony. In fact, yesterday I submitted my completed EE AA membership application form.

That’s me standing by my Great Blue Heron banner (left) and EE AA Chair Mandy graced me with a photo hug (right)!

As I wished them upon concluding my remarks: May Nature Inspire your life and vocation!

 

Thoughts and Reflections

I wrote my books (Nature Based Leadership (2016) and Nature-Inspired Learning and Leading (2017)) and the two scheduled for 2019 (Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits: Stories of Passion for Place and Everyday Nature and Natural Elixir: Lifting Your Life through Nature’s Inspiration) 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. Both published books are available on Amazon and other online sources.

Here are four succinct lessons I draw from this Blog Post:

  • In every walk with Nature one receives far more than he seeks (John Muir).
  • Every day can be a journey of discovery and inspiration, a day of sowing seeds for a brighter tomorrow… a tomorrow that is in the hands of generations ahead.
  • Every time I can inject a few lumens of Nature’s beauty, magic, wonder, and awe into a young mind (a young mind of any age!), I have accomplished a victory.
  • Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.

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

 

Note: All blog post images created & photographed by Stephen B. Jones unless otherwise noted. Please circulate images with photo credit: “©2019 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: https://stevejonesgbh.com/contact/

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 my own filters. 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.
  • Great Blue Heron clients will see their relationship to our natural world with new eyes… and will understand more clearly their Earth home.

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

 

 

 

Enjoying Nature from the Inside-Out — Tennessee Aquarium

/in /by

We visited the Tennessee Aquarium January 3 with our two Alabama grandsons (Jack, 11; Sam, nearing 5). They were enjoying the holiday break from school; we remain in retirement’s continuing holiday! What better time to visit Nature indoors following December’s 10.72 inches of rain and the inch-plus that we recorded for January’s first two days — a foot of rain over 33 days! The Chattanooga aquarium features two major exhibit buildings. We started with River Journey and transitioned after lunch to Ocean Journey. The first presents rivers broadly (lower right) even as it focus great attention on the Tennessee River (flowing through Chattanooga) from its Appalachian headwaters (lower left) to the Ohio River.

 

 

 

 

 

I watch movies that are set in nature with daunting skepticism. As a lifelong nature enthusiast and doctoral-level applied ecologist, I am quite critical. For example, my wife and I faithfully watched The Walton’s, yet I could never quite get over that producers filmed the family’s Blue Ridge Mountain home in California! I so often witness movies where the rain is pouring under bright sunshine. Or when what is obviously a stroke of lightning at distant claps its on-screen thunder simultaneously with the flash.  Or the scene with snow so fake that I am insulted; for example the poor cowpoke whose skin must be so thoroughly frozen that the snowflake resides on his bare skin for many minutes without melting. Or when the majestic eagle in flight makes the call of a red-tailed hawk!

Blessedly, nothing fake about the River Journey, which flawlessly withstood my scrutiny. I felt as though we were actually walking in the Appalachian cove hardwood forest (exhibit below right and left). The magnificent yellow poplar (Liriodendron tulipifera) beckoned me to throw my arms around it and gaze up into its heights. The boys thrilled to the deep and ancient forest setting. Of course, we all knew we were in a man-made “forest,” yet we marveled at how true-to-life the designers had constructed what is among my favorite ecotypes across my four-and-one-half decades of practicing forestry.

From the massive poplar to moss-encrusted rocks, we felt the Great Smoky Mountains, where 60-plus inches of annual rain keep summer slopes moist and verdant. I reminded the boys that we were experiencing Nature from the inside-out. They understood and agreed. I am convinced that the moss and other plants are real. A huge indoor terrarium within which we were strolling and learning.

The exhibit made clear that these upland forests accept, filter, and release life-giving waters to the waiting Tennessee River. The indoor walkways lead the visitor ever-downstream, inspiring and explaining with each step. Detail and fidelity to the portrayed action and reality are striking. The waterfall, downed and decaying log, rock ledges, and accompanying vegetation (lower left) transported me into the mountains. And the magic of the split screen lower right; above and below the water line. Native fishes below and natural vegetation above. I felt as though I was touring the real thing and at the same time moseying appreciatively through a fine museum with exquisite works of art.

Slipping below the Headwaters

We descended from the trout streams (above right) into the main Tennessee River valley where great blue herons (below left) and snowy egrets (below right) hold avian sway, and bass, catfish, bream, crappie, and bass dominate waters and wetlands. The heron is a photograph; the egret is real! What a nice touch for the boys (and their grandparents)!

 

Into the Estuary

We left the specific confines of the Tennessee River, descending toward the coastal environments where inland waterways entered the coastal swamps, estuaries, and bays. Where roseate spoonbills feed.

Where rivers slow and spread. Where brackish water and mangrove swamps provide ideal habitat for yet another ecosystem, all beautifully represented by created display habitats and real fauna. We walked the spectacular exhibits feeling one with our exotic environment yet remaining dry-footed. Again, the Tennessee Aquarium treated us to a grand excursion through Nature… from the inside out!

 

 

The interpretive signage perfectly complements the lifelike exhibits.

 

 

We entered the estuaries, typical of the Gulf coast’s Mobile Bay or Pascagoula Bayou. I wondered whether I might arrange some not-too-distant future air boat exploration with the boys on the lower Mobile River. I have read of some charter pilots who specialize in touring and interpreting these rich natural features.

And, yes, we were there in the bayou, face-to-face with the American alligator and other denizens who share these brackish waters.

Turn to the left and you’re standing waist-deep, eyeball to eyeball with a gator at the base of a mammoth bald cypress. Ninety-degrees to the right and return to dry feet and the exhibit route. What kid (of any age) doesn’t relish wading among the gators?!

 

 

We soon exited the River Journey building, found a place to eat lunch, and returned to spend a few more hours on our afternoon Ocean Journey. Perhaps I’ll offer a future Great Blue Heron Blog Post on our marine tour. It, too, proved worthy of the time and cost. I must admit, as a terrestrial (forest) ecologist, a personal and professional bias toward our River Journey. I love the Great Smoky Mountains and our passage through the headwater forests in which we began our trip to the coastal ecosystems.

Happy Faces

Our grandsons are among the many satisfied river and ocean journeyers. Nothing surpasses smiling faces and our satisfaction in sharing their journeys of discovery.

Isn’t this what Nature-Inspired Life is all about? Such a day-long outing (inning?) is just one step in fulfilling my vision that 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. My own mission is to employ writing and speaking (AND grand-parenting) to educate, inspire, and enable readers and listeners (AND grandchildren) to understand, appreciate, and enjoy Nature… and accept and practice Earth Stewardship. Whether hiking local greenways or sharing a River Journey from the inside out, we are committed to sowing seeds of adventure, learning, as well as Earth stewardship understanding and responsibility.

As Horace Mann (1796-1859) observed, “Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.” Every time I can inject a few lumens of Nature’s beauty, magic, wonder, and awe into a young mind (a young mind of any age!), I have accomplished a victory, even if modest. And, I have followed the advice that Robert Louis Stevenson implored: “Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.”

Every day can be a journey of discovery and inspiration, a day of sowing seeds for a brighter tomorrow… a tomorrow that is in the hands of generations ahead. Our obligation is to till the soil, prepare fertile ground, and sow seeds that will sprout understanding, appreciation, and embrace of Earth stewardship. These young people stand at the dawning of a new day… one that we view from our sunset perspective.

May Nature enrich your life and living… Nature-inspired living! And may you pass it forward.

 

Thoughts and Reflections

I wrote my books (Nature Based Leadership (2016) and Nature-Inspired Learning and Leading (2017)) and the two scheduled for 2019 (Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits: Stories of Passion for Place and Everyday Nature and Natural Elixir: Lifting Your Life through Nature’s Inspiration) 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. Both published books are available on Amazon and other online sources.

Here are four succinct lessons I draw from this Blog Post:

  • In more ways than literal, a journey out into Nature can entail a journey within.
  • Every day can be a journey of discovery and inspiration, a day of sowing seeds for a brighter tomorrow… a tomorrow that is in the hands of generations ahead.
  • Every time I can inject a few lumens of Nature’s beauty, magic, wonder, and awe into a young mind (a young mind of any age!), I have accomplished a victory.
  • Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.

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

 

Note: All blog post images created & photographed by Stephen B. Jones unless otherwise noted. Please circulate images with photo credit: “©2019 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: https://stevejonesgbh.com/contact/

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 my own filters. 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.
  • Great Blue Heron clients will see their relationship to our natural world with new eyes… and will understand more clearly their Earth home.

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mid-January at Alabama’s Gulf State Park: Oh Beautiful for Spacious Skies!

/in , /by

Because this is the fourth and final GBH Blog Posts from my visit to Gulf State Park, allow me to repeat elements of my introduction from the first three:

Introduction

I toured Gulf State Park (GSP) January 18, 2019 from 8-5:30 with Kelly Reetz, Park Naturalist. See my January 28, 2019 Great Blue Heron Blog Post for my Overview: https://stevejonesgbh.com/2019/01/28/mid-january-at-alabamas-gulf-state-park-overview/ My February 5, 2019 Post on the beach, dunes, savannas, and wetlands ecotypes: https://stevejonesgbh.com/2019/02/05/mid-january-at-alabamas-gulf-state-park-beach-dunes-savannas-and-interior-wetlands/ And my February 12, 2019 post on the interior forests and use of prescribed fire: https://stevejonesgbh.com/2019/02/12/mid-january-at-alabamas-gulf-state-park-interior-forests-and-prescribed-fire/

I described the first GSP Post as a broad “Overview of a Globally Significant Coastal Center for Sustainable Tourism and Earth Stewardship.” I issued my second GSP Post February 5, highlighting the beach, dune, savanna, and interior wetland ecotypes, offered “from my perspective as a doctoral level applied ecologist, lifelong Nature enthusiast, environmental educator, consummate champion for responsible Earth stewardship, and a tireless advocate for Nature-inspired life and living.” From that same perspective, I will reflected with photographs and text on my impressions and interpretation for a second set of ecosystems: evergreen forests and xeric forests. I included a section on the use of prescribed fire in Park vegetation management.

Now, as a sky and cloud junkie, I’ll lead you on a tour of the firmament that arced above our heads during my visit to GSP.

The heavens declare the glory of God;

and the firmament shows the work of His hands.

Psalm 19:1

Although the photos that follow include some of the same foreground objects that commanded my attention and guided my text in the prior three posts, I am today treating those objects as foredrop, a term that I just created as antonym to backdrop. I will focus on the sky and clouds… the setting that in my view is often the natural feature that most excites my body, mind, heart, soul, and spirit. The foredrop for me is somewhat the invisible element that helps me focus on admiring and appreciating what lies beyond and above. Just as the snowy canvas backdrop sets the mood for the family Christmas studio photo taken in August, the pier, shoreline, and placid Gulf water below merely direct my eye to the incredible sunset we witnessed our first evening at GSP.

The next morning — another treat! Lower left, dawn brightened the eastern sky under a stratus cloud deck rolling in from the west. Ten minutes later (lower right), the clouds had rolled a little further eastward as the sun reached from below my horizon line to paint the cloud undersides burnt orange.

As I swung the lens shoreward, dawn-kissed stratus framed the Gulf State Park Lodge (with the nearest private hotel hazily silhouetted two-miles beyond). The image symbolizes the Park Enhancement as a new day dawning for a globally significant Coastal Legacy Project. Perhaps the photo can serve as a visual representation of the Project vision: Gulf State Park will be an international benchmark for environmental and economic sustainability demonstrating best practices for outdoor recreation, education, and hospitable accommodations.

We began our all-day Park field tour under stratus clouds hugging the Gulf and its sandy beaches. We wondered whether our day would be fog-shrouded. We also pondered how many times has Sam, the pier’s resident brown pelican, watched a new day dawning?

We headed into the Park as the sun began to eat through the stratus, breaking the solid, ground-hugging cover into patches of grey and weak blue. We lucked upon the perfect foredrop during this threshold transition from low blanket to high blue. Of course, as with so many natural phenomenon, the sky likewise serves as perfect backdrop to the weathered sand pine standing atop the old dune! Nature so often gives us just what we seek… provided we, in fact, know what we seek and where to find it.

No hint of the morning’s fog and stratus remained as we explored a slash pine savanna. The next day’s cold front with accompanying low pressure, still several states to the west, hinted at its approach with cirrus five miles above us. What artist with brush in-hand has ever painted a more lovely sky or a more perfect foredrop?! Earth and sky; main canopy and understory; stem and crown; tree and sky — all intricately interconnected and inextricably integrated in beauty and function.

Two sages spoke great wisdom about the web of life captured by my lens (photos above and below).

Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.

Chief Seattle

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.

John Muir

Such beauty, magic, wonder, and awe. Keep in mind that I did not enter the Park to find these exquisite images. Instead, they found me and my eager eye. So often Nature rewards my wanderings. As I have written and spoken so many times, I am guided by five verbs as I venture into Nature.

  • Believe — I know from experience that such wonders and truths await me
  • Look — I must focus my senses to discover what lies hidden and beyond view to many who are distracted by far too much
  • See — be prepared to register deeply what our senses detect
  • Feel — and to see deeply enough to evoke emotion and stir passion
  • Act — and to feel deeply enough to spur purpose… to accept our obligation to appreciate, understand, and steward this precious jewel — this planet Earth, our only home

I am blessed with five grandchildren. Which one do I like best? Yes, none stands above the other. Yet among the two photos above (taken mid-afternoon well after the stratus had dissipated) and the one below (as the stratus was breaking), I can choose my favorite without harm or insult. The impressionistic cirrus brush dabs (above right) earn my highest marks. However, as I work my way through the day’s sky and cloud portfolio, I am realizing that it is the combination of foredrop and backdrop, the total composition, and the ecological context, that in aggregate stir my senses. Nature and all other aspects of life and living, act in terms of the whole, which almost without exception, exceeds the sum of its parts.

The two images below shift from a natural foredrop to the December-abandoned golf course. Just as we select from among seasonal backdrops for a family holiday portrait, choosing from among Gulf State Park foredrops alters the sky and cloud image and affect. Carrying my composite analogy a bit further, perhaps the most applicable aggregate is the entirety of images from my GSP tour. I suppose my own impression of Nature springs from my 67-year journey as a Nature-enthusiast and applied ecologist. Yes, it is the aggregate of a life in Nature that shapes my discernment of any single scene or moment in Nature. Isn’t that true for all elements and components and days in life and living?

There comes often in life circumstances and occasions when we cannot, try as we might, distinguish between foredrop and backdrop. Between what might be essential and  associated clutter. Between substance and distraction. Between what matters irritating noise. Between problem and nuisance. Is the photo below an image of a live oak with the sky beyond… or the sky seen through the oak’s spreading branches? Does it matter?

I’ll end where we began. Sunset the first evening. Nature paints across time and place, just as we live across time and place. I urge you, wherever (and whenever) you are, to believe in its magic; look for its beauty; see its wonder; feel its inspiration; and act to embrace and steward this wonderful home we call Earth.

 

May Nature enrich your life and living… Nature-inspired living! And may you pass it forward.

The heavens declare the glory of God;

and the firmament shows the work of His hands.

Psalm 19:1

 

Thoughts and Reflections

I wrote my books (Nature Based Leadership (2016) and Nature-Inspired Learning and Leading (2017)) and the two scheduled for 2019 (Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits: Stories of Passion for Place and Everyday Nature and Natural Elixir: Lifting Your Life through Nature’s Inspiration) 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. Both published books are available on Amazon and other online sources.

Here are three succinct lessons I can easily draw from this Blog Post:

  • Nature so often gives us just what we seek… provided we, in fact, know what we seek and where to find it.
  • It is the aggregate of a life in Nature that shapes my discernment of any single scene or moment in Nature.
  • So often Nature rewards my wanderings.

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

 

Note: All blog post images created & photographed by Stephen B. Jones unless otherwise noted. Please circulate images with photo credit: “©2019 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: https://stevejonesgbh.com/contact/

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 my own filters. 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.
  • Great Blue Heron clients will see their relationship to our natural world with new eyes… and will understand more clearly their Earth home.

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

 

 

Mid-January at Alabama’s Gulf State Park: Interior Forests and Prescribed Fire

/in , /by

Because this is the third of four GBH Blog Posts from my visit to Gulf State Park, allow me to repeat elements of my introduction:

Introduction

I toured Gulf State Park (GSP) January 18, 2019 from 8-5:30 with Kelly Reetz, Park Naturalist. See my January 28, 2019 Great Blue Heron Blog Post for my Overview: https://stevejonesgbh.com/2019/01/28/mid-january-at-alabamas-gulf-state-park-overview/ and my February 5, 2019 Post on the beach, dunes, savannas, and wetlands ecotypes: https://stevejonesgbh.com/2019/02/05/mid-january-at-alabamas-gulf-state-park-beach-dunes-savannas-and-interior-wetlands/

The 2016 Gulf State Park Master Plan identified nine distinct GSP ecosystems:

  • Evergreen Forests
  • Pine Savannas
  • Maritime Forests
  • Dune Ridges / Sand Scrub habitats
  • Fresh and Salt Marshes
  • Freshwater and Brackish Lakes
  • Coastal Swales
  • Dunes
  • The Beach and Gulf

I promised three subsequent Gulf State Park GBH Posts:

  • Beach, Dunes, Savannas, and Interior Wetlands (Last week’s)
  • Interior Forests and Prescribed Fire (This one)
  • Oh Beautiful for Spacious Skies (Coming soon)

I described the first GSP Post as a broad “Overview of a Globally Significant Coastal Center for Sustainable Tourism and Earth Stewardship.” I issued my second GSP Post February 5, highlighting the beach, dune, savanna, and interior wetland ecotypes, offered “from my perspective as a doctoral level applied ecologist, lifelong Nature enthusiast, environmental educator, consummate champion for responsible Earth stewardship, and a tireless advocate for Nature-inspired life and living.” From that same perspective, I will now reflect with photographs and text on my impressions and interpretation for a second set of ecosystems: evergreen forests and xeric forests. I’ve included a section on the use of prescribed fire in Park vegetation management.

Evergreen Forests

Longleaf pine (Pinus palustris) is the quintessential southern pine. When European settlers arrived, longleaf forests covered some 93 million acres across the deep South; today, longleaf occupies just 4.3 million. Loblolly (Pinus taeda) covers far more acreage, yet there is a special magic in those magnificent longleaf needles, open stands, straight timbers, and the associated diverse wildlife and vegetative communities. I like its ecological dependence upon fire. Amazing how the longleaf ecotype evolved companionably with frequent natural fire. Longleaf’s grass stage is a remarkable ecological adaptation to fire. I recently found a 53-minute video by The Southern Documentary Project at the University of Mississippi on longleaf pine (Longleaf: The Heart of Pine): https://vimeo.com/137612421?fbclid=IwAR2BXqIIKA_Y67X7_RcOdaJjF_VcpCVZiB-O1o5756_3wVqf2La2kNVSLKg

The video’s moderator speaks to the hope of future generations seeing horizon-reaching old-growth longleaf pine by quoting Janisse Ray’s poem, There is a Miracle for You if You Keep Holding On:

I will rise from my grave with the hunger of wildcat, wings of kestrel, and with possession of my granddaughter’s granddaughter, to see what we have lost returned. My heart will be a cistern brimming with rainwater — drinkable rain. She will not know my name, though she bears the new forest about her, the forest so grand. She will have heard whooping cranes witnessing endless sky. While around her the forest I longed all my short life to see winks and slips and shimmers and thumps. Mutes and musks and lights. She will walk through it with the azure-bodied eagerness of damselfly. My child, I will try to call to her. My child. I have risen from the old cemetery buried in the forest where your people are laid. Where once a golf course began. That was houses and fields long, long ago. She will be yet a child and may not hear me. Perhaps I will not speak at all but follow her through a heraldry of longleaf, seeking for the course of a day the peace of pine warblers. And in the evening of that blessed day, I will lay to rest this implacable longing.

Auburn University’s Center for Longleaf Pine Ecosystems (CLPE) shares the dream of that future day. CLPE “conducts research to address knowledge gaps in the restoration, conservation and management of longleaf pine ecosystems which provide a variety of ecological, social and economic services for the people of Alabama and the Southeast.” The CLPE mission recognizes the tremendous services (ecological, social, and economic) provided by the longleaf ecosystem. And, I love the CLPE’s action orientation: to enable us and future generations to better restore, conserve, and manage these forests. Keep in mind that “conserve” connotes wise use and management.

Why do we refer to longleaf pine’s first few years as the “grass” stage? The lower left photo answers the question. “Seedlings are stemless after one growing season and this “grass-stage” lasts from 2 to many years. It may last as long as 20 years if brown-spot needle blight or competition is severe. During the grass-stage, the seedling develops an extensive root system, and the root collar increases in diameter. When the root collar diameter approaches 1 inch in diameter, height growth begins. An open-grown seedling grows 10 feet (3 m) in 3 years once height growth is initiated. Branch production is delayed until the seedling reaches 10 to 16 feet in height. If grass-stage seedlings are top-killed, they can sprout from the root collar” (USDA Forest Service). The ability to sprout from the root collar enables the seedling to survive a grass stage fire. Beyond the grass stage, its rapid initial height growth (lower right)permits it to reach above the mortality zone for lighter ground fires.

 

How can you beat the shaggy dog look during the initial height growth years!? I also like the often uneven-aged composition of natural and managed longleaf stands. The foreground sapling (lower left) stands back-dropped by a mature longleaf. One generation looking over the next. How many fires have passed through the stand since the older tree sprung from the grass stage? Without fire, the understory would have converted to other vegetation long before the sapling germinated, survived the grass stage, and began its height growth. Lower right shows another example of uneven-aged longleaf. The sapling stands at the base of a much larger and older individual; many mid-size longleaf occupy the immediate background. Every stand tells its own story of establishment and development. Such a stand offers rich diversity in crown height and canopy density, as well as ground-level sunlight and shade patterns. To upland birds, an uneven-aged longleaf forest offers a hearty welcome: Come one; Come all — There’s something for everybody!

Slash pine (Pinus elliotti) throughout its range develops in even-aged stands. Its seedlings and saplings are far less tolerant of fire than longleaf. The open savanna (lower left) typifies a mature slash pine forest. The relatively flat canopies suggest that these pines have reached terminal height. Same for the individuals lower right — flat-crowns with coarse branching indicates maturity. Visualize botanist William Bartram traveling across the south on horseback through such forests more than 200 years ago.

GSP’s evergreen forests do attract avian diversity, including the bald eagles who were tending young at this nest. One of these days I hope to acquire a real camera (graduating from my iPhone) with a lens capable of capturing more than a mass of branches assembled high above in a tree fork. Please apply your imagination and see the eagle with its white head emerging from the nest. We also saw another occupied eagle nest on the Park. What a great story nationwide of bringing this magnificent avian pinnacle-of-the-food chain back from the abyss to abundance. The message is clear — if we awaken with head, heart, and intent to save a specific charismatic mega-fauna, surely we can respond to save Homo sapiens from degrading our one Earth beyond a threshold of restoration, conservation, and management. The year of my birth, our global population stood at 2.5 billion; we are now at 7.7 billion. The eagle recovery offers hope and promise for our future as Earth citizens… but only if we awaken to our self-induced peril.

Only we can save us from ourselves; the burden is ours alone. Gulf State Park’s Enhancement Project offers a fresh and essential way to demonstrate best practices for outdoor recreation, education, and hospitable accommodations… an international benchmark for environmental and economic sustainability. Two active eagle nests evidence success… success that can be extended in philosophy, principle, and practice globally.

Role of Prescribed Fire

Restore, conserve, and manage we must. As Yoda, the Jedi Master and ultimate sage and life coach, observed, “Try not. Do. Or do not. There is no try.” We must not try to save Earth from our own devices; we must restore, conserve, and manage ourselves and our planet sustainably. Lessons from the Park Enhancement Project begin the journey of saving us from ourselves.

Employing tools like prescribed fire is one step in the journey… a journey that occurs one ecosystem at a time and culminates in our global ecosystem here on island Earth. Since the first time a lightning bolt seared tinder grassland or forest, ecosystems have evolved with the ravages and benefits of periodic fire. We employ prescribed (also termed controlled) fire to yield the benefits and avoid the ravages. To burn under our terms to achieve results of our choosing. Consider prescribed fire a tool that we apply judiciously, mimicking nature’s way to reach a desired future condition.

Nature’s seeks to convert GSP wetlands and meadows to forest, a “climax” ecotype that will persist until catastrophic wind or wildfire begins the cycle anew. Were the Park a “preservation,” standing back over the long course of time might be an appropriate option. One summer during my Alaska days, fire consumed six million acres of boreal forest and taiga, with little attempt at suppression and control beyond protecting villages and scattered cabins. Mostly federally-owned wildland, fire amounted to a natural occurrence allowed to run its course awaiting rain or the eventual snowfall. The same no-suppression practice prevailed a few years ago as wildfires raced across vast expanse of remote Yellowstone National Park. We cannot afford the luxury of “preservation” at GSP. We must focus aggressive on restore, conserve, and manage to meet desired outcomes.

Lower left shows a meadow intent upon converting to slash pine forest. Managers control burned the tree-colonizing meadow in November 2018, the 28th day of the month… just before the seasonal burn window was about to close. Crews wanted a burn intense enough to kill the encroaching pine. The two individual saplings may have escaped mortality (they retain tufts of green foliage at their tops); most of the seedling pines are dead. Again, slash generally does not handle fire well at the seedling stage. Managers can eliminate the few surviving trees if they wish. The fire at lower right sought a different result. Managers (that same November day) ran a less intense fire through this established sapling and pole slash pine stand to retard the thick brush and understory hardwood trees that were encroaching, competing effectively with the pine, and that would eventually convert this site (via natural succession) to other than evergreen forest. The Park land management plan designates a desired pattern of ecotypes. Fire helps achieve the targeted pattern.

Lower left is another wet meadow burned to deny the invading slash pine army a permanent foothold –seeing the standing dead small saplings. Lower right demonstrates that once slash pine reaches that critical diameter of 3-4″ it can tolerate a fairly hot ground fire. This individual had a a little lower crown scorch and will thrive this coming growing season. Yet the fire burned or killed the visible above ground vegetation nearby, include the saw palmetto (Serenoa repens).

Here’s an unburned saw palmetto on the Park.

 

Xeric Forests

The Gulf of Mexico coastline has shifted over the long course of time. The Eastern Gulf Coastal Plain physiographic province covers nearly two-thirds of the state. The Lower Coastal Plain constitutes roughly the southernmost one-third of the state. As ocean levels have ebbed and flowed across the past few million years, the beach line from time to time extended inland to the Upper Coastal Plain. We should not be surprised that the entirety of GSP comprises multiple dune lines… upland areas of deep sandy soil. These dry (xeric) and infertile sites support forest types quite distinct from the evergreen forests. Sand live oak (), turkey oak (), and longleaf pine are the major overstory species. Tree heights seldom exceed 30-50 feet. Stocking (the number of stems per acre) is low, as is the biomass per acre. Dense overstory and deep shade are uncommon. The understory is relatively open, contrasted to the more common jungle-like subordinate vegetation in the evergreen forests. The lower left photo shows typical stocking, crown density, species composition, and understory condition. Lower right shows an old access road leading north along the now-abandoned Park golf course to a former cattle-dipping station.

We found a few very impressive sabal palmetto (Sabal palmetto) on these old dune ridges. Attractive fanning foliage.

Sand live oak (Quercus geminata) seem content to occupy horizontal space rather than reaching for sunlight above. Joyce Kilmer would have delighted in this individual (lower left). No designer among our own species could create a finer specimen. Although I am not absolutely sure, I believe the species lower right is southern live oak (Quercus virginiana), the quintessential live oaks that line the streets of Savannah and Mobile, and that grace some of the Old South mansions of movie fame. Note the draping Spanish moss (Tillandsia usneoides). From the Florida Extension Service: “Hanging off trees and landscape plants, Spanish moss is a familiar part of Florida’s environment. Despite its name, Spanish moss is not a moss but a bromeliad—a perennial herb in the pineapple family. Most bromeliads, including Spanish moss, are epiphytes. Epiphytes grow on other plants, but do not rely on them for nutrients. They take nutrients from the air and debris that collects on the plant.”

Did I mention that both sand and southern live oak are “nearly evergreen,” dropping its leaves and sprouting new foliage within several weeks in the spring. Here are sand live oak leaves, during my mid-January visit, still looking quite summer-like.

Turkey oak (Quercus laevis) tolerates the most xeric of the old dune ridges. Its corky bark (lower left) protects established individual stems from periodic fires. Few other hardwood trees can survive the dry, sandy soils of the old dunes. Longleaf pine often shard these inhospitable sites. Easy to see how this oak earned its moniker — its leaves (lower right) resemble a turkey’s foot.

Lichen has colonized this turkey oak trunk. Recall that nature abhors a vacuum.

Lichens find purchase at ground level on these exeric sites. This species is deer moss (Cladonia evanesii), apparent in both small clumps and as a nearly full ground cover.

Dixie moss lichen (Cladonia subtenuis) is common yet less prolific at Gulf State Park. Note its greenish hue contrasted to the near white of deer lichen.

We saw occasional patches of prickly pear cactus (Opuntia sp.), a preferred food for the endangered gopher tortoise. The gopher tortoise digs borrows (lower right) in deep sandy soils across its range. I recall setting aside and protecting habitat and gopher tortoise communities on suitable sites within Union Camp Corporation’s woodlands in Alabama’s coastal plain. From the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission: “Gopher tortoises are long-lived reptiles that occupy upland habitat throughout Florida including forests, pastures, and yards. They dig deep burrows for shelter and forage on low-growing plants. Gopher tortoises share these burrows with more than 350 other species, and are therefore referred to as a keystone species. ”

 

 

Park personnel are contemplating a significant habitat shift for the Park’s golf course, which abandoned golf operations in December 2018. Within the Park’s coastal legacy Enhancement planning, what is the highest and best use for the former golf course? Looks pretty good just sitting there with that luscious sky — that beautiful firmament showcasing above it! Perhaps managers will simply allow nature to implement her own plans… doing what come natural to her. Isn’t the golf course yet another vacuum? Another opportunity to creatively fill a void? I’ll look forward to seeing the plans unfold… whether Park staff designed or nature-designed.

 

May Nature enrich your life and living… Nature-inspired living! And may you pass it forward.

 

Thoughts and Reflections

I wrote my books (Nature Based Leadership (2016) and Nature-Inspired Learning and Leading (2017)) and the two scheduled for 2019 (Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits: Stories of Passion for Place and Everyday Nature and Natural Elixir: Lifting Your Life through Nature’s Inspiration) 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. Both published books are available on Amazon and other online sources.

Here are three succinct lessons I can easily draw from this Blog Post:

  • Fire and forests seem strange bedfellows, yet some forests are absolutely fire-dependent; understanding Nature requires that we comprehend relationships.
  • Everything in Nature and life functions according to resource availability and limitations.
  • Nature’s beauty, magic, wonder, and awe pay little mind to site constraints and limitations — a majestic evergreen forest possesses no more nobility than a xeric scrub oak forest.

May Nature Inspire and Reward you!

 

Note: All blog post images created & photographed by Stephen B. Jones unless otherwise noted. Please circulate images with photo credit: “©2019 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: https://stevejonesgbh.com/contact/

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 my own filters. 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.
  • Great Blue Heron clients will see their relationship to our natural world with new eyes… and will understand more clearly their Earth home.

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mid-January at Alabama’s Gulf State Park: Beach, Dunes, Savannas, and Interior Wetlands

/in , /by

I toured Gulf State Park (GSP) January 18, 2019 from 8-5:30 with Kelly Reetz, Park Naturalist. See my January 28, 2019 Great Blue Heron Blog Post for my Overview: https://stevejonesgbh.com/2019/01/28/mid-january-at-alabamas-gulf-state-park-overview/

The 2016 Gulf State Park Master Plan identified nine distinct GSP ecosystems:

  • Evergreen Forests
  • Pine Savannas
  • Maritime Forests
  • Dune Ridges / Sand Scrub habitats
  • Fresh and Salt Marshes
  • Freshwater and Brackish Lakes
  • Coastal Swales
  • Dunes
  • The Beach and Gulf

I promised three subsequent Gulf State Park GBH Posts:

  • Beach, Dunes, Savannas, and Interior Wetlands (this one)
  • Interior Forests and Prescribed Fire
  • Oh Beautiful for Spacious Skies

I described the first GSP Post as a broad “Overview of a Globally Significant Coastal Center for Sustainable Tourism and Earth Stewardship,” offered “from my perspective as a doctoral level applied ecologist, lifelong Nature enthusiast, environmental educator, consummate champion for responsible Earth stewardship, and a tireless advocate for Nature-inspired life and living.” From that same perspective, I’ll reflect with photographs and text my impressions and interpretation for this first set of ecosystems with respect to five of the ecological subsets comprising the Park:

  • The Beach and Gulf
  • Dunes
  • Dune Ridges / Sand Scrub Habitats
  • Savannas and Inland Wetlands
  • Pitcher Plant Bog

The Beach and Gulf

The name Gulf State Park speaks volumes. Two-and-one-half miles of white sand beaches define the Park, the coastal gem in Alabama’s 22-pearl, State Park necklace that reaches to the Tennessee River Valley, nearly 400 miles to the north. Advancing at a rate of a week per 100 miles latitude and a week per 800-feet vertical, spring will reach Monte Sano State Park’s plateau-top six weeks after its arrival on the Gulf coast.

I stood on the pier some 1,500 feet from the shore, visiting with Sam the pelican, who has spent three years in residence. He’s a fixture, banded, recognized by many, and tolerated by most anglers, whose bait he covets and frequently pilfers. He’s twice visited a nearby veterinarian clinic, driven there by Park staff. Once with a broken wing after being accidentally cast-hooked and slammed into the water. Again after swallowing a treble hook. Both times he recuperated in luxury on the Park. Staff aggressively shoo all other pelicans to maintain the permanent pier population at one. We spotted the loggerhead shrike (lower right) as we approached the pier. We saw many others but managed only one photo, this one magnified to the point of blurriness, not doing justice to the beauty of this entertaining insect predator. Audubon’s website describes the shrike’s feeding behavior: “Forages mostly by watching from an exposed perch, then swooping down to take its prey on or near the ground or from low vegetation. Kills its prey using its hooked bill. Often stores uneaten prey by impaling it on thorn or barbed wire, returning to eat it later.”

Because we were at GSP when many of my northern friends (located in PA, NY, NH, etc.) were facing a major winter storm, I asked to have this photo taken so I could (and I did) send them a taunting image of me on our “snowy” south Alabama beaches! I told them that I had no trouble driving, or difficulty shoveling, and didn’t get a bit cold.

Dunes

The dune ecosystem begins immediately interior to the flat sandy beach. The endangered Alabama beach mouse flourishes in this zone. GSP provides the most expansive protected dune system within the mouse’s range. The Park is working tirelessly to expand and stabilize the dunes. One fascinating step in that endeavor involves securing the season’s Christmas trees in small piles, allow nature to work her magic by depositing wind-blown sand around the piles and building new dunes in-situ.

Dune Ridges/Sand Scrub Habitats

Further interior, fully vegetated stabilized dunes transition to dune ridges and upland sand scrub ecotypes. I took this photo from the boardwalk trail on the south side of Lake Shelby. This is a zone of intermingled marsh grasses and forbs, standing water, and thick shrubs on the elevated dunes. I won’t venture a guess at species composition; I know my limits. I do know the Park is intent at maintaining these diverse ecosystems.

Taken from the pedestrian bridge crossing the coastal highway, this view (below left) looks north across Middle Lake to the campground and Nature Center. Nearly a mile inland, the Little Lake shoreline (below right) offers a view of the Orange Beach beachfront hotel high rises more two miles to the southeast. Once again, wildness lies within sight of fully developed coastline. The contrast is sharp; the message is stark. Except for the paved trails, a few non-native species, and the distant commercial skyline, the Park ecosystems are timeless and ageless. From the 2016 GSP Master Plan: Gulf State Park is a one-of-a-kind environmental treasure, with a rich diversity of ecosystems and 6,150 acre area. Restoring the environment and promoting stewardship are key elements of the Master Plan, creating a place where everyone can connect with nature. Outside the Park, wildness lies remote… somewhere else in time and place. Park visitors certainly connect with Nature.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I suppose that tourists who play at the beach, bask in the sunshine, enjoy food and drink, hit the putt-putt courses, and troll the arcades are, in some fashion, connecting with nature. As for me, I would view such a vacation as a sentence. I would shrivel… mentally, physically, and emotionally. I would expire in body, mind, heart, soul, and spirit. Instead, within Gulf State Park, I soared with its beauty, magic, wonder, and awe. In my younger days as an environmental effete, I would have scoffed at the thought of thousands of snow-birders on the trails. Those days are done; now I revel at the sight of so many people understanding and appreciating wildness. I take solace that the message of Earth stewardship perhaps is finding traction. Again, I am convinced that GSP stands as a globally significant coastal legacy project.

Savannas and Inland Wetlands

Please recognize that the nine identified ecosystems do not stand clearly delineated and distinct. The margins often blend and intergrade… across both space and time. The wet grass and shrub zone below may have once been a marsh, now filling in and “dry” enough that slash pine (Pinus elliotti) insists upon invading. Note the 4-10 feet tall pine extending from the ridge well over a hundred feet into the meadow. Once the pine are established, their powerful vertical pumps and effective evapotranspiration will further dry the site, in effect sealing the transition from marsh to pine forest. Park managers had hoped to run a prescribed fire across the site the prior November. The weather did not cooperate for running a fire hot enough to ignite or kill the sapling pine. They plan to try again this coming fall. A fire will not eliminate or discourage the desirable wetland species, which are accustomed to periodic “catastrophic” burns. Sure, it will kill the above ground vegetation, but it will re-sprout or seed-in-place will germinate in the exposed soil rich with nutrients released by the fire.

Conservation entails wise use and management. Management requires the deliberate application of art (many decisions involve subjective values) and science. The Park is not a preserve, where Nature is permitted to run her course.

Slash pine occupies the upland foreground (below). I snapped this photo to capture the cypress (Taxodium distichum) swamp beyond. The cypress are mature as evidenced by their flattening canopy; that is, they have achieved their terminal height. These two ecosystem types occupy distinct sites — a freshwater swamp and an upland ridge. As we approached this photo point we watched 10-15 cormorants leave their cypress perches. Perhaps some day I will buy a camera with telephoto lens capable of catching images my iPhone can only dream to capture.

Below is a classic slash pine savanna. The University of Florida Extension Service defines the type: “The most extensive terrestrial ecosystem in Florida is the pine flatwoods. This community evolved under frequent lightning and human-caused fire, and seasonal drought and flooded soil conditions. Pine flatwoods are characterized by:

  • low, flat topography
  • relatively poorly drained, acidic, sandy soil
  • typically open woodlands dominated by pines
  • an extensive shrub layer
  • and a variable and often sparse herbaceous layer.”

Imagine the view below if instead of savanna, this forest were closed. We would see a solid wall of forest, devoid of the incredible sky now drawing our eye and accenting the scattered slash pine. Since my early career days with Union Camp Corporation, I have loved the flatwoods aesthetic. However, they can be impenetrable by foot… briars, jungle-like shrub layer, brutal saw palmetto, snakes, biting insects, choking vines, and stifling heat.  Like I said, I love the aesthetic… from the trail!

The Park excels at identifying and interpreting the ecosystems. Vegetation differences correspond to associated fauna — birds, reptiles, amphibians, and mammals have niche requirements. A devoted naturalist could commit years to learning the intricate intertwined ecological nuances and relationships on GSP’s 6,150 acres and nine distinct ecosystems.

Pitcher Plant Bog

The Park’s pitcher plant bog requires requires third-mile hike off of the 28-mile bike path system, through first a ridge forest, then into a savanna, growing increasingly more poorly drained to the bog itself. Standing water 4-10″ deep challenged my boot waterproofing (below). We tread carefully to avoid stepping on pitcher plants. Again, the sky is visible through the widely-scattered savanna slash pine canopy.

We found three species of pitcher plant. White-top (Sarracenia leucophylla) and purple (Sarracenia purpurea) pitcher plants (below left and right, respectively) were very evident and abundant. The pitchers are modified leaves (trap leaves), which the Alabama Plant Atlas says, “are erect, hollow, tubular in shape with an arching hood over the opening. The trap leaves are green towards the base and white with red veins near the opening. They are pubescent with downward pointing hairs. The hollow interior of the leaf in partially filled with rain water and digestive enzymes. Insects attracted to the colorful leaves drown in the fluid and are digested by the plant. Flowers are solitary on a long scape. The flowers are nodding and red in color.” Last year’s flower stocks and brittle flowers still waved above the basal trap leaves. In contrast to the erect white-top trap leaves, the purple pitchers hug the ground. Kelly, my tour host and Park Naturalist, identified a diminutive third species (I believe she referred to it as a parrot pitcher plant). However, this old guy was unable (unwilling) to go to my knees in the standing water to actually see and photograph the few specimens she spotted. I stood with weak eyes and still-dry knees, humbled that I failed this challenge. Had I remembered to bring my selfie stick, so that I could reach the plant without kneeling, I would have captured all three.

The burrowing crawdad or crawdad (Fallicambarus sp.) is another bog denizen. The genus includes 19 species; I was unable to identify species. The photographs below show the chimneys, composed of piled sand and mud pellets to create a vertical corridor for the crustacean to exit or enter its water-filled chamber 2-6 feet beneath the surface. I have seen these mud chimneys in many places where we have resided, yet never have I seen the actual critter.

 

Water is a dominant ecosystem component within Gulf State Park… from the Gulf to some 800 acres of fresh and brackish ponds and marshes, savannas, and bog sites where water lies at or near the surface for much of the year. Nearby Foley, AL averages 66 inches of annual rainfall, which is 11 inches less than where I live in northern Alabama. Growing seasons are long; these water-based ecosystems in this near-tropical climate are home to dynamic and diverse plant and animal communities. We saw only a sampling of the richness that varies between and within ecosystems… and across the seasons. We scratched the surface. The Park is striving to tell the entire story of life and living within this globally significant coastal legacy site.

I am grateful for the opportunity to spend a day with a naturalist who knows the Park and its life. I learned a great deal, including gaining a deeper appreciation for how much I do not know. I will shift gears in my third of four GSP Posts to the upland ecosystem elements.

May Nature enrich your life and living… Nature-inspired living! And may you pass it forward.

 

Thoughts and Reflections

I wrote my books (Nature Based Leadership (2016) and Nature-Inspired Learning and Leading (2017)) and the two scheduled for 2019 (Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits: Stories of Passion for Place and Everyday Nature and Harnessing Nature’s Wisdom and Inspiration) 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. Both published books are available on Amazon and other online sources.

Here are six succinct lessons I can easily draw from this Blog Post:

  • Restoring the environment and promoting stewardship are key elements of the Park Master Plan, creating a place where everyone can connect with nature — an essential goal for global life and living.
  • Nature offers gifts from the past; we must protect and manage to pass our natural treasures forward without diminution.
  • Take advantage of every opportunity (Learning Everywhere) in Nature to sow seeds for making tomorrow brighter.
  • Living harmoniously within Nature is essential… and it is doable with wisdom, knowledge, and hard work.
  • We must adopt a land ethic as a societal cornerstone in all that we do; conserving wildness is not necessarily self-defeating.
  • Learn Everywhere… every day!

Repeating the sage wisdom of Mr. Rogers and Mark Twain:

Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children, play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood. Fred Rogers

Anyone who stops learning is old, whether twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing you can do is keep your mind young. Mark Twain

May Nature Inspire and Reward you… and keep your mind young!

 

Note: All blog post images created & photographed by Stephen B. Jones unless otherwise noted. Please circulate images with photo credit: “©2019 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: https://stevejonesgbh.com/contact/

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 my own filters. 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.
  • Great Blue Heron clients will see their relationship to our natural world with new eyes… and will understand more clearly their Earth home.

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

 

 

Late November at Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge — Fall Magic

/in , /by

November 25, 2018 we took our two Alabama grandsons to Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge, several weeks before the geniuses in Washington DC once more failed to pass a budget. Thus, as I write these words on January 6, 2019, the partial government shutdown has kept me from the Visitors Center and observation building for over two weeks, the heart of waterfowl magic at Wheeler. But I digress. My purpose is to reflect on our visit.

The boys enjoy Wheeler — the sights, sounds, and mood from seeing and hearing thousands of winter avian residents celebrating their escape from hard core winter. The view from the observation building is especially rewarding.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s like watching a well-done Nature documentary… on-site and in person. Whether a nice fall day like this one, or a cold, blustery, and wet afternoon, the building keeps us in comfort.

Designed with ample windows on both levels, the view spans some 300 degrees of fields and marsh. Enough birders are present to pass word of where the whooping cranes are within sight, or perhaps a Eurasian widget, or a bird of prey feasting nearby on some unfortunate migrant.

Just behind the Visitors Center, a broad view to the west extends across marsh and fields and hordes of sandhill cranes. Still accessible now, the view is far inferior to the now closed building.

Entering the access road on this warm mid-morning, I stopped to usher a  gray rat snake to the grassy shoulder. I suppose he was quite happy sunning on the warm blacktop. Hence his pique with my interference. How could I convince him that I was acting in his best interest?! A subsequent motorist might not see him. The boys both liked seeing the snake and felt uneasy in his presence. Try as I might, I cannot convince these squeamish young persons that snakes are magnificent neighbors and honored members of our diverse southern ecosystems. My work is never done!

Our visits to Wheeler always include exploring both upland trails (below left) and our too-short pass along the boardwalk through the cypress swamp (below right and the two following photographs).

The cypress hadn’t quite shed all foliage, yet enough to form a thick mat on the boardwalk deck. Sam (4.5-year-old) could not resist scuffing his feet to plow piles of needles! I confess that I wanted to join him to create a pile large enough to accommodate a leaping grandfather!

We departed the main entrance to explore trails across the highway on the north side. We never grow tired of boardwalks, this one made all the sweeter by a sign warning of gators. Such a sign is nearly as exciting as actually seeing one of these large reptiles.

The heavily wooded peninsula ahead (lower right) decades earlier likely grew cotton and other agricultural crops. Nature filled the abandoned farm acreage with ease. The stand now is evidencing characteristics of old growth… large diameter pine and hardwood; heights reaching 90-110-feet; lots of dead and down large woody debris. I drew satisfaction from the boys appreciating the aesthetic quality of a shore-side cypress still bearing a portion of its red-brown foliage, accenting the water and shoreline beyond.

 

Certainly, there is nothing spectacular (on a Grand Canyon or Denali or Yosemite scale) about what we saw or experienced during our three hours at Wheeler. Importantly, what we did see provided ample beauty, awe, magic, and wonder… far more than obtainable from TV or video games. Jack and Sam will never forget their trips to Wheeler with Gummy and Pap. Judy and I are planting seeds. I include a Robert Louis Stevenson quote below the signature line on every email I send: “Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.”

On second thought, what we experienced was, in fact, spectacular in aggregate. Any seed sown is an act of love… an investment in the future. I think often of the life-mission I have adopted during my semi-retirement:

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.

Tagline: Encourage and seek a better tomorrow through Nature-Inspired Living!

What could be more spectacular than heading to a nearby National Wildlife Refuge with our two Alabama grandsons, immersing them in Nature’s wonder, and sowing the seeds for responsible Earth citizenship?! Every moment I can give them pays dividends to me and to Earth’s future.

May Nature enrich your life and living… Nature-inspired living!

 

Thoughts and Reflections

I wrote my books (Nature Based Leadership (2016) and Nature-Inspired Learning and Leading (2017)) and the two scheduled for 2019 (Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits: Stories of Passion for Place and Everyday Nature and Harnessing Nature’s Wisdom and Inspiration) 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. Both published books are available on Amazon and other online sources.

Here are three succinct lessons I can easily draw from this Blog Post:

  • Take advantage of every opportunity in Nature to sow seeds for making tomorrow brighter.
  • Invest your time, knowledge, and passion for Nature in young people whenever you can.
  • Consciously and deliberately enrich your own life and living through Nature’s inspiration.

May Nature Inspire and Reward you!

 

Note: All blog post images created & photographed by Stephen B. Jones unless otherwise noted. Please circulate images with photo credit: “©2019 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: https://stevejonesgbh.com/contact/

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 my own filters. 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.
  • Great Blue Heron affiliates will see their relationship to our natural world with new eyes… and will understand more clearly their Earth home.

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

 

 

Mid-January at Alabama’s Gulf State Park: Overview

/in , , , /by

I had been to Gulf State Park 20 years ago. Since then, several hurricanes, the Deepwater Horizon Spill, and subsequent settlement funds combined to both force and enable creation of an Alabama seacoast legacy project. Judy and I spent three nights at the new lodge January 16-18, 2019. I view the Park as Alabama’s globally significant restoration, preservation, demonstration, education, and recreation project. Here are the Enhancement Project book cover and Vision statement:

One hundred forty million dollars later, the Vision is now reality. We arrived early enough Wednesday to enjoy a near-lodge late afternoon stroll. Thursday’s meeting (which brought me to Gulf State Park) allowed more time for both morning and afternoon strolls. Friday I spent nearly nine hours on-site with Kelly Reetz, the Park’s Naturalist… a “globally significant” naturalist and environmental educator in her own right!

The Park stretches along 2.5 miles of protected shoreline — unspoiled wildness nestled within otherwise continuous commercial and residential development. The 2016 Park Master Plan notes:

“There are no other parks along the Gulf Coast with as many different ecosystems and as many acres preserved overall. Gulf State Park is a very diverse park, with many different ecosystems within its 6,150 acres. The Park includes:

  • Evergreen Forests
  • Pine Savannas
  • Maritime Forests
  • Dune Ridges / Sand Scrub habitats
  • Fresh and Salt Marshes
  • Freshwater and Brackish Lakes
  • Coastal Swales
  • Dunes
  • The Beach and Gulf

As the largest contiguous preserved open space along the Gulf Coast with such a diversity of landscapes, the park is home to a great diversity of wildlife and an important rest stop for migrating birds and butterflies. Some of the animal species that call Gulf State Park home are not found in many other places. For example, the Alabama beach mouse that lives in the park’s dunes is a federally endangered species. Dune restoration will help the park be an even better home for this sensitive creature.”

The Enhancement Project Goals:

  • Restoring the Environment
  • Visitor Experience
  • Improving Mobility
  • Accessible to All
  • Learning Everywhere
  • For All Ages

I checked all boxes as I experienced the Park! Again, Gulf State Park is an international gem. My purpose with this Great Blue Heron Blog Post is to provide an overview… to scratch the surface, offer my own reflections (and photographs), and set the stage for three subsequent Gulf State Park GBH Posts:

  • Beach, Dunes, Savannas, and Interior Wetlands
  • Interior Forests and Prescribed Fire
  • Oh Beautiful for Spacious Skies

Overview of a Globally Significant Coastal Center for Sustainable Tourism and Earth Stewardship

The academic in me yearns to tell the Enhancement Project story… the entire story. I promise to resist. The Project Book does just that. And does it thoroughly and beautifully. No need for me to do more than offer a broad overview from my perspective as a doctoral level applied ecologist, lifelong Nature enthusiast, environmental educator, consummate champion for responsible Earth stewardship, and a tireless advocate for Nature-inspired life and living.

I’ll begin with the Lodge — a large, five-story beach-side facility that blends aesthetically with its natural environs and honors the goal to restore and protect the shore and dune environment. The Lodge and Park remind me of Lyrics in Robert Service’s Spell of the Yukon:

There’s a land—oh, it beckons and beckons,
   And I want to go back—and I will

The Park’s 1,500′ pier provides access beyond the shore and sand bars. Nothing beats the off-shore perspective on the Park’s 2.5 miles of beach and dunes.

Miles of boardwalk offer easy pedestrian and bicycle access to the Park’s nearly ten square miles. This view, from Pedestrian Bridge East crossing the east-west highway connecting Gulf Shores to Orange Beach, is to the north looking across Middle Lake to the campground (496 sites) and Nature Center.

Dune Restoration is a principal Enhancement Project Goal: “Create a dune system that encourages a connection to nature and maximizes the ability for that system to provide protection, habitat, and resiliency for all types of communities.” That’s the Beach Pavilion beyond the sign — a shelter for escape from sun and inclement weather and for education.

The beachside Interpretive Center Goal: “Create a gateway to the park that excites visitors about the entire 6,150 acres and entices them to cross over into the green side of the park.” The Project Book includes two of my favorite quotes about learning:

Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children, play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood. Fred Rogers

Anyone who stops learning is old, whether twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing you can do is keep your mind young. Mark Twain

Recall one of the Enhancement Project’s primary goals: Learning Everywhere. The Interpretive Center is a core element… and one of many “everywheres” throughout the Park!

Designers engineered a lighter element at the Outpost, a three-platform remote camping area with these Does and Bucks outhouses! The nearby city of Orange Beach designed and built the Outpost in cooperation with the Park — what a great symbol of shared mission and joint venture! It’s the way natural communities operate within vibrant ecosystems.

Here’s one of the three platforms… outfitted with chairs on a front porch and hammocks within. I had little idea how emblematic of the Park this scene is until I viewed the photo several days later. The low stratus began to break, permitting the sun to illuminate the white of sand, platform tent, and clouds to intermingle. Contrasting the life and vitality on this inland dune ridge, the sand pine skeleton symbolizes that both life and death compose the ebbs and flows of these coastal ecosystems. Or, for that matter, any ecosystem on our fine Earth. My mind relaxes when the photo draws me into its intimate setting, emphasizing that this one spot is a microcosm of the entire Park. A special place where life abounds in multiple textures, and senescence and rebirth integrate seamlessly and in perfect long-term balance. The Enhancement Project assures that across the Park human use and Nature are in perfect long-term balance.

The Forest Pavilion and Butterfly Garden, an interior Park learning facility, sits over a mile from the nearest road and parking area. Accessible to only bicyclers and pedestrians, the classroom had a full house of snow-birders enjoying a presentation on Park reptiles. Again, Learning Everywhere!

Here is one of several Pause Stations located throughout the Park and its trail system. This two-story structure allows visitors to explore a representation of a gopher tortoise burrow. Interpretive signs tell the tale while riders and hikers take a break to catch their breath. Aldo Leopold lamented 70 years ago in A Sand County Almanac: “Is education possibly a process of trading awareness for things of lesser worth?” Dr. Leopold would have enjoyed seeing the visionary outcome of the Enhancement Project. Learning Everywhere!

Nearing completion, the new Learning Campus will house, feed, and immerse up to 64 participants in a state-of-the-art self-contained facility, within a natural setting for hands-on learning. Fencing protects this live oak from construction equipment damage. Other natural vegetation throughout the emerging campus is similarly protected. I hope to return to offer a lecture or lead a future workshop.

I include this photo to evidence yet another option for overnight accommodations and to provide some notion of the Park’s scale. The cottages and cabins sit on the north shore of Lake Shelby. The Park’s water tower stands approximately one mile to the southeast. A cottage resident can walk or bicycle (on paved or boardwalk trails) from this viewpoint to the water tower, beach, lodge, forest pavilion, or any of the other features I’ve mentioned.

What better location to place a resting area and overlook than among live oaks draped in Spanish moss, a quintessential symbol of the deep south!

The Enhancement Project at Gulf State Park represents a new day. A fresh and essential way to demonstrate best practices for outdoor recreation, education, and hospitable accommodations… an international benchmark for environmental and economic sustainability. Two predawn easterly views (below) promise a grand new day ahead, both literally and metaphorically. Aldo Leopold saw deep shadows of environmental decline and degradation on the horizon… unless we changed our human and societal trajectory, again from A Sand County Almanac:

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 the Enhancement Project faithfully ensures against excessive seeing and fondling. Although not true wilderness, the Park certainly constitutes nearly ten square miles of wildness, within a long strand of continuous development where seeing and fondling leave little wildness left to cherish.

The Enhancement Project embodies implicitly, if not in so many words, the kind of land ethic Leopold implored in the 1940s, again from A Sand County Almanac:

My favorite quote: The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land… In short, a land ethic changes the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it. It implies respect for his fellow-members, and also respect for the community as such.

May Nature enrich your life and living… Nature-inspired living! And may you pass it forward. Remember: Learning Everywhere, Everyday!

 

 

Thoughts and Reflections

I wrote my books (Nature Based Leadership (2016) and Nature-Inspired Learning and Leading (2017)) and the two scheduled for 2019 (Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits: Stories of Passion for Place and Everyday Nature and Harnessing Nature’s Wisdom and Inspiration) 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. Both published books are available on Amazon and other online sources.

Here are four succinct lessons I can easily draw from this Blog Post:

  • Take advantage of every opportunity (Learning Everywhere) in Nature to sow seeds for making tomorrow brighter.
  • Living harmoniously within Nature is essential… and it is doable with wisdom, knowledge, and hard work.
  • We must adopt a land ethic as a societal cornerstone in all that we do; conserving wildness is not necessarily self-defeating.
  • Learn Everywhere… every day!

Repeating the sage wisdom of Mr. Rogers and Mark Twain:

Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children, play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood. Fred Rogers

Anyone who stops learning is old, whether twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing you can do is keep your mind young. Mark Twain

May Nature Inspire and Reward you… and keep your mind young!

 

Note: All blog post images created & photographed by Stephen B. Jones unless otherwise noted. Please circulate images with photo credit: “©2019 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: https://stevejonesgbh.com/contact/

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 my own filters. 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.
  • Great Blue Heron clients will see their relationship to our natural world with new eyes… and will understand more clearly their Earth home.

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

December 26, 2018 at Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge: Reaping While Sowing

/in , , /by

I’ll keep this Blog Post short. My two Alabama grandsons and their step-father accompanied me the day after Christmas to Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge. My two-part message is quite simple:

  • Take advantage of every opportunity in Nature to sow seeds for making tomorrow brighter.
  • Invest your time, knowledge, and passion for Nature in young people whenever you can.

The geniuses in Washington had seen fit to make sure the Visitors Center and observation building were locked tight as a drum due to the partial government shutdown. Regardless, we enjoyed the trails and the distant view below of several thousand sandhill cranes.

I shared my passion for lying on my back to appreciate and enjoy crown shyness in the cypress stand near the Visitors Center. What could be more fun than lying on our backs along the boardwalk and watching the trees sway?!

The boys marveled at the shiny green magnolia (Magnolia grandiflora) leaves on the seedling in the otherwise brown forest floor. I shamelessly employed every stop to share lessons of ecology.

And what youngster (or adult) could resist my challenge to see whether the three of them could link hands around this magnificent red oak (Quercus rubra).

They looked in wonder at both the 30-inch diameter, tall and straight oak and the hollowed spooky tree below. I admit to not identifying the species on site. We focused on the novelty and the cause — a former fork that broke off long enough ago to decay and return to the forest floor, yet leaving a long-lasting scar and decay.

And what fun in scaling a leaning red oak, or resting on its 45-degree bole!

Or standing atop a trailhead post while step-dad provides hidden support and assurance. I dare say the boys will long remember our sunny afternoon adventure. Environmental education is a contact sport. I pledge to do my part to pass my passion forward. I urge you to do the same.

This is the future. I close every email with my favorite Robert Louis Stevenson quote: Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant. I commit to sow seeds for informed Earth stewardship.

May Nature enrich your life and living… Nature-inspired living! And may you pass it forward.

 

Thoughts and Reflections

I wrote my books (Nature Based Leadership (2016) and Nature-Inspired Learning and Leading (2017)) and the two scheduled for 2019 (Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits: Stories of Passion for Place and Everyday Nature and Harnessing Nature’s Wisdom and Inspiration) 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. Both published books are available on Amazon and other online sources.

Here are three succinct lessons I can easily draw from this Blog Post:

  • Take advantage of every opportunity in Nature to sow seeds for making tomorrow brighter.
  • Invest your time, knowledge, and passion for Nature in young people whenever you can.
  • Consciously and deliberately enrich your own life and living by sowing seeds for informed and responsible Earth stewardship.

May Nature Inspire and Reward you!

 

Note: All blog post images created & photographed by Stephen B. Jones unless otherwise noted. Please circulate images with photo credit: “©2019 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: https://stevejonesgbh.com/contact/

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 my own filters. 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.
  • Great Blue Heron clients will see their relationship to our natural world with new eyes… and will understand more clearly their Earth home.

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

 

 

Our Lives Mimic Nature — Lessons Learned from Tree Form Oddities

/in , /by

We took our two Alabama grandsons to nearby Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge November 25, 2018. I snapped the first three images below from our hike (Post issued December  11, 2018:  https://stevejonesgbh.com/2018/12/11/late-november-at-wheeler-national-wildlife-refuge-tree-magic/). For this mid-January GBH Blog Post I have compiled these three with other photos of unusual tree shapes and forms I’ve photographed over this past summer and fall.

I’ve said often that every lesson for living, learning, serving, and leading is either written indelibly in Nature or is compellingly inspired by Nature. I took a lot of photos November 25 when something caught my eye, including the one below. A hackberry trail-side evidenced a small burl at me eye level. A cluster of branchlets sprouted from it horizontally, crossing to an adjacent smaller fork of the same tree. The view may span eight inches. The peculiar composite struck me with force only after I examined the photo at home. Sure, I saw something in it that drew me to snap the photo, yet not enough so that I took more photos from different angles and distances from the tree. I believe I can find this odd assemblage the next time I visit Wheeler. Well, my older grandson and I invested an hour weeks later, searching exhaustively where I knew I could find the oddity. It eluded us! Lesson learned — next time take more photos on the spot.

Upon closer inspection and pondering, here is what caught my attention. How on earth did this mass occur? A viral-precipitated burl perhaps — a tree version of a tumor? The tumor’s growth, combined with the pressure of the twin stems forging together triggered epicormic branches to develop, creating in sum this strange mass of tissue and side stems? A real mess that I stumbled upon at a point in time well beyond the initial trigger. Had I noticed how bizarre at that moment, I might have focused more forensic attention to it. However, we had the grandsons with us and a lot more trail to explore.

And now allow me to explain the parallel to life, living, and enterprise lessons. How often have we of a sudden realized we had stumbled into a predicament of life or business that we declared a real mess? A mess that we did not anticipate or see until is was solidly upon us? A broader observation relates to the full set of photos above and below. Everyone of these images of tree form oddities is explicable… attributable to some combination of agents, forces, and genetics. Isn’t it the same for our own life and living? Our individual oddities are due to some set of forces, conditions, and circumstance.

I had previously misidentified (in at least one prior post) the smooth-barked vine below (right and left) as a muscadine (Vitis rotundifolia). A reader set me straight, correcting the i.d. to Alabama supplejack (Berchemia scandens), common across our state, found very often in bottomlands. Unlike poison ivy (Toxicodendron radicans), which holds tightly to climbing surfaces with hairy tendrils, supplejack grasps in spirals, clinging tightly with the strength of stem turgor pressure. I include these photos as novelties — the vine strikes me as a woody snake… a boa wrapping and reaching toward the sunlight above.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A supplejack vine left its spiraling scar on this red maple along Beaverdam Boardwalk Trail (Wheeler NWR). A supplejack vine ascends beside the maple trunk. I’ve seen many a mountain craft walking stick (smaller than this six-inch diameter maple) with a pronounced spiral form.

Sometimes looking down and horizontally misses the magic in front of our noses… well, maybe above our noses. In this case, a vertical view from ground level in this bald cypress (Taxodium distichum) stand at Wheeler NWR. The formal term for this oddity (which is not all that uncommon) is crown shyness. Yet, it is odd enough, that even nearly 46 years beyond a BS in forestry, I only recently stumbled across the phenomenon and actually learned the term. I will now be spending more time on my back in coming hikes, seeking crown shyness in other stand and species mixes. Perhaps I will be viewed, lying on my back with camera in-hand, as the in-woods oddity!

I found these two oddities on the trail this early fall at Cheaha State Park, leading from Cheaha Lake to the summit.Certainly odd, yet fully explainable. The Virginia pine (Pinus virginiana) and target canker, with its inner-wood skull-face with clay pipe in mouth, derive from a perennial fungal infection that is decades-old. The white oak (below left), hollowed by an internal fungal rot, had recently yielded to the force of wind (maybe a breeze) and gravity. Insects surely played a role in excavating the debris within. We humans all carry some form of scar, whether physical or emotional. My psychologist friends tell me that the explanations are often just as apparent.

Not all woods oddities are attributable to biologic agents. The oak (lower left) grows along the loop road atop Cheaha. Some physical force bent the sapling-stage lateral branch just five feet above ground. The sunlight available at the road edge enabled the now stout branch (as large as the main stem) to thrive at nearly horizontal. The oak (lower right) likely suffered ice damage decades ago and assumed this flattened-top form. The old timber beast in me (nurtured by 12 years in the forest products industry) still appreciates a tall straight bole (clear wood) on a valuable timber species. Today, with no direct ties to commercial forestry, I’m drawn to the fancy, beauty, and mystery of these unusual forms.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I found this gravity-defying sourwood (Oxydendrum arboreum) on that same Cheaha Lake Trail. I have loved sourwood since my early forestry days in the central Appalachians for its commonly odd form, its pendulous flour heads, and the incredible honey produced by bees feeding from it. Carson Brewer observed, “Most honey is made by bees. But sourwood is made by bees and angels.”

Some trees provide fodder for mythology and legend. Lower left is Bigfoot, part of an early summer exhibit at the Huntsville Botanical Gardens (HBG). However, the image lower left is Nature’s very own hand at work on a white oak (Quercus alba) along a woods trail at Lake Guntersville State Park. I was sober… the camera was true… the form uncannily resembles the HBG Bigfoot in shape and scale. I struggle to offer much of an explanation. We’ve all seen tree burls. This form I believe derives from an arrangement of burl clusters. A bizarre and fanciful arrangement to be sure. Perhaps next time I walk the trail, the figure will have moved to another location?!

I’ve seen Nature do some odd work with branch stubs. Another manifestation of burls, I suppose. I was surprised to see “ET” peering from behind the shagbark hickory (Carya ovata; lower left) at Monte Sano State Park. I like the hickory (Carya sp.) “periscope” at Joe Wheeler State Park (lower right).

December 22, 2018 we took the two Alabama grandsons to hike along Bradford Creek Greenway right here in Madison. They dubbed this red oak (Quercus rubra) branch stub as the “thumbs-down” tree. Aptly named!

And here’s the dragon tree along a trail at a location I can’t recall. Its story? At sapling stage, a physical force (nearby tree or large-enough branch) bent it to 90 degrees. The sapling sent a vertical shoot to seek sunlight above. That vertical stem at some point much later (perhaps that’s it lying near the “mouth”) broke off, leaving the standing dragon with snout, mouth, and eye! Again, we are all shaped by forces external.

We all react to situations, circumstances, and objects we encounter, both real and metaphorical. Perhaps this is the oak’s version of “kissing the Blarney Stone to gain the gift of eloquence. This kiss appears to have lasted decades.

I found this prairie crabapple (Malus ioensis) growing contentedly is a fissure on a limestone outcrop on the Konza Prairie Biological Station near Manhattan, KS. Talk about making the most of the hand we’re dealt!

I included this photo in my July 5, 2018 GBH Blog Post on Joe Wheeler State Park. Here is the paragraph lifted from that Post: “This is the classic old growth white oak (Quercus alba) specimen along the trail. How can we not be inspired by the giants in our mixed hardwood forests. Yes, I’ve seen Yosemite’s Sequoia, coastal Redwoods, and Pacific rain-forest Douglas fir. Certainly special to visit, yet I remain transfixed by our eastern forests in their mixed-stand splendor, made all the more special by their proximity (no west coast flights required!) and the reality that most are second-growth forests.” This is anything but a tree form oddity. This tree demonstrates what happens when a tree with good genes (genotype) finds itself on a high quality site with plenty of time (well over 100 years) in the absence of imposed environmental trauma (wind, ice, lightning, etc.). The result is a near-perfect phenotype.

I’ll draw this Post to a close with the odd hackberry knot/burl contorted branch/stem composite that I used in my opening. And I will continue my quest to re-discover this odd clustering at Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge. I shall not be thwarted nor denied!

 

 

Thoughts and Reflections

I wrote my books (Nature Based Leadership (2016) and Nature-Inspired Learning and Leading (2017)) and the two scheduled for 2019 (Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits: Stories of Passion for Place and Everyday Nature and Harnessing Nature’s Wisdom and Inspiration) 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. Both published books are available on Amazon and other online sources.

Here are four succinct lessons I can easily draw from this Blog Post:

  • Like trees, we humans (and our enterprises) are shaped by forces, circumstances, and pressures.
  • We humans all carry some form of force-induced scar, whether physical or emotional.
  • Trees adapt remarkably well to adversity — they seem to play well with the hand they’re dealt.
  • Learn more — understanding deepens and expands appreciation, adaptation, and wonderment.

May Nature Inspire and Reward you… both in her perfection and her foibles, scars, and oddities!

 

Note: All blog post images created & photographed by Stephen B. Jones unless otherwise noted. Please circulate images with photo credit: “©2019 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: https://stevejonesgbh.com/contact/

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 my own filters. 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.
  • Great Blue Heron clients will see their relationship to our natural world with new eyes… and will understand more clearly their Earth home.

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