John Muir aptly observed, In every walk with Nature one receives far more than he seeks. So, too, every time I explore a new (for me) north Alabama natural area I receive far more than I seek.

Chris Stuhlinger, a fellow retired forester, and I co-lead a series of monthly hikes for the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. September 2, 2022, we made a dry run on the Cold Spring Nature Trail, which passes through sections of both Monte Sano State Park and the Monte Sano Nature Preserve of the Land Trust of North Alabama. We led the OLLI group September 10. That’s Chris below left, and one of the OLLI group below right.

I won’t burden you with indicating the respective dates for the photos within this Post. Suffice it to say that if you see more than just Chris or me, the image is from the OLLI hike. The trail transits a remarkable older-growth upland hardwood forest, much of it occupying a cove setting: concave lower slope facing east to northeast. Species composition includes: red and white oaks, yellow poplar, mockernut and shagbark hickories, sugar maple, yellow buckeye, sweetgum, American basswood and white basswood, and even a sycamore and black walnut. Several individuals exceeded three feet in diameter. The canopy reached up to 120 feet tall.

Although I have not discovered how to capture full depth of field nor vertical extent with my iPhone, these two photos do a passable job with both. Perhaps one day I will acquire and learn how to use a real SLR camera!

Here’s a 2:16 video I recorded within the cove forest on the dry run date:

I like adding these short videos to my photo-essays. They add life to my sometimes stilted text and reduce the tedium of still photos.

State Champion Basswood Tree

The state champion basswood tree is a trailside highlight. This beauty at last measurement (July 2016) stood 113 tall, had a crown radial spread of 63 feet, and boasted a diameter at breast height of 41 inches. Its average crown spread of 63 feet from the trunk translates to the tree effectively occupying 0.29 acres! No wonder there are no other nearby large trees. This champion is a tough competitor, shouldering aside others who tried in vain to capture the upper canopy sunlight.

The tree is not without internal stressors. An old basal scar from a long-ago-broken-away stem (below left) signals heart rot eating away from within. Some day, forces yet to be determined will spell the end of this magnificent champion. However, I told the group that its chances of out-lasting this old forester are pretty good. The tree dwarfs our OLLI hike participants.

I always struggle with what to exclude in these Posts. This cathedral grove offered many individual trees worthy of profiling with photographs and observations, to name a few individuals: yellow poplar, yellow buckeye, shagbark hickory, and a handsome white basswood, among others. Chris and I plan to return during the winter to gather photographs, make measurements, and assemble material for a subsequent Post.

Cold Spring

Another reason for returning during the dormant season, when seasonal rainfall is more reliable, is to see the spring with greater flow. Here’s Chris snapping a photo of the OLLI group standing at the rock face where the spring emerges.

Here’s the august group at the spring, courtesy of Chris’ camera.

As we paused at the spring, I recorded this 2:23 video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaFmRSD6rtE&t=6s

Once again, a short video tells a far deeper tale.

Understory Plants and Flowers

I’ve long been a spring wildflower devotee, from my freshman systematic botany course that focused on the spring ephemerals of the central Appalachians, through my 13 interstate professional relocations across the country. After several years retired here in north Alabama I’ve evolved to more and more appreciate mid- and late-summer bloomers. Let’s visit a few that caught my eye along the Cold Spring Loop Trail.

I’m a softy for blue flowers like this zigzag spiderwort. Note the slight stem direction change at each leaf node, thus the zig zag moniker.

We found several specimens of fortune’s spindle (AKA wintercreeper) an escaped euonymus cultivar from east Asia. Its dark evergreen foliage and climbing form make it a desirable arbor cover for home plantings. I saw no evidence that it is an aggressive invasive. The individuals we saw drew me closer, serving as a point of focus and contrast.

This particular cluster was growing on the trunk of a yellow buckeye (below), the larger of two vine stems well-camouflaged vertically along the bark, distinguished only by the moss clinging to it.

Great Indian plantain still retained a few non-showy flowers. Marking its beauty are large glossy deep green leaves.

Bearing yet another blue flower, fall phox did not shout for attention, filling its reproductive end-of-season role as a seeming wallflower, yet lovely just the same.

Unlike its wildly showy domesticated cousins, wild hydrangea offered more subtle beauty. However, because I am a big hydrangea enthusiast, I appreciated seeing this specimen offering welcome along the abandoned paved road leading to the trailhead.

Nearby, along the same old road we found creeping cucumber in full flower, an understated intricate beauty, with fine tendrils assisting and enabling its annual climb.

Fungi

I’ve become a fungi kingdom convert, more and more understanding and appreciating this life form, its manifold and diverse members, and their essential role in our forests. Turkey tail, the mushroom of a wood decay organism, is common across eastern America. The internet is rich with sources describing its medicinal benefits.

I photographed this oak mazegill mushroom on the end of a section of an oak bole cleared to open the trail. I regret that the old forester who doesn’t kneel as well as he useta-did (southern expression), failed to capture a good image of the intricate maze-like underside.

Here is an image from on online source:

Conclusion

My primary retirement mission is simple: Employ writing and speaking to educate, inspire, and enable readers and listeners to understand, appreciate, and enjoy Nature… and accept and practice Earth Stewardship.

All of my teaching, hike-leading, writing, and publishing fit the mission. I love what I do, whether co-leading a morning exploration in a local preserve with friends and fellow Nature-enthusiast seniors or bushwhacking alone through a mature riparian hardwood forest. Standing with the state champion basswood, I feel a spiritual/sacred connection to a forest elder. I em engaged entirely with all five personal portals: body, mind, heart, soul, and spirit!

I want to feel Nature’s essence and taste inhale her elixir…and share the magic with others! Learning, teaching, and inspiring are in my Nature.

Alabama State Parks Foundation

Thoughts and Reflections

I offer these observations:

• Every time I explore a new (for me) north Alabama natural area I receive far more than I seek.
• I want to feel Nature’s essence and taste inhale her elixir…and share the magic with others!
• And into the forest I go, to lose my mind and find my soul. John Muir

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

If only more of us viewed our precious environment through the filters I employ. If only my mission and vision could be multiplied untold orders of magnitude:

Steve’s Three Books

I wrote my books Nature Based Leadership (2016), Nature-Inspired Learning and Leading (2017), and Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits: Stories of Passion for Place and Everyday Nature (2019; co-authored with Dr. Jennifer Wilhoit) to encourage all citizens to recognize and appreciate that every lesson for living, learning, serving, and leading is either written indelibly in or is powerfully inspired by Nature.

I began writing books and Posts for several reasons:

• I love hiking and exploring in Nature
• I see images I want to (and do) capture with my trusty iPhone camera
• I enjoy explaining those images — an educator at heart
• I don’t play golf!
• I actually do love writing — it’s the hobby I never needed when my career consumed me
• Judy suggested my writing is in large measure my legacy to our two kids, our five grand kids, and all the unborn generations beyond
• And finally, perhaps my books and Blogs could reach beyond family and touch a few other lives… sow some seeds for the future

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

This Post launches the 14-minute land legacy video tale for the Goldsmith-Schiffman Wildlife Sanctuary in Huntsville, Alabama. The Post chronicles and presents the year-long video production. Bill Heslip, retired videographer, and I conceived and co-led the effort…Bill Directed; I Produced. Bill dubbed our two-person team Two Guys & A Camera. We enjoyed the project immensely. We consider our product a lasting tribute to Margaret Anne Goldsmith, a model for her selfless gift of land and Nature to perpetuity, and to Marian Moore Lewis, an author, dedicated naturalist, and Nature enthusiast extraordinaire.

Bill and I tried not to take ourselves too seriously, hence we had lots of fun, learned a great deal, and will never forget the rewarding experience. We were blessed by getting to know Marian and Margaret Anne, Two Remarkable Women. Allow me just a few photographs to introduce our 14-minute video tribute. Here are Marian (left), Margaret Anne, and I standing at the Taylor Road entrance in June, 2020, before Bill and I germinated the idea for a land legacy video: https://stevejonesgbh.com/2021/08/25/contemplating-a-video-of-the-goldsmith-schiffman-wildlife-sanctuary/

Marian and Margaret Anne are holding a copy of Marian’s book, Southern Sanctuary, A Naturalist’s Walk through the Seasons at the Goldsmith-Schiffman Wildlife Sanctuary.

The video idea quickly took root once we broached it with Marian and Margaret Anne. In fact, once we adopted the video notion, the project became ours collectively, with fully shared ownership. Simply, we four viewed it as ours. We four gathered on-site June 6, 2021 for the first time. We were hooked!

May 13, 2022 proved to be a day gifted from on high — a tupelo swamp with emergent spring leaves and firmament above the fields opening a window straight into heaven!

Ours was truly a labor of love, ultimately yielding a product bringing the emotional power of human belief, action, and passion to reason…the reason of telling a story to audiences now and deep into the future.

Here is A Tale of Two Extraordinary Women:

On this grand day in May 2022 we could only dream of the completed project. My friends and colleagues can now celebrate — we did it! We memorialized Margaret Anne’s gift of land and vision to future generations. Louis Bromfield, mid 20th century author, playwright, and land steward, bought what he called his old worn out farm in north-central Ohio in the 1930s. He dedicated his life to rehabilitating the farm and its soils. He wrote in his non-fiction book, Pleasant Valley:

The adventure at Malabar is by no means finished… The land came to us out of eternity and when the youngest of us associated with it dies, it will still be here. The best we can hope to do is to leave the mark of our fleeting existence upon it, to die knowing that we have changed a small corner of this Earth for the better by wisdom, knowledge, and hard work…

We commend and thank Margaret Anne for donating the original 300 Sanctuary acres, thus changing some small corner of the Earth, gifting future generations with an incredibly Special Place!

The video matched my fondest memories and images of this special place, whose moods shift and gift across time, whether a frosty winter morning…

Or an autumn gaze into the canopy…

Or an early summer day of glory over a masterfully naturalized gravel pit. John Muir knew of Nature’s healing ways: Earth has no sorrow that earth cannot heal.

I co-authored (with Jennifer Wilhoit) my third book, Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits: Stories of Passion for Place and Everyday Nature, inspired by the deep relationships I’ve had with other special Nature places across life. Rest assured, the Sanctuary is one of my north Alabama Special Places. I will return often…to appreciate, learn, and grow from her ever-changing faces. I embrace without hesitation my belief that every lesson for living, learning, serving, and leading is written indelibly in or is powerfully inspired by Nature…and her special places.

Thoughts and Reflections

I offer these observations:

• Every parcel of land, including the Goldsmith-Schiffman Wildlife Sanctuary, has a legacy story to tell.
• Such preserved natural places enrich citizens’ lives.
• I applaud all nature enthusiasts who practice informed and responsible Earth stewardship. 

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

If only more of us viewed our precious environment through the filters I employ. If only my mission and vision could be multiplied untold orders of magnitude:

Steve’s Three Books

I wrote my books Nature Based Leadership (2016), Nature-Inspired Learning and Leading (2017), and Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits: Stories of Passion for Place and Everyday Nature (2019; co-authored with Dr. Jennifer Wilhoit) to encourage all citizens to recognize and appreciate that every lesson for living, learning, serving, and leading is either written indelibly in or is powerfully inspired by Nature.

I began writing books and Posts for several reasons:

• I love hiking and exploring in Nature
• I see images I want to (and do) capture with my trusty iPhone camera
• I enjoy explaining those images — an educator at heart
• I don’t play golf!
• I actually do love writing — it’s the hobby I never needed when my career consumed me
• Judy suggested my writing is in large measure my legacy to our two kids, our five grand kids, and all the unborn generations beyond
• And finally, perhaps my books and Blogs could reach beyond family and touch a few other lives… sow some seeds for the future

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

August 12, 2022, I visited the 20-acre Indian Creek stream-side property owned and stewarded by Huntsville, Alabama’s Grace United Methodist Church, toured by my friend and Grace UMC parishioner Jim Chamberlain, a fellow Nature-enthusiast. It’s fitting that a church owns this sacred place, where I feel the nearness of a higher Power, immersed in a natural spiritual essence and filled with the hope of eternity. I’ve driven past the church dozens of times, paying no attention to it or the forest behind it. However, hidden in plain sight, the property serves as a reminder that Nature lies within easy reach to all of us, an island of urban wildness, rich with forest and edge plant and animal communities.

Streamside Forest

Indian Creek flows south from the property to first run along the Indian Creek Greenway at the Providence community, crosses Route 72, then parallels the Indian Creek Greenway. The Providence segment terminates just a few hundred feet below the church property. The stream had good summer flow, visually complementing the riparian forest lining it. At this point the church property reaches across the creek.

This rich bottomland supports a vibrant forest, including the largest tree we encountered, a 39-inch DBH (diameter breast height) southern red oak, wearing a tree moss skirt. The view left looks back into the stand toward the church, which sits safely well above the floodplain. The photo below right shows that the oak stands squarely in the flood zone, just fifty feet from the stream.

Jim captured this image of me with the oak. It’s not often that I have such an aura about me! Perhaps it is the spiritual essence of the place loaning its glow to an old forester.

The oak barely beat out the nearby yellow poplar, which we measured at 36-inches diameter breast height. Both trees stood greater than 100 feet, in their own way reaching heavenward, just as the parishioners do through their songs, prayers, and fellowship.

Here’s my 2:07 video centering on the poplar and giving you a taste of the riparian forest along Indian Creek:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OM-EX7c0Ovc

I’ve spent many hours combing our north Alabama woods, yet here on the church forest I encountered my first-ever trifoliate orange (Citrus trifoliata), with its woody multiple thorns and, you guessed it, its leaves of three (i.e.trifoliate).

Because this is a strange new plant for me, I offer this description from a North Carolina Cooperative Extension reference:

Trifoliate Orange or Hardy Orange is a deciduous thorny shrub or small tree that grows up to nearly 20′ tall. This plant blooms in mid-spring and fruit ripens in early fall. Spines are sharp and numerous and are not for high traffic areas. This plant may be pruned into a thick, impenetrable hedge. This plant is an excellent winter character as specimen planting. This plant prefers well-drained, acid soil and full sun. It is intolerant of shady siting, is easily transplanted, and has no serious pest or disease problems.

The lemon-like fruit is exceedingly sour and full of seeds. If eaten in large quantities, the high acidity can cause severe stomach pain and nausea. Some people experience minor skin irritation with prolonged contact. While the peel and the pulp can be used to make marmalade, the fruit is often left on the tree to provide beauty well into winter.

Makes an excellent hedge, its thorns deterring entry.  However, it can be somewhat invasive.

Admittedly, while happy to encounter this new (for me) species, the cited description does not engender warm feelings! The specimen I photographed is growing in full shade, thus explaining its less than robust condition. I suspect that it sprouted from seed washing downstream from a vibrant mother plant thriving in more favorable conditions. It was not lost on me that the woody thorns brought to mind a long-ago crown of thorns.

The orb weaver spider below at the top of its web is feverishly wrapping its dinner. Just as I glanced ahead, the hapless insect flew into the web. Within seconds the spider had immobilized and wrapped its future meal. Nature is harsh. It’s a spider-eats-insect world. So many people tend to think of Nature as an idyllic world characterized by peace and love…entirely cooperative and synergistic. I’ve heard idealists remark, “Why can’t we all get along…like in Nature?” Truth is, Nature is ruthlessly competitive. The food chain is fine, as long as you sit upon the apex. The spider loves the moth, freshly wrapped. A female praying mantis loves her mate — he tastes so good when she consumes him after coitus.

Here is Jim’s 11-second video of the spider in action, a sobering image and a stark reminder of Nature’s harshness:

https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipPaQxoh5rn2EEsQTn5U3C7lvIrDIpo6sxiQxUaCaRZrFSog7sr87j0Yct8Jcy55uQ/photo/AF1QipNlStEd8bgzDwg2AQKacCzeVztTEmxmZmOTXukU?key=RENDMkdpZHFfMHdSdXlxMlZZaTNHLUxWUVlnZUJB

Here’s Jim’s still shot of yet another orb weaver web.

Nature is anything but the universally pleasant and peaceful place depicted in 1960s Disney movies.

I’ve read many recent much-ballyhooed pseudo-scientific tomes that address how caring trees in the forest are to one another. Instead, I see evidence in every stand that competition is brutal…to the victor go the spoils of space, moisture, and nutrients.

Upland Forest

Access to the upland forest is via the Grace Prayer Trail. Because we concentrated on the riparian forest, I failed to photo-cover the upland area. Perhaps on another visit we’ll spend more time in the mixed pine-hardwood forest.

Jim Chamberlain Photo

The Prayer Trail leads to a point for quiet reflection and prayer.

Jim Chamberlain Photo

Fairyland Portal

We entered the GUMC streamside forest through the adjacent riparian forest at Providence Elementary School, just downstream from the GUMC property. Students have created a fairyland for elves, gnomes, and other creatures of a fantasy world.

Even the trees have faces. I suppose it’s funny that the adjoining properties have different spiritual essences. The youth chose a more mirthful theme.

The Providence Greenway ends at the Elementary School property line.

Forest Edge

We walked along the church upland forest on the school driveway leading to its parking lot. The forest sits atop the rise north of the lot.

Jim Chamberlain Photos

We found several plants worthy of photographing within the edge along the property line. I am sure that most drivers thought little of the weeds along the lane as they prepared to drop off or pick up their kids. Instead, I saw the edge as botanically rich…a showy summer garden. Heart-leafed peppervine, a member of the grape family, grew into the trees. Although attractive, its fruit is inedible for humans.

Common evening primrose did not seem to recognize that its name suggests an end of day flower period. The image at right with blurry flowers is intended to show its leaves.

I really like the red morning glory’s diminutive orange-red flower (left) and its typical heart-shaped leaf (right). Unlike the evening primrose, the morning glory lived up to its moniker.

The common morning glory proudly displayed its iridescent blue petals and white center.

I am grateful for a chance to explore the riparian portion of a 20-acre parcel along Indian Creek. I know the creek from hiking and biking along both the Indian Creek Greenway. Because the watershed in dominated by urban and suburban communities, it flashes (floods) rapidly. The GUMC flood plain evidences frequent and significant flushes. In effect, the property represents an island of urban wildness, rich with forest and edge plant and animal communities. It serves as a reminder that Nature lies within easy reach to all of us.

Thoughts and Reflections

I offer these thoughts:

• Urban wildness lies within easy reach of nearly everyone who reads these words.
• Whether a church property or a public Park or Preserve, Nature’s Spirit is ever-present.
• Every tree, forest, and property has a story to tell!

If only more of us viewed our precious environment through the filters I employ. If only my mission and vision could be multiplied untold orders of magnitude:

Steve’s Three Books

I wrote my books Nature Based Leadership (2016), Nature-Inspired Learning and Leading (2017), and Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits: Stories of Passion for Place and Everyday Nature (2019; co-authored with Dr. Jennifer Wilhoit) to encourage all citizens to recognize and appreciate that every lesson for living, learning, serving, and leading is either written indelibly in or is powerfully inspired by Nature.

I began writing books and Posts for several reasons:

• I love hiking and exploring in Nature
• I see images I want to (and do) capture with my trusty iPhone camera
• I enjoy explaining those images — an educator at heart
• I don’t play golf!
• I actually do love writing — it’s the hobby I never needed when my career consumed me
• Judy suggested my writing is in large measure my legacy to our two kids, our five grand kids, and all the unborn generations beyond
• And finally, perhaps my books and Blogs could reach beyond family and touch a few other lives… sow some seeds for the future

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

August 16, 2022, I hiked the Racetrack Trail at Wade Mountain Nature Preserve just north of Huntsville, Alabama. Jim Chamberlain, friend and fellow nature enthusiast (below left), led the way on our early morning venture. He had hiked the preserve multiple times; this was my first visit to Wade Mountain. Like all of the Land Trust of North Alabama preserves, Wade Mountain is a cooperative venture (below right).

I’ve photographed two other Land Trust of North Alabama Hug Me trees on two other Land Trust of North Alabama properties (Bradford Creek Greenway and Rainbow Mountain Nature Preserve). I appreciate the welcome to reach out, touch, and toast a fellow forest denizen.

Although we spent just a single morning on the preserve, I view the hike as two distinct segments. This Post encompasses what we saw on the more typical forest we hiked on our trek to the actual ridgetop racetrack, which circuits a limestone glade, a unique floristic community.  I’ll offer separate reflections, observations, and photographs on the glade for the subsequent Wade Mountain Post.

Pleasant Forest Trail

The early, lower slope trail transits an old field forest of loblolly pine and mixed hardwoods. I’ve learned that much of northern Alabama forestland saw attempted agricultural domestication during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Virtually every acre of original (at time of European settlement) forest experienced at least one round of timber harvesting, often leading to cropland or pasture. The cropped non-bottomland acreage fell victim to erosion, loss of fertility, bankruptcy, or other causal abandonment. Nature effectively regenerated the failed agricultural land to successional pine and hardwood. Some of the pine in the photos below may have been planted; most lands regenerated naturally.

The ash below stands tall and straight. I’ve been a big fan of ash since my forestry undergraduate days and well into my early forestry career. Both green and white ash (both native here) prefer more fertile sites, reaching vertically with clear bole, competing effectively for space in the upper crown. Its wood is highly prized for furniture. I’ve used it with preference for firewood. It splits ever-so-easily and burns with high BTU generation. This individual measured about 18 inches DBH and reached branch-free 50 feet.

Like all public access Land Trust of North Alabama preserves, the trails are clearly marked, well-maintained, and have occasional benches.

Here’s the 2:45 video I recorded midway to the ridgetop limestone glade:

The video provides a nice example of what is a gentle hike through a forest typical of upland northern Alabama.

Special Features

Many special features caught our eye, most of it hidden in plain sight. This mockernut hickory, a species common along our route, evidenced continuing yellow bellied sapsucker bird-peck. Bird peck generally does not reduce tree vigor. Sources indicate that wounds occasionally serve as infection courts for wood decay fungi.

While in most cases not harming the tree, bird peck results in lessening the commercial value for wood products. My first exposure to bird peck as a lumber defect came in undergraduate forestry studies. Here’s a photo of bird peck as a lumber grade defect from an online Mississippi State Cooperative Extension publication.

The defect took on much greater significance during my early career when I purchased standing sawtimber to supply my employer’s hardwood sawmill in Waverly, Virginia (Union Camp Corporation) early in my forestry career.

I’ve mentioned repeatedly in these Posts that life and death operate in tandem within our forests…and that nothing in Nature is static. This 15″ DBH (diameter breast height) red oak toppled across the trail within the past 2-5 years. I know it was living when wind (most likely) brought it to the ground. How do I know? See the root ball, evidencing that pliant roots were still grasping the soil, obviously wrenched free by the violent action.

How do I know that the leafless tree is a red oak? The chainsawed cross-section has open pores; white oaks have closed pores, filled with tyloses. Thank heavens for closed white oak pores; without them, barrels would leak, which for example would not be good for Jack Daniels or for those of us who enjoy such fermented and aged libations!

This oak died standing. When physics brought the tree to its horizontal resting place, its roots had already decayed. Roots had long since become brittle and weak, no longer able to hold the tree against even gentle forces of wind and gravity. Nature has many secrets to share with those who have learned her ways.

Jim stands beside a hollow white oak. My forensic forestry observations tell me that this tree began life as a twin. At some point decades ago the twin on this side crashed toward the photo point in a storm, leaving a gaping wound welcoming decay fungi that have since hollowed the trunk. Note in the closer look (below right) a mushroom within the hollow. I suppose it is associated with the decay fungi or other fungi working on jettisoned organic matter within the cavity.

I use that white mushroom to segue from special features of the forest to special finds within the forest’s fungi kingdom.

Special Fungi Kingdom Finds

I grow increasingly fascinated with fungi, owing in part to my retirement pursuit of wild edible mushrooms and, in large measure, to now having time for learning more about all facets of our forests.

This is Coker’s amanita, a spiked globe when just emerging (left). The top flattens considerably as it spreads, and the spikes appear as scales. Our visit coincided with a particularly showy time for this species.

Jim Chamberlain’s photo below shows me taking the image above left, providing a sense of scale…and giving proof that I can still get on my knees in pursuit of mushroom close-ups.

Jim Chamberlain Photo

This pallid bolete likewise presented as newly emerged and fresh. My bookshelf and online references are not in full agreement on its edibility. Therefore, I have not ventured into testing. I plan next season to pay greater attention to the local boletes, learning to distinguish those that are table-worthy.

In contrast, I have full confidence in collecting and consuming summer oysters. However, I do not collect on Land Trust Nature Preserves. I simply collected the images.

I’ve found this to be a spartan season for mushroom observation and collection. The weather? The natural cyclical nature of mushroom reproduction? I don’t know. The mushrooming internet sites I occasionally visit have likewise reported a generally disappointing summer.

Rock Features

Nature does indeed abhor a vacuum, this lichen-covered rock serving as a prime example. However, I must offer a caveat. In our human terms, the rock offers a most hostile environment. In contrast, the evidence, a dense crustose lichen colony, carries the day. Obviously, the lichen is quite happy with the surface. I’ve observed before in these Posts that lichen requires little, and the rock offers quite a bit of just that!

The lichen-crusted rock offers much to the dedicated and observant Nature enthusiast — a gift of beauty and marvel!

Water can be very creative and artistic with limestones, working its magic with physical and chemical weathering. I wondered what special forces aligned to create this perfectly cylindrical hole. We had a little fun with it, but could not offer an explanation for its formation. I’ve learned that reward in exploring Nature sometimes derives from not having all the answers. The universe…and the forest…is replete with phenomena beyond our understanding. I’ve observed often that the more I learn the less I know.

The forests I wander are home to countless such special features.

Way Down Yonder in the Paw Paw Patch

I grew up in western Maryland just 30 miles from Paw Paw, West Virginia. Paw paw trees (lower and mid-canopy) were common in the central Appalachian forests. I had not anticipated seeing the species here in northern Alabama, yet I see them frequently, usually as an understory shrub. I just liked the notion of sharing these photos of Way Down Yonder in the Wade Mountain Nature Preserve Paw Paw Patch!

Every place in Nature has a unique character and special features. Learn to be ever-vigilant in your search for both. You will never be disappointed in what you discover, often hidden in plain sight.

Thoughts and Reflections

I offer these thoughts:

• First visits to a new Nature Preserve offer special rewards.
• Each place in Nature has a unique character and tells its own story.
• Inhale and absorb Nature’s elixir, whether on an initial exploration or during each return visit!

If only more of us viewed our precious environment through the filters I employ. If only my mission and vision could be multiplied untold orders of magnitude:

Steve’s Three Books

I wrote my books Nature Based Leadership (2016), Nature-Inspired Learning and Leading (2017), and Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits: Stories of Passion for Place and Everyday Nature (2019; co-authored with Dr. Jennifer Wilhoit) to encourage all citizens to recognize and appreciate that every lesson for living, learning, serving, and leading is either written indelibly in or is powerfully inspired by Nature.

I began writing books and Posts for several reasons:

• I love hiking and exploring in Nature
• I see images I want to (and do) capture with my trusty iPhone camera
• I enjoy explaining those images — an educator at heart
• I don’t play golf!
• I actually do love writing — it’s the hobby I never needed when my career consumed me
• Judy suggested my writing is in large measure my legacy to our two kids, our five grandkids, and all the unborn generations beyond
• And finally, perhaps my books and Blogs could reach beyond family and touch a few other lives… sow some seeds for the future

Jim Chamberlain’s Photo

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

July 27-29, 2022, Judy and I, along with Alabama grandsons Jack (14) and Sam (8), spent two nights at Cave City, Kentucky to visit one of my bucket list National Parks, Mammoth Cave. Although the world’s most extensive cave (420 miles of mapped passageways) provides lots of fodder on Nature-Inspired Life and Living, that is not my purpose with this Post. Instead, I offer a few snippets of Nature gleaned from our two overnights in Cave City. My point is that Nature’s beauty, magic, wonder, and awe can be found wherever one cares to look.

The Park itself offers free admission; visitors pay for the various structured cave tours, one of which we took the next afternoon. I captured the two image below the first day when we toured the museum and interpretive center.

I won’t report on our underground experience. Suffice it for me to observe that Nature can do a lot with a few hundred million years of deposition, compression, uplift, and within-limestone-strata chemical and water action! Four hundred twenty miles of mapped passageways. A lush mixed hardwood forest occupies the cove site (left) as the trail descends to the cave entrance (right).

Our First Evening: An Atmospheric Show

Our first evening we left the Park with thunderstorms moving in from the west. Rain fell as we ate dinner. We returned to our hotel in time for me to photograph the departing line of storms to our east. I apologize for including the commercial buildings, yet I had little choice. Please do as I did…focus on the incredible clouds, not the foreground. The first image is an 8:03 PM view to the east.

These are at 8:05 and 8:07 to the NNE.

I recorded a 20-second video of the very active eastern sky. In retrospect, I should have extended the run:

Even as the action retreated east, the massive thunderstorms produced a spreading anvil, with thunder still rumbling within the anvil, directly overhead, miles above me. The setting sun underlit the anvil and highlighted trailing mammatus to the west. This brilliant sky appeared behind me at 8:04 PM when I took the photos above. These same storms (and more behind them) generated the torrential deadly rains that inundated eastern Kentucky later that evening and overnight. Nature can combine captivating beauty with unfathomable power and fury. Flooding rains have pummeled eastern Kentucky since (and before) the first tectonic plates crashed to create the alpine-like early Appalachians…long before the first internal combustion engines. Frog-stranglers, cloudbursts, gully-washers, and other epic flash floods will continue long after the Appalachians are forever flattened. Climate change — No! Climate — Yes!

Pastel blue trailed the anvil at 8:05 and 8:06 PM. Like with so many natural phenomena, we are rewarded when our gaze shifts along a continuum, whether within a single forest stand, or across an entire landscape or the firmament from west to east, and back again. As I’ve said repeatedly, viewer appreciation increases exponentially with understanding. Without knowing the atmospheric physics and mechanics of thunderstorms, I would have enjoyed the superficial prettiness, but would not have seen the real beauty that emerges only with comprehension.

Leonardo da Vinci concurred:

The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.

One has no right to love or hate anything if one has not acquired a thorough knowledge of its nature. Great love springs from great knowledge of the beloved object, and if you know it but little you will be able to love it only a little or not at all.

Another cluster of storms passed overnight, rousting us from sleep, with no opportunities for capturing images. Those storms, too, were eastbound to add tumult to misery, taking at least three dozen lives. I think often of the Nature of catastrophic weather events…perhaps odd to phrase it this way, but the flip side of disaster can be absolute stunning gorgeousness. Think of the satellite images of Katrina spinning with grandeur before landfall. The magnificent supercell thunderstorm profile at distance in full sunlight, even as it spawns an EF-5 tornado raking an Oklahoma or Missouri community. The sunlit anvil trailing a thunderstorm cluster destined to flush human infrastructure and lives from east Kentucky hamlets 170 miles from Cave City. The Beauty and the Beast of weather! The Nature of weather and climate since time immemorial. Since long before man contemplated climate change as an existential threat.

John Muir observed that all of Nature is a continuum…a never ending loop:

This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never dried all at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls.

Our Morning of Departure

I arose at dawn July 29, our day of departure, to stroll around the land surrounding the hotels. A thick layer of low stratus dampened the air and softened the morning light. I found a few Nature items worthy of photographing. Purple passion flowers have an unsurpassed intricate structure and eye-popping beauty. They displayed proudly this damp morning.

Northbound en route to Cave City, I had noticed tree of heaven in full seed along the interstate. My morning stroll presented a close-up photograph opportunity. Nature’s wonder hidden in plain sight. The dual miracles of photosynthesis and reproduction.

Shining sumac showcased its winged compound leaves and dense flower heads. I wondered whether sunlight would have enhanced or lessened the effect of my three plant subjects. Perhaps there is an aesthetic reason why I long for occasional rainy summer days that may or may not enhance beauty, but certainly elevate my appreciation of Nature.

The morning’s low stratus deck above our hotel served as a fitting context for our brief stay and my early wanderings.

Nature is, in fact, with few exceptions, where we seek to find it. Although Mammoth Cave National Park was our primary destination, I found fulfillment around our hotel, a place far removed from traditional wildness.

Thoughts and Reflections

I offer these observations:

• The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding (da Vinci).
• Nature is, in fact, with few exceptions, wherever we seek to find it.
• Nature shared with those we love enhances appreciation of her wonders.

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

If only more of us viewed our precious environment through the filters I employ. If only my mission and vision could be multiplied untold orders of magnitude:

Steve’s Three Books

I wrote my books Nature Based Leadership (2016), Nature-Inspired Learning and Leading (2017), and Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits: Stories of Passion for Place and Everyday Nature (2019; co-authored with Dr. Jennifer Wilhoit) to encourage all citizens to recognize and appreciate that every lesson for living, learning, serving, and leading is either written indelibly in or is powerfully inspired by Nature.

I began writing books and Posts for several reasons:

• I love hiking and exploring in Nature
• I see images I want to (and do) capture with my trusty iPhone camera
• I enjoy explaining those images — an educator at heart
• I don’t play golf!
• I actually do love writing — it’s the hobby I never needed when my career consumed me
• Judy suggested my writing is in large measure my legacy to our two kids, our five grand kids, and all the unborn generations beyond
• And finally, perhaps my books and Blogs could reach beyond family and touch a few other lives… sow some seeds for the future

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