I am pleased to offer the fourth of my new GBH Brief Form Post format (Less than three-minutes to read! Not including viewing the short video) to my website. I tend to get a bit long-winded with my routine Posts. I don’t want my enthusiasm for thoroughness and detail to discourage readers. So I will publish the brief Posts regularly on at least a trial basis.

Brief-Form Post on Magical Mosses and Lichens

January 31, 2023 I visited Huntsville, Alabama’s Goldsmith-Schiffman Wildlife Sanctuary to see what woodland delights mid-winter offered. One might expect a drab, lifeless, early afternoon. Such is seldom (never!) the case when I wonder our north Alabama forests.

Mosses in Regal Green

Were this one of my longer Posts I would define and characterize the lifeform we call moss (and in the following section…lichen). Today, I shall presume my readers generally know a moss when they see one. Let’s instead enjoy and admire the exquisite verdant drapery adorning these winter trunks!

I recorded this 2:28 video of moss-draped trees while wandering the riparian forest:

Even the fallen stems retain their green fineries!

Mid-winter as drab and lifeless — no way!

Multi-hued Lichens

This stem serves as a perfect segue from mosses to lichens, sporting both lifeforms on its trunk.

American beech trees, on which so many brainless humans insist upon carving banal epitaphs of adoration, provide superb palettes for lichens of all shades and varieties. Especially when rain has wetted the trunks with stem-flow, as was the case on January 31, the colors are vibrant.

I’m fascinated with Nature’s artistry…revealing her incomparable beauty, magic, wonder, and awe!

• Nature’s beauty, magic, wonder, awe, and inspiration are without limit, often exceeding our expectations!

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

NOTE: I place 3-5 short videos (15-seconds to three minutes) on my Steve Jones Great Blue Heron YouTube channel weekly. All relate to Nature-Inspired Life and Living. I encourage you to SUBSCRIBE! It’s FREE. Having more subscribers helps me spread my message of Informed and Responsible Earth Stewardship…locally and globally!

I am pleased to offer the third of my new GBH Brief Form Post format to my website (Less than three-minutes to read! Not including viewing the short video). I tend to get a bit long-winded with my routine Posts. I don’t want my enthusiasm for thoroughness and detail to discourage readers. So I will publish the brief Posts regularly on at least a trial basis.

Brief-Form Post on Some Horrendous Big Tree Crashes

March 16, 2023 I co-led a field trip as a supplement to the seven-week North Alabama State Parks course that Mike Ezell, Alabama State Park Naturalist Emeritus, and I taught at Huntsville LearningQuest this winter semester. We chose a spectacular spring day, unlike just two weeks prior when a ferocious squall line brought high winds across north Alabama. As I bushwhacked the Lake Wheeler bluff forests near Park headquarters after my saunter with the class, I discovered two large wind-downed trees worthy of photographing.

Snapped 40-inch Red Oak

Wind snapped the top at 25-feet above the stump from this massive northern red oak. The mass crashed to the ground with tremendous force. I stood in awe, feeling this day’s fresh breeze from the lake, only imagining the crescendo of noise, vibration, and gust accompanying the fall.

I’ll include the 3:16 video of this shattered oak when I post my longer-form photo-essay. This giant left a void…one that Nature will fill. Tons of organic woody debris will inexorably recycle to soil and new life.

Uprooted Thirty-inch Hackberry!

I had seen few hackberry trees larger than this one. Securely rooted in a rich woodland draw…a perfect growing environment, blessed with ample moisture and abundant nutrients…this incredible living organism yielded to the gale, its roots wrenched from its fertile medium!

The hackberry giant acted as the first in a hackberry domino series. Wind combined with the multi-ton mass momentum of the pitching tree served as an irresistible force.

As I often note, a short video (this one 3:31) tells the tale better than my feeble prose.

I’m fascinated with Nature’s brute force…and with her incomparable beauty, magic, wonder, and awe!

• Nature’s ferocity is one element of her magnificence.

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

In concert with the January 19, 2023 Alabama State Park Foundation Board meeting I spent two nights at an Oak Mountain State Park cabin on Tranquility Lake, rewarding me handsomely with two evenings and two mornings of dusk and dawn lakeside.

I shifted this Post from my normal focus on lessons and conclusions that I draw (and communicate) from my observations, reflections, and photographs. Occasionally I like to ask the photos and videos to speak without the clutter and distraction of wordy narrative. I ask that you accept the compilation of photos and videos as a simple sharing of Nature’s beauty, magic, wonder, and awe…so often available with minimum effort and cost within easy reach of where we happen to live.

Double Oak Lake Welcome

After checking in at the park office January 17, I stopped at the larger Double Oak Lake near the headquarters, capturing the fading afternoon sky above the lake at 3:55 and 4:00 PM.

The shoreline forest reflected nicely at 3:57 PM. Calm water encourages visual and spiritual reflection!

First Evening at Tranquility Lake

Once settled into my cabin, I explored my surroundings, collecting photographs and memories from the shore and entering Maggie’s Glen Trail. I’ll report on my several forest ventures in two separate Posts. I snapped the photos below at 4:37 and 4:46 as the sun descended into the forest across Tranquility Lake. Peace, beauty, and serenity abound…intense in their subtlety. An abundance of spiritual and sacred connection…the magic entered me, absorbed by the five portals of acceptance: body, mind, heart, soul, and spirit!

Camera perspective modifies brightness. The two images below appear much brighter than the direct sunset views above. These images emphasize forest and shoreline reflections (4:37 and 4:38 PM).

I recorded this 3:07 video at 4:38, immediately after the four still photos above.

Time progressed as I left the pond (4:52 PM) to explore the first few hundred feet of the Maggie’s Glen Trail, saving deeper exploration for the next morning.  The view left depicts the feeder stream entering the lake; I snapped the photo at right a few hundred feet further from the lake.

I returned from the forest, where darkness was rapidly descending (or was the gloam ascending?), to gather two more images, the western sky and my cabin, both photos at 5:19 PM, nautical twilight.

Just a minute later, Nature gave me one last gift as fog…an evening vapor…began seeping from the outlet stream forest under a still luminescent western sky.

John Muir often captured the essence of Nature’s inspiration and magic:

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

First Morning on Tranquility Lake

January 18 I arose early to enjoy dawn, a daily gift I seldom miss wherever I am. Tranquility Lake once again presented a serene, calm, dawn image at 6:41 AM.

Because still photos can’t capture all of the dawn magic, here is my 2:09 video:

My cabin at 6:55 AM, a stand of loblolly line rising into the mists behind it.

A quiet gaggle of Canada geese gathered at the inlet stream (6:57 AM).

I caught the geese stirring and a nearby great blue heron in the dawn tranquility with this 2:08 video:

Shifting my lens to the heron (6:57 AM), I managed a profile just before the magnificent bird took flight.

Nearly an hour later, I returned to the lake after emerging from hiking on Maggie’s Glen Trail, to find the lake still misty (7:53 AM).

Second Morning on Tranquility Lake

January 19, I once again exited my cabin, snapping two Tranquility Lake photos at 6:32 and 6:34 AM, with little mist and a higher stratus overcast than the prior morning. My Canada geese friends have not left.

Here’s my 2:41 video of yet another dawn on Tranquility Lake:

Perhaps I would have eventually tired of the superb reflections of cabin and trees (6:34 AM) and the view of the lake from the feeder stream (6:37 AM), but I suspect it would take far longer that just my two night stay!

By 7:10 AM I viewed and photographed Tranquility Lake from the Cabins Loop Trail whose trailhead departed near my cabin. With the sky brightening and hints of blue and pink, the reflections remained intense and rewarding.

The views at 7:14 and 7:20 AM paid great dividends for my investment of rising early and circuiting the Cabins Loop Trail. I shall never abandon my pre-dawn and early morning wanderings!

Repeating from my opening, I shifted this Post from my normal focus on lessons and conclusions that I draw (and communicate) from my observations, reflections, and photographs. Occasionally I like to ask the photos and videos to speak without the clutter and distraction of wordy narrative. I ask that you accept the compilation of photos and videos as a simple sharing of Nature’s beauty, magic, wonder, and awe…so often available with minimum effort and cost within easy reach of where we happen to live.

I shall never tire of rising early enough to chronicle a new day’s dawning, whether from my back patio, in a nearby parcel of wildness, or some far away destination!

Alabama State Parks Foundation

Thoughts and Reflections

I offer these observations:

• I shall never tire of Nature’s dawning and gloaming.
• This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never all dried at once (John Muir).
• I shall never abandon my pre-dawn and early morning wanderings!

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.

December 19, 2019 I visited the Tunica River Park along the Mississippi River just 30 miles south of Memphis and immediately across from Arkansas. The Mighty Mississippi stirred my soul. Oh, the stories it could tell.

Okay, I’ll admit that a Tunica casino and the overwhelming human urge to risk wealth to beat the 25-cent slots drew Judy and me to the Big Muddy! We are high rollers — Not! We showed up willing to blow $100. We managed to do just that…yet it took us two full days, allowing lots of enjoyment and excitement. We looked, I am sure, out of place. Married 50 years and still in love, sitting side-by-side at a single slot machine, laughing with glee when we won…and sharing the woe when we didn’t. We reached an alpine high when we reached $125 the first evening. We ended the second day at $75, managing to depart the last morning at a big fat zero!

But that’s the side story. I could not visit the Mississippi River without sampling a taste of Nature. That’s our casino site along the river.

The Tunica County River Park serve as the location for this Post. Note that the Park sits on the outside of one of the river’s broad meanders, a feature that defined the river’s pattern across the millions of years of creating this magnificent delta region. The outside river cuts the deep delta soils; the slower inside flow deposits sediments…the sandbar across the river.

The stone below protects the shoreline, in this case 20-feet above the then current water level. This view is downstream. A typical hardwood forest lies beyond the park’s open ground.

A river cruise boat sits docked upstream at the park’s museum and interpretive center.

My 2:11 video captures the essence of the river several hundred miles above the Gulf of Mexico:

Although at least twenty feet above the current river level, flood debris suggests the far greater volume carried periodically by the Mighty Mississippi! Arkansas sandbars defining the broad inside meander lie perhaps a half-mile from my vantage point (right).

I wonder what Mark Twain would have thought of the modern day river cruise ship docked at the park. Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer’s adventures would have taken a different twist had they been aboard such a ship.

The company’s online site offers this:

Stretching for 2,350 miles down the United States, from Minnesota’s Lake Itasca to the Gulf of Mexico, our new cruises on the “Mighty Mississippi” offer a different type of cross-country journey for the curious explorer—one that allows you to be immersed in American history and culture. Step on board the newest and most modern ship on the Mississippi with all outside staterooms, private verandas, spacious public areas and our signature, clean Scandinavian design, reimagined for the Mississippi River.

Not at the kind of Big Muddy adventure that Huck and Tom experienced!

Here’s the cruise ship view from the north, pausing for tourists to visit the Park and its River Museum.

As is my custom, I paid attention to the firmament, an altostratus overcast, the river mirroring its leaden color, albeit with a strong hint of its sediment burden. This view is downstream, its disturbed water flowing toward the Gulf.

Because I contend more and more with each Post that a brief video enhances my still photos, observations, and reflections, I present this 3:19 video I recorded just upstream from the Visitors Center.

The overcast north and upstream expressed the same mid-winter grey dullness. I do not imply that the tone and effect are without beauty and magic. I find wonder in the South’s varying winter moods.

Judy provides a pleasant foreground to the Mississippi and a tow of barges heading north.

Sycamore had been planted in straight rows near where I recorded the second video. Forty years ago I established and managed plantations of four species of hardwood to supply high quality fiber to my employer’s (Union Camp Corporation) Franklin, Virginia mill. Sycamore grew rapidly with wood fibers (short, smooth, and dense) perfectly suited for manufacturing fine writing paper. At the time, our Franklin mill was the world’s largest fine paper producer. The ornamental planting reminded me that I had revelled in pursuit of my chosen profession on behalf of a Fortune 500 paper and allied products manufacturing concern. I still have high regard for those who manage forests to sustainably and renewably meet the manifold wood and fiber needs and demands of society.

Now, far removed from my younger practicing industrial forestry days, I retain that deep respect for utilitarian forestry. I watch sawlog and pulpwood trucks along our roads and byways with a degree of longing for those good old years. Some of my fellow Nature enthusiasts don’t view the raw product harvest, transport, and manufacturing sectors with respect and affection. I, in contrast, thank God for the 12 years I spent practicing forestry for a company that owned and responsibly and sustainably managed 2.2 million acres of forestland from Virginia through the Carolinas, Georgia, Florida, and Alabama. I am blessed to have done the real work and experience of informed and responsible forestry.

Although I regret not finding a rich delta site to hike through some of the most productive forests on the planet, I snapped these two photos of a old bottomland forest that is feeling and showing its age. Like our north Alabama forests, the delta hardwood forests do not live unchanged forever. Nothing in Nature is static. The photo below left shows coarse-topped crowns beginning to break apart. A closer look revealed considerable dead and down woody debris on the ground. A large dead tree stands left of center at right.

The trail-closed sign kept me from exploring the younger stand beyond the open park grounds below. For another day!

I leave you with a broad aerial view of the region we visited….and urge you to consider that individual trees and forests do not live forever, nor does Old Muddy pick a channel and stay within it, unchanging over time. The casino and resort where we stayed is just above and to the left of the red pin. The large Arkansas sand flats that lie across the river from the Park are WNW of the pin, downstream from our casino. The aerial photograph evidences that the river is ever-changing. Horseshoe Lake is clearly an old meander oxbow lake. Other ancient meanders and oxbow remnants pepper the landscape, defining the river and delta’s past and portending its future.

The Mighty Mississippi River has transported rainfall and melted snow uninterrupted since the continental ice sheet melted 13,000 years ago…and during interglacial periods before, from Lake Itasca to the Gulf of Mexico. Itasca annually receives 30 inches of liquid precipitation (includes 50 inches of snow). Across 13,000 years, Itasca contributed 32,500 feet of rain (and melted snow) to Big Muddy. Every Itasca acre contributed 1.4 billion cubic feet of water over the period. The aggregate numbers are staggering. Nature itself is similarly mind-blowing. Nature one day at a time can be overwhelming. Expand her beauty, magic, wonder, and awe by a month, a year, a decade, or 13,000 years…her essence is beyond our imagination. Stand back if we reach beyond the arbitrary 13 millennia, an insignificant blink of an eye…just 1/7692 of a billion years.

I close with those sobering reminders of our own human insignificance.

Thoughts and Reflections

I offer these observations:

• The Mighty Mississippi is truly a force of Nature.
• Nature is within reach even on a trip to enjoy a nice hotel, good food and drink, and some low-stakes slots!
• A taste of Nature along the Big Muddy inspires a future deeper dive into the Delta Bottomland Forests.

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.

Winter is racing past. I’m completing this Post narrative February 24, 2023, a full two months beyond the deep winter episode that is the subject of this photo-essay. Yesterday (February 23) Madison recorded a high of 83! I have a backlog of these Posts ready for publishing. I thought it is approaching past-time to issue this one!

A Personal Fascination with Weather

December 22, 2022, our local forecast alerted us in north Alabama to an epic Arctic air mass plunging our way, anticipated to enter from the northwest that evening, ushered by showers before midnight. I’ll focus this Nature-Inspired Life and Living Post on the six-day period from the frontal passage to the return flow of warmer air.

I admit to being a complete weather geek! I still follow the weather at locations where we’ve lived across our 50 years of marriage and career. I normally chronicle my Nature wanderings in forest and field environs. I’ll focus this Post, instead, on the weather right here in my backyard. I’ll preface my observations, reflections, and photographs with a simple declarative statement. I use the term epic because the media, obsessed with the ubiquitous hysteria of climate change as an existential threat to our very existence, adopted the epic characterization from the moment the deep cold air in the Far North began building and threatening to move our way.

As a weather addict, scientist, and passionate observer of Nature, I’ll confess to being an unabashed sceptic of the widely-held belief (yes, belief is the operative word) that human influences are the primary (or even a major) cause of any changes to our climate. I do not buy the existential climate threat scenario painting doom and gloom. I contend that sceptic differs profoundly from the pejorative term denier.  I trust the judgment of those whose intellect ran far deeper than my own, and whose wisdom has stood the test of time:

His insistence that the book of nature was written in the language of  mathematics changed natural philosophy from a verbal, qualitative account to a mathematical one in which experimentation became a recognized method for discovering the facts of nature. Finally, his discoveries with the telescope revolutionized astronomy and paved the way for the acceptance of the Copernican heliocentric system, but his advocacy of that system eventually resulted in an inquisition process against him. (Galileo Galilei By Albert Van Helden)

Approaching Cold Front

The period December 22-27 is emblematic of our changeable weather here in north Alabama at 34.72 degrees North Latitude. One swing of the winter temperature pendulum does not constitute climate change. Instead, it is within the normal fluxes of north Alabama winter. December 22, 2022 offered a southerly breeze and 50 degrees at 4:25 and 4:32 PM (photos below). The view westward, however, portended the approaching front, clouds thickening as they advanced.

Overhead at 4:37, the sky remained broken as the front glowered, darkening.

The 4:33 and 4:39 sky directly above us hinted at little…unless we glanced westward. These two images stand as metaphor for life and living in general. Too often, unless we look deeply and see clearly, the truth lies hidden in plain sight. We miss the obvious when blinded by the superficial.

Informed repeatedly by the media that we were about to experience an air mass portending catastrophic climate change, one might believe that the event would be unprecedented. I do not imply that the coming weather would be benign…only that it’s been cold in northern Alabama before…and will be again.

A Mount Washington (New Hampshire) Side Trip

Over the years of my weather addiction, a fragment of my psyche has taken residence atop Mount Washington in New Hampshire. I’ve visited the summit-located (6,288 feet) Mount Washington Observatory several times, summer and winter. I once failed notably in a winter ascent at 5,000 feet when a hurricane force ground blizzard repeatedly knocked our party to the ground, forcing retreat to the base. So that you are reminded of the relative severity of our north Alabama cold air intrusion, here is the Observatory’s account of the recent Christmas weekend episode:

Drastic Overnight Change

The front did indeed penetrate the South, plunging our prior afternoon’s 50 degrees to two degrees with strong wind by 7:34 AM the next morning!

Don’t be fooled by the bright sunshine, open water, and snow-free ground. At 7:35, this transplanted former Alaskan found the bitter wind formidable. Living on-campus at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, I did not hesitate to walk to my office, wearing appropriate gear, at 30 degrees below zero. My cold tolerance has long since waned.

I believe this 1:15 video captures the morning better than my observations, reflections, and photographs:

December 23 reached an afternoon high of only 16 degrees. I ventured outside only twice: driving to the gym and refilling the backyard bird feeders!

Continuing our southern deep freeze, here’s Christmas Eve at 3:28 PM with the high temperature at 26 degrees, and ice covering this end of our pond.

The Deep Freeze

That evening at 8:26 PM, ice covered nearly the entire pond, the temperature at 17 degrees after the wind had stopped.

Christmas morning dawned at 12 degrees (6:30 AM), the pond icy from shore to shore. The thin covering perhaps would have supported a mallard…but little more.

My 1:20 video shows the third-day extent of our winter blast:

I love the combined impression of Christmas spirit, frozen pond, pristine air, and dawn light!

Only the immediate vicinity of the aerators remained open or slushy. I enjoy the magic of such cold snaps, even as I remind myself that during my Fairbanks, Alaska winters, similar ponds would be frozen at least a foot thick by mid-December, despite a thick blanket of insulating snow.

Third grade grandson Sam stood along the shore at 9:44 AM, the temperature had warmed to 18 degrees Fahrenheit.

Sam requested that I pose with the icy background at 9:45.

Sam and I discovered soil frost pillars in our backyard perennial beds. Nature’s pure magic, generated by simple physics, often lies hidden in plain sight.

I snapped this final pond photograph from the  flower beds at 9:50.

Leaving the Cold Behind

We departed Madison December 26 at 4:57 AM (21 degrees F) for the first leg of the trip to visit our son and his family in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. We photographed sunrise over Nick-a-Jack Lake at 6:32 and 6:36 AM as we passed through northeast Alabama.

Our Madison forecast hinted at snow showers late that afternoon. We learned from our daughter that driving conditions in the Huntsville area deteriorated to impassable with an inch or so of snow late afternoon. Those of us who have lived many years in snow country too often scoff at a little snow bringing travel to a standstill in the South. However, snow removal and deicing are non-existent here…and many residents have, at best, limited experience in slippery-road-driving. I say, get off (or stay off) the roads during periodic winter weather crises in our locale. North Alabama, for patient drivers, has the world’s best snow and ice removal. It’s called solar power. Wait a day or so and the snow and ice disappear!

Epic? Record? Portent of Climate Doom?

December 27 mid-morning a friend, Angie Fedele, snapped this image of the remaining snow and ice cover from my backyard flower beds. The temperature that day rose to 50 degrees, marking the abrupt end to our epic Christmas 2022 deep freeze.

Just how cold was it? Here are the National Weather Service temperature data for Huntsville over the Christmas epic cold front period:

Date                                 High Temp      Low Temp      Record Low

December 22                           51                    21                    -3

December 23                           16                    3                      -3

December 24                           26                    9                      1

December 25                           32                    17                    -1

December 26                           33                    18                    4

December 27                           50                    24                    12

Cold, yes; record cold, no! However, in today’s world of mainstream weather media coverage, we are deluged (pardon the weather pun) with reports of epic this and epic that. Many events are termed unprecedented. So many outlets starved for viewers or hits, The Weather Channel among them, attribute every storm, drought, Arctic outbreak, heat wave, flood, and other events to Climate Change. As I scientist, I don’t buy it. I look to observation, fact, and data. I abhor the vast predominance of perception and sensationalism. Our Christmas 2022 cold spell certainly hit us southerners hard, but it was not an episode that drove me into despair over an imminent climate catastrophe. It’s been cold before (note the record cold low temperatures above)…and it will be cold again. It’s called climate…not climate change! The entire six-day period fell within the range of our climate normal. Below average, yes, yet still within the bounds of normal.

Galileo nailed it: [T]he book of nature was written in the language of  mathematics. 

Facts and data matter. Observation (facts and data) rules the day in the realm of science. Perception, emotion, and speculation persist and control the world of mainstream media, politics, and much of public opinion…who dare with blind ignorance to judge Truth and Knowledge.

Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the Gods. Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

I remember with admiration Carl Sagan’s (1934-96) view of our Earth as a pale blue orb in the vast darkness of space. He, too, urged human adherence to science and its experimental basis in objective observations and reasoning. Although he wasn’t speaking of climate change per se, he expressed my own concerns about today’s existential threat adherents demanding immediate and wholesale action to reduce (no, eliminate) our reliance on all fossil fuels:

Finding the occasional straw of truth awash in a great ocean of confusion and bamboozle requires intelligence, vigilance, dedication and courage. But if we don’t practice these tough habits of thought, we cannot hope to solve the truly serious problems that face us — and we risk becoming a nation of suckers, up for grabs by the next charlatan who comes along.

I’ll end with a nearly one-thousand-year-old quote that in this context is relevant:

Now there are four chief obstacles in grasping truth, which hinder every man, however learned, and scarcely allow anyone to win a clear title to learning, namely, submission to faulty and unworthy authority, influence of custom, popular prejudice, and concealment of our own ignorance accompanied by an ostentatious display of our knowledge.
The Opus Majus of Roger Bacon (1220-1292)

Thoughts and Reflections

I offer these observations:

• Weather-addiction is just one facet of my Nature-affliction!
• Shifting weather moods confirm that nothing in nature is static.
• Deep cold spells, like our 2022 Christmas season chill, have occurred before…and will again and again and again.

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.