Returning from a Six-Month Absence

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Happy New Year!

I left Big Blue Lake end of June, 2017 for my six-month Interim Presidency at Fairmont State University. We returned mid-day December 23. I squeezed a lot out of that half-year. Yet I must admit, I cannot ignore the trade-offs… the costs of a six-month full immersion out of state. Judy (my spouse of 45.5 years) joined me a week per month, too infrequently for me not to feel generally as though I was living alone. Also, I made it back to Alabama only once during the term, making our daughter and grand sons Jack (10) and Sam (4) seem remote. We kept up through phone and Face-time, yet it’s not the same.

Was great to reconnect at Big Blue Lake upon return! As I appreciated this special place and reunited with family, I thought of Wendell Berry’s “VII,” his poem reminding us that the day-to-day small things aggregate to life, pleasure, and reward:

“Again I resume the long

lesson:  how small a thing

can be pleasing, how little

in this hard world it takes

to satisfy the mind

and bring it to its rest.”

Christmas Eve stayed cloudy most of the day as a cold front slowly slipped south. Thick low clouds parted at sunset, rewarding us with sparkling clear skies above as the cloud deck slipped away.

Again, Nature serves dollops of magic to those willing to look, see, and feel. What did seeing this wonder require of me? Sensing the light changing outside my window… and wandering to the patio with camera at the ready. The view is to the south, clouds racing from the northwest, heralding the first really cold spell of the young winter. The mix and richness of colors and textures constitute the scene, yet the details of season, wind direction, and frontal passage add meaning and content not discernible to the unknowing and disinterested. I observe people clinging to their digital devices, and feel sorrow for what they are missing.

When I hit the shutter for this frame, I saw only the magnificent sky. Then my eye saw Big Blue standing at water’s edge near the willow clump just right of center. Hunched to buffer the now chilly breeze, he did not rise.

I brought him closer via the zoom. This was my first close-up of our resident great blue heron since my return the day prior. I viewed his presence as a gift, an acknowledgment that the simple things matter. Berry’s “VII” said it beautifully:

“What more did I

think I wanted?  Here is

what has always been.

Here is what will always be.”

I seek Nature’s gifts relentlessly. She rewards selflessly… and often. She asks only that I be alert, and not demanding on a Grand Tetons or Alaska Range scale. Life presents itself in bite-size morsels. Enjoyment, appreciation, and fulfillment need not await the once-in-a-lifetime vacation adventure.

Christmas brought the anticipated pleasure of celebrating the ultimate Gift of a Life that forever changed the world to those of us who embrace Christianity. May each of you have found some similar Spiritual awakening… your own belief in a higher power — a spiritual purpose and calling.

Jack’s new fishing rod and reel connected the day after — a 1.5 pound large-mouth bass right at our shore. We immediately released it, knowing that the frogs, smaller fish, and other critters will soon nurture his growth to tougher future angling battles and perhaps a fry-pan.

That day ended with yet another gift, this one at sunset, welcoming a night that fell into the lower twenties. Balmy by our Fairbanks, Alaska winter standards, yet seasonably cold for northern Alabama.

Again, just four days back at Big Blue Lake and life is rich, full, and good. All without any digital immersion beyond a few emails and texts from friends and family.

I can’t resist the shutter when Nature paints the evening sky.

The same holds for Nature’s wake-up call, this one greeting December 29, a full-week returned to Big Blue Lake.

Are you on alert for Nature’s richness?

Are you looking, seeing, feeling, and acting? I’m writing these words Friday evening, the 29th. I just glanced out my office window to the north, discovering a glow reflected in windows across the street. I rushed to the patio, camera in hand, curious to see whether the day would end with the west ignited in farewell:

Sure enough, another blessing, both without and with Sam and Jack in silhouette! As I’ve said too many times to count, every lesson for living, learning, serving, and leading is either written indelibly in or is compellingly inspired by Nature. This Blog Post focuses on Nature’s incessant inspiration. Yet perhaps her most poignant lesson expressed powerfully in these photographs and reflections is simple and direct. Berry nailed it:

“Again I resume the long

lesson:  how small a thing

can be pleasing, how little

in this hard world it takes

to satisfy the mind

and bring it to its rest.”

Dewitt Jones, decades-long National Geographic photographer extraordinaire, observed in The Nature of Leadership (Covey, Marshall, and Jones), “Perhaps the greatest lesson we can learn from nature is gratitude. If we could publish it in our lives everyday, the way nature publishes beauty in every sunrise and every sunset, how different might the world be?”

Great Blue Heron can help you find Nature’s simple power and wisdom to guide your life and enterprise. And how we might inculcate a measure of gratitude for the world around us.

 

Preservation and Change

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Return Visit to Cathedral State Park

My first two undergraduate forestry summers I performed continuous forest inventory on Savage River State Forest (then 52,000 acres) in Western Maryland’s Garrett County. I stayed weeknights in a cabin at New Germany State Park. The entire experience served in retrospect as a gift from God — Divine Professional Providence! Preston County WV lay just to Garrett’s west, still in the Allegany Plateau high country from 2,500 to >3,500 feet. Just over the WV line, WV’s Cathedral State Park preserved and protected an ancient hemlock stand that had escaped turn-of-the-20th-Century logging. I visited and hiked the preserve a dozen times over those invigorating formative summers.

Precious Recollections

I recall a closed canopy of massive trees, a mixed stand of hemlock, black cherry, oak, and others. An understory dark with deep shade. Vibrant and healthy trees showing vitality despite standing for perhaps 300 years. I’ve carried the indelible memory with me for the 45 years since.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nature’s Sobering Reality

December 17, 2017, a week from my final day at Fairmont State University, I re-visited Cathedral State Park. The four-plus decades have not been kind, and I don’t mean just to my knees. The once regal, magnificent old-growth forest is entering its period of senescence.

Age and gravity always prevail. We can cherish these ancient stands, yet we cannot forever delay the ultimate ravages of time. The agents of agony and demise range from individual lightning strikes to uprooting to mid-trunk shattering to thinning and fading foliage.

Death by Static Electricity

 

Blow-Down

 

Topped-Out

 

Crown Vigor fading

 

Some old soldiers stand dead, attributable cause uncertain.

 

Patches lay jack-strawed.

 

Only a few stand remnants still hold deep shade.

I’m told that Super Storm Sandy dumped a couple feet of wind-driven wet snow at this elevation, doing great harm, snapping many stems and wreaking havoc within the crowns. Sandy served as the proximate cause – the catastrophic straw-breaking-the-camel’s-back. Yet the ultimate agent acted over an extended period of change. Nature knows time… and anticipates inexorable stresses, shifts, patterns, and eventual mortality. Light now reaching the forest floor is triggering forest renewal at Cathedral. When the last of the giants submits to the forces of Nature, the next stand will be adolescent, a rich admixture of hemlock and hardwoods.

 

Nature knows how to perpetuate forest cover, albeit the next iteration may (No, will!) differ in species composition, structure, and old growth trajectory. Three hundred fifty years hence, the new forest may look little like today’s aging stand. Nature’s top seldom re-spins in like manner. Perturbations will not pattern-repeat over neat 350-year cycles. What if the next super storm strikes the new stand at age 50? Followed two springs hence when a wild, dry, spring front pushes winds reaching 50 miles per hour… and some camper fails to tend a cook-fire? The crazy fury will convert the fallen, tinder-like debris of the downed forest to ash and bare ground. What then? Forget about hemlock. Look instead for oak root-sprouts and light-seeded, wind-dispersed species like aspen, and seedlings from acorn-snacks cached by rodents or birds in soil. Nature’s team is proven and reliable. The busy squirrel buries the acorn for retrieval, unaware that she will not (cannot) find them all, and that one of them may be part of Nature’s design to perpetuate the oak. And she knows not that her habit of caching tasty acorns furthers her own species, assuring that future oaks will feed her descendants time and again.

Every Forest Tells a Tale

Her act of placing the acorn is random. Chaos rules Nature… I suppose chaos rules most everything. Nature’s preparation is hard-wired, DNA-ingrained-preparation spanning a few million years of adaptation. Our enterprises and lives are far less experienced. Nature urges anticipation; we too often operate without it. We also are blind to what is likely, much less to what is possible. Nature will occupy this land, originally protected and preserved for the sake of a wondrously beautiful old-growth hemlock forest. Visitors many generations hence may see rotting hulks of long-dead forest giants. Interpretive signage may tell the tale. Old photographs may chronicle the story of the magical forest. Several individuals may persevere another hundred years.

Many of you own forest land. I recall from my faculty days at Penn State that one in ten Pennsylvania families owns forested property. Your forest acreage, whether in New Hampshire, Alabama, or Kansas, has its own story, written on the land and still retained within the family’s written and oral history. Contact me if you’d like to have your own Forest Land Legacy Story told and interpreted for prosperity (https://stevejonesgbh.com/legacy-stories/). Every stand expresses sentiment and symbolizes special meaning and memory.

For example, at Cathedral, I found and photographed one giant that spoke to me of life and living. It reached for the light with a rough ladder… a Stairway to Heaven. A symbol for both our need to reach beyond our own grasp, and to reach for something larger than our meager selves:

As I’ve observed time and again, every lesson for living, learning, serving, and leading is either written indelibly in or is powerfully inspired by Nature.

Revisiting Cathedral State Park still generates a deep sense of humility and full inspiration. Although fading, the forest still touches my core. I absorbed those few hours via my five portals — heart, mind, body, soul, and spirit. Even a snow-covered foot-bridge over a late fall flowing stream evokes wonder, awe, and appreciation:

 

I also felt a sharp melancholy. A realization that nothing stays the same. That time marches onward, and we are taken along for a ride, powered by forces beyond our control. We can only do what we can within its current, making some small differences as we may. Making the most of the voyage, and always conscious of our responsibility to steward the land and leave it better for those who follow.

 

 

 

The Cycle Completes a Turn

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I’m just a week out from my departure from north-central West Virginia and Fairmont State University, returning to north Alabama. I’ve experienced a seasonal cycle from early summer to now near the winter solstice:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’ve also progressed from anticipating the start of the fall semester to soon closing the campus for Holiday break:

 

 

 

Life, living, learning, and leading distill to seasons. Childhood, adolescence, early adulthood, kids, career, grand-kids, retirement, slowing down. Sunrise to  sunset. Summer to winter; start to finish. I’ve relished this FSU journey of discovery.

I’ll be reflecting more as I settle back into semi-retirement. I’m excited to sip morning coffee and evening adult beverages once again from our patio on Big Blue Lake. To breathe a little more deeply once more after the intensity of this Interim Presidency. These few months may rank among the most fulfilling and satisfying of my career. Again, allow me some time to reflect… and write more about the meaning and significance from my time in Almost Heaven.

Nature’s Inspiration at Scale

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I often think back to my first close-up view of Mount Denali. I had hiked up Mount Quigley one late August morning, providing a clear, cloud-free view of Denali’s north face from just 20 miles. Because the big one rises from 2,000 feet above sea level on its north side, it ascended within my field of view 18,000 feet vertical, all of it visible in one magnificent image. I could imagine nothing more grand. Everest reaches 11,000 feet higher, yet no where does it show an 18,000 vertical face. Even as I contemplate such grandeur, I recall someone saying decades ago that were Earth the size of a ping-pong ball, it would actually be smoother than the little plastic sphere. Scale determines so much. Close to my temporary WV home, Dolly Sods provides some great panoramas (this view and the Feature Image of this post):

Beautiful in that larger view, the Sods generate yet another scale of special beauty and perspective up close:

Slice the scene even more narrowly, and a hidden world emerges. We found this unidentified fungal fruiting body trail-side on a fallen birch, still at Dolly Sods.

Beauty, magic, awe, and wonder await the discerning hiker… the hiker who looks and sees. Perhaps decades ago, I remember a Nature documentary that began at day-to-day human scale and successively led the viewer outward into space one order of magnitude distance at a time. Out through the solar system, into the Milky Way, and then beyond into deep space, and other galaxies. I felt smaller and even more insignificant with each ten-fold leap.

The television program then reversed from human scale, by orders of magnitude smaller. Into the soil litter, soil micro-organisms, and by scale eventually into atomic and sub-atomic. Once again, scale makes all the difference. We can observe the forest at the price of missing the trees; and the trees at the cost of missing component life (and death). Yet another unidentified fungus infects this standing dead hickory about eight inches in diameter:

A living tree stands by the strength of its cellulose; a fungus stands by the sustenance it draws from the cellulose, digesting it one cell wall at a time. Each one of those minute fungal fruiting bodies will eject thousands, if not millions, of spores. Wind-borne (or maybe insect-disseminated) spores may have the good fortune of happening upon a recently dead, not yet colonized, host species. That tiny, invisible spore operates at a smaller scale. Each division has a division, and subsequently smaller world. A dead beech sapling also hosts micro-organisms, both fungal fruiting bodies and lichen mats.

As does a prostrate white pine:

Life is rich at multiple scales, each providing a glimpse into smaller and smaller domains, down to to the molecular. Though life does not extend outward larger and larger without end, the non-living world certainly reaches far beyond. At the risk of repeating one comparative example I’ve used from the lectern and in other postings, a photon would travel seven times around Earth in one second. That same photon at the speed of light would reach the center of our Milky Way galaxy, with its several hundred billion stars, only after 25,000 years. And our Milky way, this unimaginably large star cluster, is only one of some two trillion such galaxies. Too immense to grasp? You bet! So let’s return to our human scale world.

I found this multi-storied, yellow poplar apartment complex at Valley Falls State Park during the summer. Excavated by pileated woodpeckers in search of insect protein, these cavities now house all manner of life: insect, small mammals, snails, fungus, and who knows what else. All elements are intimately inter-related, from the cosmic to the sub-atomic.

What a blessed, miraculously interdependent world — physical and organic. The yellow poplar apartment complex will one day succumb to the forces of life, death, and gravity. This 30-inch-plus diameter, deceased maple is decaying toward the horizontal, even as a beech sapling stands ready to absorb and prosper from nutrients long-since sequestered as the maple flourished:

Leaves from a still-living red maple bring early fall color to this mossy seep among the rhododendrons atop Dolly Sods.

Not far from the boggy forest interior, the west-rim panorama opens to a larger scale. All we do and see in life and nature present at scale.

Too few people notice the dimensions that add vibrancy to life, living, and enterprise. There are those who can’t see the forest for the trees. Sadly, there are those, too, who see neither the forest or the trees. I look hard, seeking to see in multiple dimensions, yet I fear I am missing far too much. Better to be the miserable wretch who sees nothing beyond the digital… unaware of the rich palette unseen? No, I much prefer seeing a bit of something, rather than all of nothing.

Opening Our Eyes

Today (12/10), I drove Judy to the Pittsburgh airport, some 90 miles north, and returned to Fairmont. A quarter inch of snow dusted the ground last night, adding a hint of deeper, impending winter to the now dormant landscape. I thought, how gloomy, yet quickly dismissed that too-easy trap of negativity. Instead, I relished that my view at 70 mph now opened into the roadside forests. No longer simply a wall of green, the denuded trees and shrubs permitted deep looks at the forest floor and countless stems and trunks. Three full dimensions where during the growing season only two appeared to us.

It’s so easy to be blind to the world around us. Great Blue Heron borrows nature’s lessons, and instructs how to learn and apply them. Nature’s Wisdom and Power enrich my life. Great Blue Heron can help you harness Nature’s Power and Wisdom… in service to your life and enterprise. I am grateful for far more than most people dare to dream.

Life is rich and good. Nature informs, enriches, and inspires!

 

 

A Near-Final Week at Fairmont State University

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I write these words December 3, mostly intended for my December 10, column for the Times West Virginian. For this Great Blue Heron Blog Post, I’ve added a twist and turn here and there to bring it back to my Nature-Inspired Leading and Learning theme. The Feature Photo has me standing just this week at the Crepe Myrtle in front of FSU’s iconic Falcon Center, where we hosted the robotics competition I mention in the text below.

We just returned to Shaw House from the Annual Service of Lessons and Carols, the Fairmont State University Chorus (featuring the First Presbyterian Church Cambridge Hand-bell Choir and Children’s Choir). This wonderful Holiday Festival epitomizes the spirit of FSU/Community reciprocity… the spirit I refer to as Town/Gown. The Spirit (the Holy version) also entered the afternoon concert – the Presbyterian Church is a heavenly venue!

Town/Gown may actually serve to name the local ecosystem where Fairmont State University resides. The paragraphs below speak in no small way to our relationships with other organisms residing along side us.

This entire past week offered a full menu of semester wrap-up activities, Holiday celebrations, and other events signaling my waning Interim Presidency. Judy and I over-ate Thanksgiving with our son and his family north of Pittsburgh. Our visits with them will be less frequent once we leave Fairmont. We enjoyed Sunday afternoon and Monday morning at Stonewall Jackson Resort. A symbol of north-central WV that we will carry with us. We considered it just one more slice of Almost Heaven!

Monday evening, we enjoyed sharing dinner and dessert with our Fighting Falcons Volleyball team and coaches at Shaw House. Our treat to these wonderful student athletes who graciously made us feel throughout the fall that we belonged to their family. Competitors, scholars, leaders, and citizens extraordinaire! So many people thank us for inviting them to our home. Not so, Shaw is their home. We are simply privileged to live here… and to share it with this great university community.

Judy prohibited my Tuesday evening return to Shaw until after the HOPE event – ladies only — a fund-raiser for our local battered-women shelter. Yet another great use of an FSU venue for supporting a pressing community cause. I did reap some reward by returning before catering had carted off the goodies to the Falcon Center. Ah, another FSU benefit I will miss. Aladdin does a fantastic job feeding campus and community – another invaluable FSU partner.

Wednesday, I enjoyed delivering an open lecture at West Virginia University, just 20 miles North of us. A thirty-year friend is Dean of the Davis College of Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Design. You may have guessed my topic: The Nature of West Virginia Life! We enjoyed a standing room crowd. I spread the gospel of Fairmont and sang the praises of FSU.

Thursday evening, we once again hosted a community dinner at Shaw – Leadership Marion County. Nearly fifty attendees: LMC Board, participants (and guests), and some FSU folks. I can assure you that Marion County’s future is in good hands. Everyone thoroughly enjoyed the food, beverages, and fellowship. How do I know? We had a hard time getting them to leave! A great bunch and a wonderful tribute to the value of investing in our community’s future.

Yet another example Saturday and Sunday of what an engaged FSU brings to our fair community, we hosted the WV State Robotics Championship. Well over 500 participants, chaperones, and family members. Saturday’s competitors were kindergarten through middle school; Sunday’s at the high school level. Many of these out of town guests spent money in town – food, lodging, etc. We hope many of the young people elect to return for subsequent competitions and eventually enroll as Falcons.

Also Saturday, Judy and I hosted another 120 of our best friends at Shaw for refreshments to recognize completing seniors and their families. We do this now in lieu of a fall graduation. We love hearing the amazing stories of family engagement to enable their offspring’s progress and degree fulfillment. Lots of laughter and tears of joy! Nothing satisfies me more than seeing success manifest as celebration.

Oh yeah, we also welcomed good crowds to the Feaster Center for both men’s and women’s Fighting Falcon basketball Saturday afternoon. Once again, a Town/Gown occasion.

I could not have better designed a week that represents this incredible FSU/Fairmont community joint venture. We are in this together. As I’ve noted before, we are jointly blessed, as James Norton so eloquently expressed in his November 30, Times West-Virginian Letter (An FSU gift to Fairmont is appreciated). He spoke of Fairmont without FSU: “How deadly would that be!” He mentioned his “moment of reconsideration and Thanksgiving, one that visualized professors, students, and other staff, and all the blessings their pursuits in science, art, literature and philosophy bring because FSU is here.”

Every ecosystem has its keystone species — there is no debate that FSU is this community’s keystone… its anchor… its distinguishing feature. FSU’s roots sink deeply into the fertile community soil here along the Monongahela River. We draw sustenance and nurture from the richness of our Marion County environment. FSU can be the mighty oak. FSU and Fairmont – mutual reciprocity; shared dreams; and absolute interdependence. I urge you to reach high together. Your future is bright.

 

A View of Fairmont State University’s Ecosystem

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FSU’s Science and Technology Dean Don Trisel sent his drone with camera aloft 7:30 AM November 20. Looking north, the view captures campus and the hills beyond. Almost Heaven, don’t you think! A typical landscape of North-Central, Wild Wonderful West Virginia. Our “College on the Hill” campus rises some 300 feet from Locust Avenue in the foreground to the physical plant buildings at the distant-center tree line.

Shaw House, the President’s residence, where I have stayed for nearly five months, sits in the copse of trees in the upper left quadrant of the main campus. My office is in Hardway Hall (front-right), the long building with the columns. A beautiful campus in a grand location, one where I am at home and thriving. No wonder deer frequent my yard. The surrounding forest simply extends into our community.

The deer recognize no city boundary. They observe only the extent of suitable habitat and available browse. Resident squirrels, raccoons, ground hogs, opossums, and other critters pay no mind. Same for birds. For that matter, thunderstorm cells can’t discern forest from campus from downtown. They simple form, rumble, and move along with air currents. Likewise, the wind itself cares not, nor do clouds.

Season changes the temporal context, yet the physical location a month earlier stays fixed.

And, Fairmont State University is one with the community of man, a cog in the gears of the city and its human inhabitants. Yes, FSU is an organism, living and breathing literally and metaphorically, in this three dimensional social, economic, and environmental ecosystem. Nothing illustrates our place in the intricate structure better than an aerial photo. More broadly, we fall within the Monongahela River Basin ecosystem, expanded from there to encompass the Mississippi Basin, and from there to temperate North America, and from there to our One Earth. The latter perspectives are beyond the reach of a drone or even a jet at 30,000 feet. Instead, try a photo from a satellite in Earth-orbit:

 

Great Blue Heron views enterprises in the same way. What constitutes your ecosystem? See my web site for more about the approach. I could not have effectively led this university as Interim President if I had looked only inward. FSU does not exist in a vacuum, nor does any individual, business, or organization. The world that affects us lies beyond our campus edge… and far beyond that as well. We are all creatures of our social, economic, and environmental ecosystems.

I will find a way before I depart Fairmont to secure a first-hand aerial view from a small plane. Short of that, Don’s drone provided a surrogate. I’ve reviewed countless aerial photos over my practicing forester days. However, never has one been an adequate substitute for being airborne, cruising above the canopy, looking down, at liberty to scan where my eye and the flight take me. I assure you, I will take my camera along, and record fodder for a few more blog posts. My heart and soul soar with me as we dance on laughter-silvered wings!

Whether I am deep in the forest, hiking stream-side, pausing at an overlook, or flying high above the ground, I find beauty, magic, wonder, and awe in Nature’s bounty and God’s work.

Call me – we’ll examine your enterprise from an ecosystem perspective.

Summer-Like November Hike Along the Mon-River Rails-to-Trail

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I hiked six-and-one-half miles along the Monongahela River Rails-to-Trail November 5, 2017, near Prickett’s Fort State Park. The temperature of 77 degrees masked the season. Leaves have mostly dropped, attributable to photo-period and evolved seasonal habit. We have not yet had a killing frost here in North-Central West Virginia.

We’ll call this hike an escape to Nature. At 52-minutes out, walking at a little faster than four miles per hour (yeah, I timed a bit over 14 minutes between measured miles), I sat leaning against a large yellow poplar (Liriodendron tulipifera for the Latin hardcore).

 

 

The Featured Image looks across the river from where I rested. A pleasant respite from a warm hike. I note a thin vine clinging above my head. Interestingly, such aerial navigators generally grow vertically with the tree, matching the 100-foot-plus poplar foot-by-foot as the tree extended its leader a little higher each season.

Man has left deep footprints along the Mon.

View from the Trail — a still-active rail line that crosses over the R-to-T.

Yet, the trail reveals beauty along the quiet river.

Tranquility dominates.

Just 300 feet down-river (to the right in the photo above), man exhibits his capacity for spoiling splendor and plundering plenty. Homo sapiens — such an odd species, too often content to foul our own nest.

An abandoned cabin on a bluff above the magnificent river.

I found my hike therapeutic. Nursing an upper respiratory bug, and spending a weekend alone with Judy back in Alabama for three weeks, I needed to leave the computer keyboard for a while. To add a little fuel to my Nature-powered engine. To inject a bit of Earth Stewardship passion into this week’s GBH Blog post. I occasionally know my topic ahead of the Tuesday morning posting. My hike made this one easy. Nature and Human Nature spin in and out of paradox and irony — harmony and contrast. The ramshackle cabin the peaceful river brought an Aldo Leopold quote to mind, 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 the cherish.” This river attracts many who like to be near it, yet who have little sense of our individual and collective obligation to practice an informed land ethic.

I am committing my life through Great Blue Heron to promote an Earth Stewardship ethic, and to help individuals and enterprises harness Nature’s wisdom and power. My daily reflections desktop calendar offered a message the day of my hike… a message clearly inspired by Nature: “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.” Heraclitus. Like life, the river flows ever toward its rendezvous with the sea. Never does the same water pass again by any one shoreline post. I have walked along scores of rivers hundreds of times. I’ve transited 66.5 years, myself ever-changing, growing from a boy to a man, and then another man, and another as the years changed me. I see life, living, and Nature through a maturing mind, body, heart, soul, and spirit.

Nature opens all my portals — rewards every step, enriches every breath, and encourages thought and reflection like nothing else can. Great Blue Heron can help you engage your portals to open new horizons and discover possibilities that lie hidden within you and your enterprise.

 

 

A Simple Expression of Nature’s Beauty, Awe, Magic, and Wonder

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The old saw says a picture is worth a thousand words. I walked out of my Fairmont State University campus home to retrieve the Sunday paper this morning, glanced to the east, and succumbed to Nature’s greeting of beauty, magic, wonder, and awe. Overwhelmed by humility and lifted by inspiration, once again I know that I have a purpose — to do all I can to ensure that we steward this One Earth… to Care for Our Common Home. We are blessed beyond measure by Nature’s gifts.

Great Blue Heron — by way of my writing, speaking, and consulting — can help you apply Nature’s lessons for living, learning, serving, and leading. Harness the power and passion of Nature’s wisdom.

I will complete my FSU Presidency at the end of December, transitioning then to full time as Great Blue Heron CEO.

Little Things Matter — ‘U’ Better Believe IT!

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What’s a ‘U’? One of the 26 letters in our alphabet. A little less than four percent of the total, with a frequency of usage rate even lower at 2.758 percent (Wikipedia). Yet, look at the Feature Image for this post. Fairmont State University women’s tennis hosted our first home competition of the season several weeks ago. A couple days prior we had taken delivery of our new wind screen to lessen gusts and air turbulence on the courts. The old one was tattered and frayed. The vendor placed the new just in time for a breezy home encounter. We played the match, but with no small measure of embarrassment. The vendor had presented us with a bargain — gave us an extra letter. We swept doubles and singles play — winning on the Fairmount State University courts. Of course, since then the vendor has made good on the error.

Errors are common in Human Nature. A business committing too many mistakes finds itself struggling to generate profit. An individual similarly oriented likewise falls behind. Yet I have observed many times that I seldom have learned by doing things right. It’s the mistakes I’ve made and observed in others that teach deeply. I recall hearing the inarguable wisdom that experience is that thing you get right after you needed it! Thomas Edison famously quipped, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” And Michael Jordan said in his Nike ad, “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot… and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

Let’s hope the vendor, who cannot afford 9,000 missed shots, has learned a lesson.

Errors are likewise common in Nature. In fact, evolution is error-dependent. Our Earth environment ebbs and flows; fluxes and surges; warms and cools; adjusts to episodic and periodic solar activity, meteor and asteroid impact, and who knows what other influences from within this dynamic planet. Dynamism capable of lifting marine limestone to constitute the summit of Mount Everest. Protein, cellular, and other code mistakes lead to adaptation to conditions peculiar to the norm. Organisms evolved of necessity as life altered the environment. For example, from anaerobic to oxygen-rich… as photosynthetic plant life literally took root and prospered.

Dealing with Change

Life on Earth knows no stasis, and likely never will. Nor will your business, enterprise, and life. As humans, we are blessed with mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual adaptability. We deal effectively with change only when we anticipate it, prepare for it, and react to its advance and onset. Nature, too, has seen to each living organism having a set of tolerances within which it operates. Climate offers a wide band of precipitation, temperatures, and conditions within the normal variation that characterizes any place on our tiny planet. No need for evolutionary adaptations to operate within those wide normal bounds. Reach beyond the normal for extended periods… and evolution kicks in over generations. As enterprise managers, we should know the variations within the normal that influence operations.

Again and again, I urge you to look — know what is normal for your enterprise and life environment. See — anticipate the signs and signals that portend operating environment shifts, surges, and influences. Feel — see deeply enough to anticipate the effects on you and your enterprise. Act — stasis does not exist; react to change that is imminent and certain.

My Fairmount ‘U’ is an annoyance, spurring only our action to secure remedy. The vendor should see it as a signal prompting greater attention to detail. The little things do matter. A chill in the air does not necessarily portend the next continental ice sheet advance, yet it may announce an early frost. We are well-advised to know our operating environment well enough to distinguish ice age from an early October cold front. Chicken Little did not, and he paid the price of embarrassment and ridicule.

I close with a bit different twist. Although little things do matter, sometimes little things are just that… little things. Over-reacting is often painful, always stressful, and frequently expensive. We can handle the season’s first frost simply by closing the windows and lighting a fire. We can (and did) manage a bonus ‘U’ with a simple phone call to a very accommodating vendor.

Reverse Sabbatical Leave

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I had planned to work full-time another 3-5 years when Antioch University (AU) reconfigured June 2016 (a month from my 65th birthday). Reconfigured to deeply centralize and eliminate its five campus presidents (me among them) and the local Boards of Trustees. I immediately sought yet another permanent presidency. I thank God, I did not succeed. By June 2016, I did, in fact, need a change. I needed a break from leading a university, especially one tacking in a direction in which I felt uncomfortable sailing. I did succeed in redirecting my actions and interests to writing, consulting, and retirement, and preparing to do so full time and long term. My signing contract with AU relieved me of financial concerns through June 2017. Operating from my retirement home office, I wrote and published Nature Based Leadership and Nature-Inspired Learning and Leading, and created Great Blue Heron, LLC. I completed a major environmental education project in west-central Tennessee. I wrote a near-final version of Harnessing Nature’s Wisdom and Power, which I set aside, unconvinced that a third in the series furthered the tenets and principles already elucidated.

Like these thunderstorms sagging east at sunset, my Reverse Sabbatical brings peace and fulfillment.

No doubt, I made the most of my new-found freedom – in effect, an imposed “sabbatical leave,” which Merriam-Webster online defines as “a leave often with pay granted usually every seventh year (as to a college professor) for rest, travel, or research.” Renewing and refreshing as it was, I was feeling a sort of professional emptiness – a void – when my email delivered notice of the Fairmont State University Interim Presidency and a query regarding my interest. My professional blade felt a bit dull – perhaps now I could sharpen the edge. Although I enjoyed the relative leisure of few pressing commitments, I did miss the action, intensity, and urgency. No, I did not long for another permanent presidency (3-5 years), yet with the prospect of a six-month interim, blood coursed through my veins. And the location near my birth home called to me. I threw my hat in the ring, with nothing to lose. I did not need the job as a means to an end, having retired once, assured that we could live long-term at a level to our liking.

A Reverse Sabbatical

Could this six-month immersion in any sense of the term be cast as a period of “rest, travel, or research”? No, the specific words are wrong, yet the result is surely one of renewal and recharge. I believe I can view it as a reverse sabbatical leave. Returning to deep task immersion as a means for regaining an edge. Like a solar panel reactivating with the sun’s rise.

I view diving back into the deep end as a reverse sabbatical – a return to the game, intensely engaged, and as a time-duration-certain re-entry to leading another university. Now entering the second half of my term as Interim President, I may be operating at a level more intense than at any point in my career. A normal presidency is a marathon. I am a former marathoner, a tested distance runner. Once I had run my first 26-miler, I knew how to pace myself. I maintained a much faster rate per mile for 5-Ks. Six-months is a five-K! My best marathon: 7:12 per mile; my best 5-K: 5:38. A little over five-and-half minutes per mile for me was flying; I am flying here at FSU! I found marathons exhausting; 5K’s exhilarating. Both exacted a toll. Only the marathon, however, left me nearly debilitated for days.

Knowing that this interim presidency is a five-K, I can push, surge, and pound — the finish line is ahead, within reach. Now more than three months into it, I recognize the surge of professional renewal… the rush of vocational adrenaline. I’m back in the race… competing and adding value. The gun fired July 1, and I am off and running! Once again, I have a team, colleagues, a shared cause, and a noble purpose to attend. I am energized in ways more immediate, palpable, and real than drafting essays and establishing consulting relationships. Don’t get me wrong, I will return to writing and consulting when FSU’s new president accepts the mantel of leadership in early 2018. I will do so with relish and joy, yet perhaps with a tinge of regret about letting go so soon after embedding deeply and with full passion for this wonderful regional state university. I see my imminent departure the same way Judy and I view out-of-town guests – we prefer they leave when we wish they could stay longer!

And, I will return to the computer keyboard with a sense of satisfaction and fulfillment, with the knowledge that I can still do it – that is, lead a university. I will return with stories, tales, memories, and lessons from a brief, yet very deep immersion in yet another university, community, and region. I will draw upon that package of experiences in both my writing and consulting. All of that sure sounds like professional renewal and recharge!

Relevant Lessons from Nature or Inspired by Nature

Granted, I came to Fairmont the end of June, finding it still a bit spring-like compared to the deep summer of late June in Alabama. I admired and appreciated the vibrant greens, lush growth, and special rhythms during an unusually wet July. We had warm days, some hot, yet not at sweltering and unbearable levels. Metaphorically and professionally, I remain in deep spring. Just as I would feel renewal, recharge, and recovery with spring’s arrival after a long winter, those three ‘Rs’ are flowing within me now. This interim presidency is a professional spring elixir.

Over my career, a fourth ‘R,’ rest, has never been too important. During my distance running decades, rest translated to a shortened three-to-five-mile morning jog. Rest is what we knew we would do when life slowed and we desired a slower pace. I am not resting now as Interim President. Anything but. I set my alarm for 3:59 AM – no, don’t ask why such an odd number. May take a psychologist to decipher that one. With Judy spending 70 percent of this period at our Alabama residence, I am pushing hard, demanding much of myself, giving this everything I have. Yet I feel absolute renewal, recovery, and recharge. Hence, this interim opportunity is doing for me what I suppose sabbatical leaves are intended to do for those who take them mid-career.

Nothing about this post-retirement burst, reentering the game, seems unnatural. I feel as though the afterburner ignited. Some might say that writing two books and starting a company did not constitute retirement, yet I felt some lessening. As I reexamine that year, I see a revelation that escaped me until this very moment.

I see this interim presidency as a welcome change of pace, another challenge, and a source of renewal unmatched in professional richness and life reward. I am astounded by the wealth of fulfillment. There is no way that a permanent presidency would be hitting the same buttons, unleashing parallel sentiments and such powerful vocational endorphins. I believe a good deal of what makes this immersion so powerful is that I can feel my writing and consulting batteries recharging, and my reservoir of ideas, stories, and lessons deepening. Not many people can re-enter the springtime of their life. I am blessed to have another shot at a professional vernal recharge. I can hear the vocational equivalent of spring peepers! Spring ephemerals are dressing my symbolic forest floor in carpets of color and vitality?

Actual seasonal changes progress around me. During these three short months, my three immediate neighbors (four-legged) have flourished. The two little ones have developed from intensely-spotted tykes to now long-legged and teen-like, their spots fading.

At the University of Alaska Fairbanks, our biologists in the Institute of Arctic Biology studied the Arctic Ground Squirrel, a little gopher-like high latitude mammal whose body temperature falls below freezing during the long Arctic winter. And picture them fully vibrant come spring and summer – amazing, high-energy, and in constant motion. Renewal and recharge are natural. I did not invent this pattern that I have adopted. I discovered that this is my own rhythm, not forced upon me by social constructs or the dictates of an employer, but one that fits me at some visceral, engrained, and perhaps evolutionary level. Fortuitously, I have awakened to what may be hard-wired in me.

If I am certain of anything, it is that we humans do not stand above nature. We are one with nature. I am blessed to have found where I fit, and I am grateful that, like the Arctic Ground Squirrel, I can live the pattern that is most natural for me. However, none will find their pattern unless able and willing to Look, See, Feel, and Act. Are you engaged in the natural world that envelops all of us? I am convinced that any of us can find the spring in our life. Any of us can discipline ourselves to look; train ourselves to see. Are you looking and seeing? Here’s what I saw on an early August evening from my front yard on campus!

So, as odd as it may seem, I consider this interim presidency a sabbatical… renewing, refreshing, recharging, and in some extraordinary way, even restful! What is natural for you? For your vocation? Your life? I urge you to explore your feelings, ambitions, and fulfillment.

These six months will allow me to serve a higher purpose. Four thousand young people at any one time here at Fairmont who will lead us into the distant tomorrows that I will not see. Who will carry the torch and meet the issues, problems, and opportunities decades beyond. I intend to learn much over these coming months – much about how I can modify my writing and consulting to more effectively reach them and future citizens. They will make the Earth stewardship decisions that will shape humanity seven generations hence… and beyond. My sabbatical may lead me to the key that I need to help unlock the future.

Warm wishes for the many springs of your life. They await your discovery and exploration!

 

Featured Image: Like these thunderstorms sagging east at sunset, my Reverse Sabbatical brings peace and fulfillment.