forests Archives - Steve Jones Great Blue Heron

Mid-December Saunter on Monte Sano Oak Park Trail

April 6, 2026/in Updates /by Steve Jones

I co-led a North Alabama Land Trust Nature Hike on December 13, 2025, at Monte Sano Nature Preserve. I had never trekked the Oak Park Trail, which climbs ~300 feet up the north side of Monte Sano Mountain, returning via a counterclockwise circuit to the trailhead. Like so many of my first-time treks, I didn’t know what to expect. Join me as I share my reflections, observations, a few images, and one brief video.

The trail is within the city of Huntsville, just 25 minutes from my home. My career took Judy and me through thirteen interstate moves in this sequence: Cumberland, MD to Syracuse, NY; Franklin, VA; Savannah, GA; Prattville, AL; Syracuse, NY; State College, PA; Auburn, AL; Cary, NC; Fairbanks, AK; Urbana, OH; West Chesterfield, NH; Fairmont, WV; Madison, AL. We learned that we prefer wrinkled land, where a 25-minute drive can take me from 800 feet on the Tennessee Valley to the Cumberland Plateau’s Monte Sano, 1,600! I enjoy exploring the wrinkled terrain of northern Alabama and its rich forests. Wrinkled is different from mountainous. From our 1,000-foot elevation University of Alaska at Fairbanks, we could see Denali (aka Mount McKinley; 20,310 feet) on a clear day. The White Mountains rose 3,176 feet within 20 miles to our north. At the tender age of nearly 75 years, with two knee replacements, chest scars from triple bypass surgery, fully recovered from a minor stroke, and a few continuing aches and pains, wrinkled is sufficient to sate my woodland exploration appetite!

I recently saw a relevant meme:

The Land Trust’s signage welcomes, orients, and directs visitors.

I borrow from an online descriptor of the trail, here is the route we followed: Climb up the north side of Monte Sano! One of the favorite trails of our trail running groups is Oak Park, which you’ll follow until you get to the northern fork of the Buzzard’s Roost Trail, which features a small waterfall at the wetter times of the year. Take the loop of Buzzard’s Roost back down across the Dallas Branch Spring to the lower section of Oak Park, and climb back down to the parking lot for a short but vigorous hike.

Even this old forester, who knows most of our main canopy species by sight, appreciates tree identification plaques. It’s always nice to confirm my skills. Two old favorites, yellow poplar and northern red oak, shouted their greeting long before I read their name tags.

Sugar maple and American basswood likewise are easy to identify based on nearly 60 years of familiarity!

The trail presented no difficulty to our group. Mostly gentle grades, smooth surface, and well-marked.

A yellow buckeye stands beside a red oak (left). An identified black oak is at right.

Nearby are a pignut hickory (left) and paulownia (right).

The rock formation below resembled a dry waterfall, yet there was no evidence that surface water flows even during heavy rains. Does it under special conditions, less frequently than annually, carry water? Decadal floods? One hundred-year events?

A minor wooden bridge crosses a ravine, currently dry.

A trailside marker describes another footbridge, this one constructed using “no power tools, only saws, hammers, wedges, etc. over a period of 3.5 days in April 2017.”

Here is the referenced video of a hand-built black locust bridge:

Black locust wood is disease resistant, renowned for use as fence posts.

We chose the Buzzards Roost Trail to continue our counter clockwise citcuit, eventually returning us to Oak Park Trail at an intersection where we had earlier passed to the left.

Buzzards Roost provided a nice place to rest and enjoy the clear beauty, a place that gave me a feeling that we were far higher than 1,300 or so feet.

We looked downhill from the Roost. A crooked green ash tree, at the base of the ledge, drew closer with the telephoto lens.

Further magnified, a pool of water reflecting branches above it hints that even in a dry autumn, moisture is present. I can accept that were I to return in a period of mid-winter rains, the Roost would feature a small waterfall at the wetter times of the year!

We descended the limestone slabs working our way to Dallas Branch Spring below the Roost. We passed a large gnarly white oak fronted by a tortured looking eastern redcedar.

There’s little soil and only seasonally abundant water to sustain forest cover.

Dallas Spring greeted us with surface water among the rocks.

Meager flow hinted of the wet season to come.

Hidden beyond the trees, Buzzard’s Roost stands above the photo point (left). Water trickles downstream (right).

The winter sky, soft cirrus and pale blue, drifts past beyond the canopy. This time of year we don’t need to distract ourselves with those pesky rising cumulus and 30 percent chances of afternoon showers…capable of drenching us with frog-strangling rains, gale force microbursts, and tree-slamming lightning bolts!

Okay, to be honest, I enjoy summer’s pop-up thundershowers. They add variety and spice to our long hot summers. They give us most of the rainfall that sustains the lush forests where I hike, explore, study, celebrate, and find spiritual renewal across the seasons. Winter rains, contrary to summer’s hit and miss downpours, are predictable days in advance.

Thoughts and Reflections

I offer these observations:

At my age, wrinkled land is sufficient to sate my woodland exploration appetite! (Steve Jones)
Like so many of my first-time treks, I had no expectation beyond knowing that I would find more than I sought! (Steve Jones)
All men are created equal; only the best can still go hiking in their seventies! (Anonymous meme)

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

Note: All blog post images created & photographed by Stephen B. Jones unless otherwise noted. Please circulate images with photo credit: “©2026 Steve Jones, Great Blue Heron LLC. All Rights Reserved.”

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

Subscribe to my free weekly photo essays (like this one) at: http://eepurl.com/cKLJdL

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

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

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

Vision:

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

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

Steve’s Four Books

I wrote my books Nature Based Leadership (2016), Nature-Inspired Learning and Leading (2017), Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits: Stories of Passion for Place and Everyday Nature (2019; co-authored with Dr. Jennifer Wilhoit), and Dutton Land & Cattle: A Land Legacy Story (2023) 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. All four of my books present compilations of personal experiences expressing my deep passion for Nature. All four books offer observations and reflections on my relationship with the natural world… and the broader implications for society. Order any from your local indie bookstore, or find them on IndieBound or other online sources such as Amazon and LifeRich.

I began writing books and Posts for several reasons:

I love hiking and exploring Nature
I see images I want to (and do) capture with my trusty iPhone camera
I enjoy explaining those images — an educator at heart
I don’t play golf!
I do love writing — it’s the hobby I never needed when my career consumed me
Judy suggested my writing is in large measure my legacy to our two kids, our five 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

Squeezing a 90-Minute Woodland Saunter into Four Hours!

April 1, 2026/in Updates /by Steve Jones

I co-led a University of Alabama in Huntsville OLLI (Osher Lifelong Learning Institute) Nature Hike on Saturday, March 28, 2026, with fellow retired forester Chris Stuhlinger. Chris led the way; I swept, bringing up the rear behind our 15 seasoned hikers (we’re predominantly retirees). We departed from the Kensington Trailhead on the North Alabama Land Trust’s Rainbow Mountain Nature Preserve, climbed to Rainbow Mountain Loop Trail, visited Balance Rock, and returned to our vehicles. Come along, and I’ll show you what I crammed into a one-hour and 43-minute venture!

I want to articulate a lesson with this Great Blue Heron photo essay. Like John Muir, I prefer sauntering, slow and deliberate, attentive, purposeful movement within the forest. Contrast sauntering with hiking, which progresses rapidly through the wildness, focused on the destination more than the passage. I am the master of squeezing a 90-minute hike into four hours!

I chose to sweep this day so I could take time to look, see, and photograph the wonders I anticipated finding hidden in plain sight. Most of my group surged ahead. I stopped when something shouted to grab my attention — a flowering plant, a curious tree form, or an odd rock formation. I would snap a photograph or two, then surge to catch up to the group. I wanted to record many more videos than the single one I captured. Had I been alone, I would have seen far more than my impelled pace permitted. I give you with this rushed essay a small taste of what our speedy hikers missed, by and large. Sure, they enjoyed the hike, although I overwhelmingly prefer the pleasure, joy, and satisfaction of deeper examination.

Without unecessary narrative, here is what I packed into 103-minutes on the trail. I could have used three hours or more!

Ephemeral Spring Flowers

American cancer root, the flower from a parasitic plant that grows on oak roots. I shared the discovery with the one person lagging behind with me. Most people did not notice this fascinating organism common to our late March hardwood forests!

Violet woodsorrell is a common woodland spring ephemeral.

Fire pink is less common and and spectacularly beautiiful. See it this time of year or forget about it!

Purple phacelia is another seasonal mid-spring delight, often growing atop boulders and ledges, as were these. Why in those curious niches, where nutrients and moisture are subject to the whimsy of weather fluxes. Their beauty would have made good topics for conversation and speculation. I still do not have all the answers, nor even a complete set of questions..

Eistein knew that Nature held natural secrets of unfathomable depths:

We still do not know one thousandth of one percent of what nature has revealed to us.

I shall never tire of red buckeye’s triumphant declaration of spring life, exclaimed with simultaneous glossy palmate leaves and stacked upright clusters of tubular red flowers

Amur honeysuckle, native to eastern Asia, is a fast-growing shrub that forms dense thickets, outcompeting native plants and altering local ecosystems. Seeing it in flower presents another teachable moment. Pretty…and pretty disturbing!

Virginia creeper is opening its palmate leafy umbrellas.

Atop Rainbow Mountain xeric conditions furnish an ideal site for prickly pear cactus: shallow soils, exposed microsites, and little capacity for moisture retention. Another feature worthy of observation, reflection, and learning.

I have been unquenchably in love with trilliums since my spring 1970 systematic botany course in Maryland’s Appalachian Region. Sweet Betsy is among my local favorites. Like every flowering plant I found, the season is brief.

Shiny New Leaves

Poson ivy, although ornamented with shiny new leaves, is one I can admire without touching!

Fragrant sumac, resembling poison ivy, appeared in profusion along the trail. Recognizing the distinction is not unimportant!

Rusty blackhaw was just showcasing it rust-hued leaves.

Nature does indeed abhor a vacuum; life finds suitable habitat almost anywhere. Rock greenshield lichen paints the surface of bare exposed rock surfaces across our harsh wooded ridges.

Our group paused when we intersected Rainbow Loop Trail.

I recorded this 54-second video as I caught up with our group as they paused.

Stone Statuary

One of our party stood gazing at Balance Rock.

The late morning sun graced our observation perch with a reverent glow.

Rainbolt Trail passes through a labyrinth of imagined stone statuary. I saw this rock frog perched atop a limestone ledge.

Einstein saw extraordinary value in mind-rambling:

Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.

Remember, employ your imagination to envision the stone-hard gaze of this ancient warrior’s severe countenance staring from right to left.

I photographed this rock face along the trail in November 2024.

Trees Meet Stones

A persimmon tree stood silently along the trail, backdropped by yet another limestone ledge.

This oak somehow grew wedged in a rock crevice, forcing life’s sustenance from roots penetrating into mineral soil below.

Another oak, a chestnut oak, likewise precariously clings to life in a not-so-friendly survival niche.

Downslope from a Rainbow Loop ledge, I spotted a fearsome creature awaiting the freefall of any unwary, hapless, clumsy hiker who slipped from the rim. Its awry, gaping maw, face contorted from prolonged hunger, is poised. I wonder whether any of our party saw it? Good thing they were sure-footed!

A trailside white oak sniffed us as we wandered blithely past, oblivious to its sentinel presence.

And this agonized spectre of a redcedar also stood watch on the Rainbow Loop. Did anyone else witness its tortured form. Leonardo da Vinci observed, There is no result in Nature without cause. Oh, I longed to explore its cause with flellow hikers!

I wished the same for this old redcedar denizen, yet another work of art, grandeur, and mystery.

I’ve said repeatedly in my weekly photo essays, every tree has a story to tell. What is this redcedar snag’s tale?

Evev the redcedar burl has a story worthy of exploring. An old injury, providing an infection court for bacteria, fungus, virus? Does it harm the tree? Affect growth? What nature of bowl could a woodshop crafter produce?

Two ancient chestnut oaks stand at the southwest rimroack of Rainbow Mountain. Two centuries of harsh survival?

Sparkleberry is the only tree form (marginally so in my estimation) of the blueberry (Vaccinium) genus. Its tough, contorted, multiple stemmed character seems content on sites where real trees struggle.

What a rich panoply of Nature’s gifts, harvested (observed, photographed, and contemplated) across a 103-minute forest speed-reading excursion. Forty-eight photos in 103 minutes. That’s 2.25 mppp (minutes per publishable-photo)! I won’t do that again. I made my point. I can’t both responsibly co-host a hike and gather sufficient observations, reflections, photos, and videos for a Great Blue Heron photo essay.

Closing

I recalled and reflected upon the lyrics of a beautiful, haunting, sobering song written by Cody Johnson and recently re-released by Kid Rock:

If you got a chance take it
Take it while you got a chance
If you got a dream chase it
‘Cause a dream won’t chase you back
If you’re gonna love somebody
Hold ’em as long and as strong and as close as you can
‘Til you can’t

Here’s Kid Rock’s performance: https://video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?fr=mcafee&p=kid+rock%27s+til+you+can%27t&type=E210US752G91913#id=1&vid=65bad198429e2f998a60294e98819e09&action=view

After wandering forests for three-quarters of a century, I was struck with the notion that I intend to continue doing so…until I can’t. A day will come when I can’t. I look at my wife, kids, grandkids, friends, and colleagues through the same reality filter. A day will come… when I can’t.

I recall the dawn…my dawn…from a growing distance. I sense the evening gloam approaching. I ask myself, do I want to invest a single woods venture by racing with a group from one place, through the woods, to another, with virtually no time for inter-personal, social intercourse? And certainly too little time to harvest photo essay fodder. I relish each step at my own pace, embracing the beauty, magic, wonder, awe, and inspiration? Are my Mission yields (To educate, inspire, and enable participants to understand, appreciate, and enjoy Nature… and accept and practice Earth Stewardship.) sufficient from an OLLI woods walk to merit my time?

I love introducing Nature to others, but my minimum requirement perhaps must be for more of an introduction than a handshake or nod. This past Saturday amounted to little more than a superficial greeting with Nature. I may explore whether there is enough interest within OLLI for an occasional 3-4-hour long meaningful woodland excursion…a probing immersion with a limit of 6-10 eager and dedicated learners.

I shall continue to wrestle with the dilemma, pondering the best use of my time, expertise, and passion. Louis Bromfield intimated that the best that any of us can do during our fleeting existence is to change some small corner of our earth for the better through wisdom, knowledge, and hard work. Until we can’t…

I shall remain a dedicated servant of encouraging informed and responsible Earth stewardship...Until I can’t…

Thoughts and Reflections

I offer these observations:

I don’t like either the word [hike] or the thing. People ought to saunter in the mountains – not ‘hike! (John Muir)
Every tree has a story to tell to those of us intent on learning the language. (Steve Jones)
Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world. (Albert Einstein)

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

Note: All blog post images created & photographed by Stephen B. Jones unless otherwise noted. Please circulate images with photo credit: “©2026 Steve Jones, Great Blue Heron LLC. All Rights Reserved.”

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

Subscribe to my free weekly photo essays (like this one) at: http://eepurl.com/cKLJdL

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

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

Mission: Employ writing and speaking to educate, inspire, and enable readers and listeners to understand, appreciate, and enjoy Nature… and accept and practice Earth Stewardship. Until I can’t!

Vision:

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

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

Steve’s Four Books

I wrote my books Nature Based Leadership (2016), Nature-Inspired Learning and Leading (2017), Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits: Stories of Passion for Place and Everyday Nature (2019; co-authored with Dr. Jennifer Wilhoit), and Dutton Land & Cattle: A Land Legacy Story (2023) 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. All four of my books present compilations of personal experiences expressing my deep passion for Nature. All four books offer observations and reflections on my relationship with the natural world… and the broader implications for society. Order any from your local indie bookstore, or find them on IndieBound or other online sources such as Amazon and LifeRich.

I began writing books and Posts for several reasons:

I love hiking and exploring Nature
I see images I want to (and do) capture with my trusty iPhone camera
I enjoy explaining those images — an educator at heart
I don’t play golf!
I do love writing — it’s the hobby I never needed when my career consumed me
Judy suggested my writing is in large measure my legacy to our two kids, our five 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

Mid-December Above Ground Exploration at Cathedral Caverns State Park

March 24, 2026/in Updates /by Steve Jones

I published a photo essay of my July 2020 Cathedral Caverns tour on October 20, 2020: https://stevejonesgbh.com/2020/10/01/wonder-below-ground-cathedral-caverns-state-park/. I pledged a subsequent visit to explore the park’s surface trails, not knowing that 5.5 years would elapse before my December 11, 2025, four-hour venture with Hannah Hembree, Park Naturalist for Cathedral and Rickwood Caverns State Parks, Amber Coger, NW Alabama District Naturalist, and Chris Stuhlinger, a fellow retired forester. I sorted, selected, edited, and placed these 29 photos within a WordPress format on December 14, 2026. I’m drafting text five weeks later, on January 12, 2026, debating whether I should have begun a month earlier while my memory remained sharp!

I photographed the park entrance sign in 2020.

Hannah, Chris, and Amber showed their enthusiasm for our journey, backdropped by the mixed upland forest growing among scattered limestone boulders. Hannah stands at the edge of a distinct sinkhole (right), where trees reach more than 100 feet vertically owing to deep limestone-derived soil, abundant moisture, and protected slope position. We enountered a diverse overstory species mix, another expression of the productive site.

We admired this massive American beech tree dominating the convex ridgetop, a terrain position not generally conducive to large diameter, straight, tall beech. As we progressed, I marveled increasingly at the high site productivity reflected in species diversity and average canopy height.

I recorded this 58-second video of the upland hardwood forest and the wide flat trail system we explored.

I would like to return to catalog the tree species, identifying a complete list. We paid attention but did not keep a tally. We guessed 20 individual main canopy species.

Oddities and Curiosities

Always alert for tree form curiosities and oddities, I photographed a pair of pole-size yellow buckeye and sweetgum trees embraced, a union that is termed inosculation when they grasp more securely and intimately.

I never tire of seeing Carpinus carolinia, which I learned 56 years ago in dendrology as musclewood for the distinctive sinewy, muscle-like appearance of its stem. Also known as American hornbeam, blue-beech, ironwood, and muscle-beech, the species grows in the understory of hardwood forests from Alabama to New England, occasionally reaching heights of 25-30 feet. Most of the curious phenotypes I photograph are variant forms from the typical genotypye. Musclewood’s sinewy stem form is the standard genotype, not an abberation. So, its oddity is its standard form. Nothing special except to an aficiando like me!

Supplejack, in my humble opinion, is the boa conscrictor of native Alabama forest vines. Its smooth green stem one could conclude is snake-like. What makes it boa-like is its extraordinary knack for appearing to choke the living daylight out of any sapling that offers purchase and a route to fuller sunlight above.

The supplejack doesn’t always win the squeeze-battle. This sapling sugar maple appears to have prevailed. Life in any plant-based ecosystem involves fierce competition (often life and death) for essentials…nutrients, moisture, sunlight, and space, both above and below ground. This struggle left scars in form of a clockwise spiralled disfirgurement…a tree form curiosity. Every tree has a story to tell to those of us intent on learning the language.

Leonardo da Vinci understood that there may be no truly inexplicable mysteries in Nature:

There is no result in nature without a cause; understand the cause and you will have no need of the experiment!

Mr. da Vinci knew many languages…of trees, geography, skies, and the pure elegance of shade, light, colors, hues, distance, and all other elements that constitute Nature’s visible beauty, magic, wonder, and awe.

Some fellow nature enthusiasts seem intent on ascribing a common tree form curiosity to Native American manipulation of trees and branches. Their purpose was to create Tree Markers directing and guiding fellow travelers to important landscape features (springs, choice trails, hunting spots, fishing holes, villages, trail routes to significant landmarks, etc.). The bent eastern hop hornbean (Ostrya virginiana) below is most certainly not an Indian Marker tree. The stand we traversed is less than 100 years old, post-dating Native American wildland occupation by well over half a cenutury. I frequently see such disfigurement…resulting from breakage by fallen trees or branches, wind, ice, or some other force. Trees are resilient, clinging valiantly to life, intent upon surviving to reproduce, which is the ultimate pursuit of every living creature…from earth worms to humans.

This suger maple suffered a crushing blow from above when just a sapling. The youngster responded with vertical shoots, three of which persist to today. Sugar maple tolerates shade. The stunted shrub of a tree persists in the understory, standing humbly with its tree moss skirt amid a cluster of mossy limestone boulders.

Sassafras is common as deep shade seedlings, understory shrubs, and occupying the imtermediate canopy. We found a 12-inch diameter sassafras tree reaching to a co-dominant position. This individual sported a vertical scar revealing its hollowed trunk, a condition favored by cavity-coveting birds, mammals, reptiles, and other forest critters.

As we proceeded I pondered previous land use, which I believed included domestication, timber harvesting, grazing, and even selected cropping. We found compelling evidence in form of barbed wire protruding from the base of a white oak…a remnant fence that either kept stock in or out.

One among us (I’m withholding identity to protect the innocent!) had not seen the imposing compound thorns of honey locust. Farmers have told me that these fearsome spikes can puncture a tractor tire. The thorns don’t scare me, but they certainly earn my respect!

Fan moss drapes this yellow buckeye pair.

In quick progression allow me to chronicle a few observation highlights absent detailed narration, beginning with this handsome yellow buckeye.

A pole-sized yellow poplar bears the striking pattern of vertical white stripes and pale camouflage patches.

A two-foot diameter loblolly pine carries decades of horizontal yellow-bellied sapsucker wounds.

We returned to the cavern entrance. Interpretive signage tells the geologic tale and human history.

An imposing entrance!

Visitors Center and Park Store.

The Karst topographic signature and large yellow buckeye behind the headquarters.

Alabama State Parks Foundation

I’ll remind you that although I serve on the Alabama State Parks Foundation Board (Secretary), in part because of my love of Nature and in recognition for my writing many prior Posts about visiting and experiencing the Parks, any positions or opinions expressed in these Posts are mine alone and do not in any manner represent the Foundation or its Board.

I urge you to take a look at the Foundation website and consider ways you might help steward these magical places: https://asparksfoundation.org/ Perhaps you might think about supporting the Parks System education and interpretation imperative: https://asparksfoundation.org/give-today#a444d6c6-371b-47a2-97da-dd15a5b9da76

The Foundation exists for the sole purpose of providing incremental operating and capital support for enhancing our State parks… and your enjoyment of them.

We are blessed in Alabama to have our Park System. Watch for future Great Blue Heron Posts as I continue to explore and enjoy these treasures that belong to us. I urge you to discover the Alabama State Parks near you. Follow the advice of John Muir:

And into the forest I go, to lose my mind and find my soul.

In every walk with Nature one receives far more than he seeks.

I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.

Between every two pines is a doorway to a new world.

Thoughts and Reflections

I offer these observations:

There is no result in nature without a cause; understand the cause and you will have no need of the experiment! (Leonardo da Vinci)
Every tree has a story to tell to those of us intent on learning the language. (Steve Jones)
A short autumn morning saunter can reveal volumes on the magic of everyday Nature. (Steve Jones)

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

Note: All blog post images created & photographed by Stephen B. Jones unless otherwise noted. Please circulate images with photo credit: “©2026 Steve Jones, Great Blue Heron LLC. All Rights Reserved.”

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

Subscribe to my free weekly photo essays (like this one) at: http://eepurl.com/cKLJdL

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

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

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

Vision:

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

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

Steve’s Four Books

I wrote my books Nature Based Leadership (2016), Nature-Inspired Learning and Leading (2017), Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits: Stories of Passion for Place and Everyday Nature (2019; co-authored with Dr. Jennifer Wilhoit), and Dutton Land & Cattle: A Land Legacy Story (2023) 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. All four of my books present compilations of personal experiences expressing my deep passion for Nature. All four books offer observations and reflections on my relationship with the natural world… and the broader implications for society. Order any from your local indie bookstore, or find them on IndieBound or other online sources such as Amazon and LifeRich.

I began writing books and Posts for several reasons:

I love hiking and exploring Nature
I see images I want to (and do) capture with my trusty iPhone camera
I enjoy explaining those images — an educator at heart
I don’t play golf!
I do love writing — it’s the hobby I never needed when my career consumed me
Judy suggested my writing is in large measure my legacy to our two kids, our five 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

Thanksgiving Eve Fungi Encounters at Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge

March 11, 2026/in Updates /by Steve Jones

Mushroom Potpourri

I ventured into the bottomland hardwood forest south of HGH Road, east of Jolly B. Road, on the Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge, Limestone County, Alabama, on the morning of Thanksgiving Eve, 2025. A chilly post-frontal breeze blew from the north-northwest under cloudless, cerulean skies. I hoped recent rains would bless me with a variety of mushrooms to view and catalog. Join me via this Post on my two-hour bushwhack discovery jaunt.

I am an old forester, learning in retirement to identify some regional fungi by their mushrooms, with special attention to common edibles, such as oysters, chanterelles, lion’s mane, puffballs, chicken of the woods, jellies, and a few others. I relish the rich tapestry of a vibrant forest, where death and life are interwoven in an elegant, intricate, and unending dance of carbon accumulation, decay, and recycling. Fungi are among the decomposers; mushrooms, their reproductive organs, disseminate billions of spores to ensure the cycle remains unbroken.

I am not a mycologist. Please don’t hold me to properly identifying the fungi pictured below. I rely on memory, limited referencing my several source books, and too much reliance on my close companion iNaturalist. I give you my best shot.

False turkey tail covers the surface of this downed red oak trunk. The bark hasn’t yet sloughed, owing in large measure to the brackets and mycelia holding fast.

Pear-shaped puffballs populated the oak. These had not yet ripened.

Some puffbals were ripe, emitting clouds of spores when poked.

I recorded this 22-second video of the finger-poked smoking puffballs.

I spotted a biodiversity cornucopia on another downed oak: snow jelly fungus, crowded parchment, and a white-lip globe snail on a carpet of seductive entodon moss. Wow, I’m getting chills just remembering the magic hidden in plain sight…a nature-enthusiast’s siren song!

Each time I enter any woodland, I strive to see magic hidden in plain sight. The mushroom/snail/moss menagerie congregated within a six-inch diameter circle. Add to the life assemblage that the snail is very likely consuming algae and organic detritus. A remarkable six inch circle of life. I wonder what I may have missed on my woodland circuit. I spotted the six-inch circle domain only because my wide, circuitous wanderings brought me within a few feet of the log.

I’m reminded of the intensive, scientific forest inventories I’ve conducted across my forestry career:

Maryland Forest Service, Savage River State Forest (1970-71) — two summers (after freshman and sophomore forestry years) systematically sampling fifth-acre plots
Union Camp Corporation (1973-1985) — sampling company forestland to prepare timber sales
UCC (1973-85) — regeration surveys to assess planted pine survival after the first growing season
Doctoral field research (1986-87) — sampling uncut second growth Allegheny hardwood forests in northwestern Pennsylvania and southwestern New York

I mention my professional inventories to contrast my informal, haphazard, unscientific wanderings seeking whatever caught my eye on a late fall saunter at WNWR. I wonder what a gridded sampling filling a full day would have revealed? I leave such a venture to a forest mycology graduate student…or maybe an artist/photographer intent on assembling a portfolio of Nature’s limitless delights.

Back to the six inch circle of diverse life. Each component of the miniature ecosystem warrants an individual photograph. I don’t recall previously seeing snowy jelly fungus. As its name suggests, it feels like Jello!

Crowded parchment is ubiquitous throughout our hardwood forests. It is a saprobic, wood decaying bracket fungus occurring on stumps, logs, and sticks of hardwood trees, especially oak.

The white-lip globe snail grazed peacefully, oblivious to the old forester observing it.

The seductive entodon moss offers a dense carpet, ideal for gathering and holding moisture and nutrients, and offering the snail a surface to scour with its rasping mouth parts. I love the seductive moniker. Perhaps seductive to the globe snail!

Club-like tuning fork mushrooms and Carolina shield lichen colonize this downed stem. Surely, an other worldly scene!

Carolina shield lichen, a primary decomposer, seems to possess this dead and downed hardwood stem. Although I may assume it is understood by many, I will risk stating the obvious. A lichen is a composite organism composed of a fungus and an alga (singular of algae) growing communally. An online source strays from my simplistic explanation: a lichen is a hybrid colony of algae or cynobacteria living symbiotically among filaments of multiple fungus species, along with bacteria embedded in the cortex or skin, in a mutualistic relationship.

I do not aim with these weekly photo essays to demonstrate how much I know. Leonardo da Vinci captured my approach to communicating complexity:

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

I reported to several boards over my senior administrative career. When preparing for quarterly board meetings, I coached my staff to Keep it Simple. Present as though board members were sixth graders, not because they were either unable to understand complex issues, quantitatively limited, or unfamiliar with higher education. Instead, board members have lives, businesses, and many distractions, and then meet only four times a year, jumping into our boiling university cauldron. Forcing you (staff) to keep it simple assures that you will edit, condense, and summarize the essential, key elements more concisely, precisely, and powerfully. I keep my Great Blue Heron prose at the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level 10.

Oak bracket mushrooms can be massive, growing at the base of living and dead oaks. Other common names include weeping conk, warted oak polypore, and weeping polypore. Note the thick amber, honey-like liquid secretions

My beauty-of-the-day designation goes to coral-pink merulius, a colorful decomposer of dead woody debris.

Ganaderma sessile, a type of laquered saprobic polypore bracket fungus, decomposes dead hardwood logs, stumps, and other debris. One oneline site refers to the species as a beautiful polypore, yet I am not persuaded to elevate it to beauty-of-the-day! I recall from my long-ago forest pathology course hearing the moniker bear’s tongue fungus. I see the resemblance.

I have doubts about this being deer-colored Trametes (Trametopsis cervina), yet iNaturalist seemed at least marginally confident. I like this individual’s powder puff appearance, which drew me to powderpuff bracket (Postia ptychogaster), which is found in both Europe and North America.

Autumn is the season for bulbous honeytop, a delightful edible. I have found large colonies of honeytop mushrooms elsewhere. I don’t remember seeing bulbous honeytop. The photo at right shows the conspicuous swollen stem base.

The late autumn forest carbon cycle was in full gear, a surging, steaming stewpot of life, death, and renewal.

Other Lifeforms

I snapped the below left photo of the bracket fungi and coral-pink merulius, only to find the white-banded fishing spider later when I examined the image, which explains why the enlarged spider image at right is not in focus. The spider was indeed hidden in plain sight.

Resurrection fern shows full life during the moist North Alabama dormant season. Partridgeberry likewise displays vibrant green winter foliage, combined with its bright red berries. Some people complain of our winter dreariness and incessant drabness. Contrarily, I delight in its stark simplicity, exquisite contrasts, and unlimited delights. Summer woods present a visual maelstrom that can overwhelm an old forester seeking isolated delights. Dormant season performances present on isolated stages.

I’ll end with another gelatin mushroom, American amber jelly, which I found on the gravel road near my car. The infected dead twig fell from the canopy overhead. The background is my tailgate. I have harvested and consumed these uniquely-textured shrooms occasionally.

Thanks for accompanying me virtually. It didn’t match a six-mile circuit of Jenny Lake in the Tetons, but it offered everyday Nature delights almost in my backyard (15-mile drive), absent the time and expense visiting a world class National Park.

Thoughts and Reflections

I offer these observations:

Fungi deepen forest exploration mystery and intrigue. (Steve Jones)
There are some who can live without wild things and some who cannot. (Aldo Leopold)
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. (Leonardo da Vinci)

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

Note: All blog post images created & photographed by Stephen B. Jones unless otherwise noted. Please circulate images with photo credit: “©2026 Steve Jones, Great Blue Heron LLC. All Rights Reserved.”

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

Subscribe to my free weekly photo essays (like this one) at: http://eepurl.com/cKLJdL

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

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

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

Vision:

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

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

Steve’s Four Books

I wrote my books Nature Based Leadership (2016), Nature-Inspired Learning and Leading (2017), Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits: Stories of Passion for Place and Everyday Nature (2019; co-authored with Dr. Jennifer Wilhoit), and Dutton Land & Cattle: A Land Legacy Story (2023) 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. All four of my books present compilations of personal experiences expressing my deep passion for Nature. All four books offer observations and reflections on my relationship with the natural world… and the broader implications for society. Order any from your local indie bookstore, or find them on IndieBound or other online sources such as Amazon and LifeRich.

I began writing books and Posts for several reasons:

I love hiking and exploring Nature
I see images I want to (and do) capture with my trusty iPhone camera
I enjoy explaining those images — an educator at heart
I don’t play golf!
I do love writing — it’s the hobby I never needed when my career consumed me
Judy suggested my writing is in large measure my legacy to our two kids, our five 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

Early December Nature Explorations along The Natchez Trace Parkway

February 25, 2026/in Updates /by Steve Jones

On Wednesday, December 3, 2025, Judy and I made our first visit to the Natchez Trace Parkway, entering north of the Tennessee River in Alabama near Rock Spring (Mile Post 330) and exiting at the Meriwether Lewis Memorial (Post ~385) in Tennessee. The casual 55-mile journey served as a teaser for the entire 444-mile Parkway from Natchez, MS, to Nashville, TN. Come along with me to experience a taste of Nature and history.

Like most Department of the Interior National Park Service units, the Natchez Trace Parkway tells its story with excellent interpretive signage. I won’t burden the photo essay with narrative repeating details of history associated with Native American and early colonial modern developments.

The history is rich, colorful, positive, cruel, punishing, rewarding, and ugly. Choose the flavor you desire. It’s all there. Imagine boatmen and farmers who floated their products down the Mississippi river to market in Natchez, MS, then sold their flatboats as lumber and walked home 500 grueling miles along the Trace. That’s 35 days from punching the clock at the docks to arrive home to spouse and the kids! The sign reads, “By 1810, occasional travel had turned into a human flood; up to 10,000 passed along the well-trodden path each year.”

Judy and I traveled leisurely, safely, and without threat of harm. We made our circuit, departing home after breakfast and returning in time for supper.

We encountered none of the listed hazards: torrential rains; swollen streams; thieves; swamps; or insects (“muskeetos & gnats & water very bad”):

I passed through the most horrid swamps I had ever seen. These are covered with a prodigious growth of canes and high woods, which shut out the whole light of days for miles. (Alexander Lewis, 1811)

Our camp was surprised in the night, and two of our horses stolen, by Indians. (Francis Baily, 1797)

I can adjust a simple handkerchief about my head and face in a way to parry the mosquitoes, or their more formidable companions the horseflies. (Herman Blennerhassett, 1807),

Each stop offered interpretation and explanation. I want to return to explore such delights as these. Rock Spring Trail is a 20-minute saunter exploring woodland and several beaverdams.

Ten thousand annual traipsers, countless horses, oxen, and mules, iron-rimmed wagons, and other means of coveyance, during dry seasons and mud-plagued torrents, scarred the Trace, in places leaving an obvious sunken pathway. Prior to European settlement, Native Americans traversed these hills and crossed its streams for more than 10,000 years. Every chain (66 feet; 80 chains to a mile) along the length has stories to tell.

The sign presents a multi-generational, multi-millennial theme, comprising volumes of decadal tales of adventure, discovery, love, war, life, and death:

This early interstate road building venture produced a snake-infested, mosquito-beset, robber-haunted, Indian-traveled forest path. Lamented by the pious, cussed by the impious, it tried everyone’s strength and patience.

As the sign notes:

Here you see three cuts made to avoid mud into which oxcarts and wagons sank, making progress slow, dangerous, or even impossible.

Although enamored with and captivated by this dip into the etheral world of intersecting human venture, natural history, time, and seasons, I kept my eyes alert for Nature’s oddities, curiosities, and mysteries. A black cherry tree infected with the fearsome countenance of a fungal black knot canker (Apiosporina morbosa) demanded my attention and implored a photograph. I wondered whether some handsome Indian warrior in 1026 might have mused on a Prunus serotina similarly infected?

The McGlamery Stand, a combination inn and trading post, served travelers near this location from 1849, closing before 1865. Its name persisted through the next 150 years. Can any of us expect our 2026 moniker (our individual identity) to last beyond 2176?! I am blessed beyond imagination that the lovely young lady at right still carries my surname 54 years after she graciously adopted it in 1972!

Oh, to inhale the magic of a mild autumn afternoon along a serene stillwater stream!

The branch is still carving and shaping the valley, you may follow the struggle of trees and other vegetation to gain a hold in the shallow rocky soil in the bottom in a 15-minute stroll along this narrow trail.

I cling to the emotional power of any southland stream still carving and shaping its valley! Five hundred years ago, Leonardo da Vinci observed:

Water is the driving force of all Nature!

I recorded this 59-second video at Sweetwater Branch.

The Driving Force of All Nature! Who can debate or challenge the half-millennial wisdom of an incredible polymath? No telephone, computer, AI, camera, or combustion engine! No view of our pale blue Earth from Apollo in moon orbit! Yet, he knew, saw, and felt so much more then we in our digitally-distracted world. It’s high time we fattened sheep got into the great out there; time to get out of the darkness into the light!

Here is my 39-second video focusing on the crystal clear water. What could da Vinci have done with my iPhone?

Each stop along our brief trip suggested hours of contemplation and exploration. My career demanded much from me. I seldom had the leisure to devote to what I might have learned when young, physically capable, intellectually exquisite, and tireless. However, it is only now that I yearn to delve deeply enough to probe the depths beyond career expediency. As I listened and yearned for more time to sit quietly, I thought of Chickasaw poet and novelist, Linda Hogan:

There is a way that nature speaks, that land speaks. Most of the time we are simply not patient enough, quiet enough, to pay attention to the story.

Glenrock Branch at milepost 365, yet another stop, stirred my heart, soul, body, mind, and spirit. I wanted more than our superficial circuit allowed.

I recorded this 59-second video at Glenrock Branch.

I’m a champion of and advocate for special places and everyday Nature. How many did we see along our 55 mile journey, where we discovered an endless fountain?

Still at Glenrock Branch, a towering American beech stood creekside (left). Nearby, an Eastern redcedar provided dormant season shade.

Another beech showed mirthful character with its apparent (to observers with vivid imagination) multiple facial expressions. I see eyes, noses, and mouths. Contrast its expressive trunk (i.e. an extrovert) to its kin above left and beyond it at right, clearly, like me, a certifiable introvert.

I love catchy, provocative place names, especially those attached to local conditions and experiences:

A mile to the south, the Old Natchez Trace crossed a depression in the flat, dogwood-coverred ridge. After heavy rains it became almost impassable for wagons. Its name, Dogwood Mudhole, recalls the ordeals of travel. It shows, too, how place names arising from local conditions of long ago are carried down through the years.

Stephen Edward Ambrose (January 10, 1936 – October 13, 2002) was an American historian, academic, and author. He published Undaunted Courage (1996), telling the nearly unfathomable 48-month tale of daring and courage of the Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery. They led the 33-member Corps approximately 8,000 miles, from St. Louis, Missouri to the Pacific Ocean and back.

Defying all odds, the Corps completed its mission, losing only a single member, not to accident or hostiles, but to pneumonia. Mr. Lewis succumbed at this site along the Trace, to internal demons, stronger than his fame, courage, or continental conquest.

The monument and its massive oak triggered an emptiness in my heart. A man who soared with eagles died alone, scared, and helpless in the wilds of west Tennessee. As I read Undaunted Courage, I pictured Lewis and Clark transitioning to the hereafter with angels singing and trumpets blaring. The sad and troubled soul passed without fanfare.

Like other stops, the Meriwhether Lewis memorial presented hiking opportunities. Alas, we allowed no time in our itinerary for pleasant side excursions.

I wondered whether this dogwood tree, batttered, dead, and tortured, once bore a heavenly spring shroud of white-blossom elegance. Did it live a daring and courageous life, only to die alone, scared, and helpless…without fanfare?

Instead, I’ll bring this essay to close by celebrating that the Trace lives on through a million tales from along its 250 years and 35,520 chains of beauty, magic, wonder, awe, and inspiration!

Thoughts and Reflections

I offer these observations:

Water is the driving force of all Nature! (da Vinci)
The Natchez Trace carves a multi-generational, multi-millennial theme, comprising tales of adventure, discovery, love, war, life, and death. (Steve Jones)
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better. (Einstein)

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

Note: Unless otherwise noted, all blog post images are created & photographed by Stephen B. Jones.

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

Subscribe to my free weekly photo essays (like this one) at: http://eepurl.com/cKLJdL

A reminder of my Personal and Professional Purpose, Passion, and Cause

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

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

Vision:

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

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

Steve’s Four Books

I wrote my books Nature Based Leadership (2016), Nature-Inspired Learning and Leading (2017), Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits: Stories of Passion for Place and Everyday Nature (2019; co-authored with Dr. Jennifer Wilhoit), and Dutton Land & Cattle: A Land Legacy Story (2025) 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. All four of my books present compilations of personal experiences expressing my deep passion for Nature. All four books offer observations and reflections on my relationship with the natural world… and the broader implications for society. Order any from your local indie bookstore, or find them on IndieBound or other online sources such as Amazon and LifeRich.

I began writing books and Posts for several reasons:

I love hiking and exploring Nature
I see images I want to (and do) capture with my trusty iPhone camera
I enjoy explaining those images — an educator at heart
I don’t play golf!
I do love writing — it’s the hobby I never needed when my career consumed me
Judy suggested my writing is in large measure my legacy to our two kids, our five 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

Mid-November 25-Year Return to Alabama’s Chewacla State Park

February 18, 2026/in Updates /by Steve Jones

Having arrived in Auburn, Alabama on Thursday evening November 13, 2026, fellow retired forester (and Auburn University forestry graduate) Chris Stuhlinger, my grandson Jack (18), and I visited the College of Forestry, Wildlife, and Environment’s (CFWE) Kreher Forest Ecology Preserve and Nature Center, spent all day Friday at sundry engagements on AU’s campus, and hiked several trails Saturday morning at AL’s nearby Chewacla State Park. I invite you to join us as we hike the Upper Chewacla Trail System.

I had last visited the park 25 years ago, before I left my Auburn position as Director, Alabama Cooperative Extension System, heading to NC State University. I was pleased to revisit Chewacla in good company.

I welcome these autumn days of comfortable temperatures. I contend that our southern winter is a gradual transition from fall to spring, with an occasional cold spell thrown in for good measure.

Sauntering along the Mountain Laurel Trail and Return on a Ridgetop Trail

We parked at the Mountain Laurel Trailhead and worked downstream to the falls. We enjoyed pleasant temperature and morning sun as we strolled through the mixed hardwood forest along the toe slope.

The open understory presented a parklike scenario, and evidenced a high deer population effectively browsing the understory.

The stream flow corroborated the persistent autumn dry period that preceded our trek. A great morning for reflecting and reflection!

No heat, excess humidity, biting, sucking, or irritating insects — only the welcome crunch of early leaf-fall, a few bird calls, a scampering squirrel, and an occasional acorn dropping. Peace, serenity, and tranquility suggesting that all is good! Sauntering the gentle trail and soft fall woods with friend and family, I think of John Muir’s classic quote:

When we contemplate the whole globe as one great dewdrop, striped and dotted with continents and islands, flying through space with other stars all singing and shining together as one, the whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty.

Here’s my 60-second video from the Chewacla Creek channel.

Above the dam, the channel expands to a calm lake. A persimmon loaded with fruit leans over the water. I believe the mood and word of the morning is tranquil.

I recorded this 56-second video where the stream flattened to the lake.

Saw palmetto is common from central Alabama south to the coast. From 1981-85, I served as Union Camp Corporation’s Land Manager, responsible for the company’s 325,000 forestland acres (500 square miles) in Alabama, 100K north of the black belt (prairie soil divide just south of Auburn and Montgomery) and the remainder to the south. Seeing saw palmetto sparked deep memories of those years of action-packed industrial forestry!

I suppose I could elucidate what ecosystem factors at Chewacla signal deep within me the feeling that I am in the deep south, starting with the saw palmetto! North Alabama, although still in the South, has a more northern feel.

Curiosities and Oddities along the Way

I discover and appreciate tree form oddities, curiosities, and mysteries wherever I roam. This sweetgum sports an agrobacterial burl three feet above the ground.

A red maple streamside bears burls from its base to the live crown. When I took forest pathology in 1971-72, I would have termed the tree’s condition as diseased, attributing its abnormal growth to an infectious organism (fungal, bacterial, viral).

A Google AI Overview offered:

A tree disease is a harmful deviation from a tree’s normal function, typically caused by pathogens like fungi, bacteria, or viruses, or by environmental stress, leading to symptoms like discolored leaves, cankers, wilting, or stunted growth, and can ultimately weaken or kill the tree. These issues disrupt water, nutrient, and energy flow, often targeting roots, stems, or foliage, with factors like drought, soil issues, or physical damage increasing susceptibility.

One-half century ago, my forest pathology focused on tree health relative to timber products, i.e. commercial value. This maple has no value for lumber production, yet it may have novelty commercial value. My point is that diseased in this case, may not be a cause for alarm.

Like so many tree form anomalies, this sycamore suffered a crushing blow from above years ago, bending the tree to 30 degrees from horizontal, then sending a new short vertical. The form is distorted; the cause is clear; the future is affected; a disease organism is not involved,

Make what you will of this dragon-headed Ostrya virginiana (ironwood), its mouth agape in grin (left) and its eye piercing and nostril flared (right). Once again, injury from above explains the origin of disfigurement.

The same cause and effect explain this hickory abnormality, not a face but a large caliber muzzle.

I wanted to make a head/snout/face out of this Ostrya burl, but nothing comes to me. Do with it what you will.

Simon and Garfunkel’s America (1968) came to mind as I struggled for a descriptive totem for this particular burl.

Laughing on the busPlaying games with the facesShe said the man in the gabardine suit was a spyI said “Be careful, his bowtie is really a camera

I suppose it’s okay to be just a burl!

Other Notable Feature

Vaccinium arboreum (aka sparkleberry or farkleberry) is the only tree form of the native blueberry genus. I appreciate its mirthful common names, showy bark, interesting shape and texture, and its evergreen foliage.

How could I trek the Mountain Laurel Trail without posting mountain laurel photographs?!

We spent little more than 90-minutes at Chewacla. I wanted to showcase with this photo essay what a short morning saunter can reveal about the magic of everyday Nature.

Chewacla Falls

Without further elaboration, I give you the falls.

I recorded this 58-second video at Chewacla Falls.

I remind you of my third book, co-authored with Dr. Jennifer J. Wilhoit, Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits: Stories of Passion for Place and Everyday Nature. Without deep thought or deliberate intention, my series of ~500 Great Blue Heron weekly Posts has trended to six consistent theme elements:

Stories of passion for place and everyday Nature emerge wherever and whenever I wander (and wonder).
Nature-inspired life and living color and direct my living, learning, serving, leading, and praying.
Nature’s beauty, magic, wonder, and awe lie mostly hidden in plain sight.
Look deep into Nature, and then you will understand everything better. (Albert Einstein)
And into the forest I go, to lose my mind and find my soul. (John Muir)
In every walk in Nature, one finds far more than he seeks. (Muir)

Certainly, there is more, yet these six simple themes cover most of my Nature musings.

Alabama State Parks Foundation

I’ll remind you that although I serve on the Alabama State Parks Foundation Board (Secretary), in part because of my love of Nature and in recognition for my writing many prior Posts about visiting and experiencing the Parks, any positions or opinions expressed in these Posts are mine alone and do not in any manner represent the Foundation or its Board.

I urge you to take a look at the Foundation website and consider ways you might help steward these magical places: https://asparksfoundation.org/ Perhaps you might think about supporting the Parks System education and interpretation imperative: https://asparksfoundation.org/give-today#a444d6c6-371b-47a2-97da-dd15a5b9da76

The Foundation exists for the sole purpose of providing incremental operating and capital support for enhancing our State parks… and your enjoyment of them.

We are blessed in Alabama to have our Park System. Watch for future Great Blue Heron Posts as I continue to explore and enjoy these treasures that belong to us. I urge you to discover the Alabama State Parks near you. Follow the advice of John Muir:

And into the forest I go, to lose my mind and find my soul.

In every walk with Nature one receives far more than he seeks.

I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.

Between every two pines is a doorway to a new world.

Thoughts and Reflections

I offer these observations:

Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better. (Albert Einstein)
And into the forest I go, to lose my mind and find my soul. (John Muir)
A short autumn morning saunter can reveal volumes on the magic of everyday Nature. (Steve Jones)

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

Note: All blog post images created & photographed by Stephen B. Jones unless otherwise noted. Please circulate images with photo credit: “©2026 Steve Jones, Great Blue Heron LLC. All Rights Reserved.”

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

Subscribe to my free weekly photo essays (like this one) at: http://eepurl.com/cKLJdL

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

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

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

Vision:

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

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

Steve’s Four Books

I wrote my books Nature Based Leadership (2016), Nature-Inspired Learning and Leading (2017), Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits: Stories of Passion for Place and Everyday Nature (2019; co-authored with Dr. Jennifer Wilhoit), and Dutton Land & Cattle: A Land Legacy Story (2023) 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. All four of my books present compilations of personal experiences expressing my deep passion for Nature. All four books offer observations and reflections on my relationship with the natural world… and the broader implications for society. Order any from your local indie bookstore, or find them on IndieBound or other online sources such as Amazon and LifeRich.

I began writing books and Posts for several reasons:

I love hiking and exploring Nature
I see images I want to (and do) capture with my trusty iPhone camera
I enjoy explaining those images — an educator at heart
I don’t play golf!
I do love writing — it’s the hobby I never needed when my career consumed me
Judy suggested my writing is in large measure my legacy to our two kids, our five 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

Brief-Form Post #54: Second Autumn Afternoon Near the Lodge and Cabins at AL’s DeSoto State Park!

February 11, 2026/in Updates /by Steve Jones

I attended an Alabama State Parks Foundation Board morning meeting on Thursday, November 6, 2026, at the DeSoto State Park Lodge. I had hiked extensively at the park the previous afternoon. Following the board session, I hiked the Chalet Trail from the Lodge and circuited the nearby cabins area. I am seldom disappointed by the magic a short saunter reveals, if only one looks deeply enough to discover what lies hidden in plain sight.

Come along with me to see the beauty, magic, wonder, and awe I spotted. The lodge deck overlooking the canyon of the West Fork of the Little River proved a good place to begin my trek. A brilliantly red sourwood tree stood at eye level, peering through the now-leafless yellow poplar (left). A smaller sourwood shrub topped a sandstone ledge near the deck (right). As a run-of-the-mill guy who knows only the basic rainbow colors, I referred to sourwood’s fall cape simply as red. Online leafyplace.com relied on more color-proficient descriptors: vibrant shades of crimson red to burgundy and purple.

The canyon reached ~250′ from stream to rimrock. Summer foliage hides the opposite ridge, now visible with leaf-drop.

I recorded this 58-second video from the Lodge deck.

Intent on uncovering more of the forest’s secrets, I walked from the Lodge to the Chalet Trailhead.

Afternoon along the Chalet Trail

A hike doesn’t need to be long and daunting to offer rewards. A perfect afternoon for leisurely sauntering is ideal for recovering mentally from a Board meeting, and for preparing physically for the required two-hour drive home.

I recorded this 59-second video within the forest along the trail.

Periodic prescribed fire has eliminated understory trees and shrubs, creating an open-grown grassy impression. Some refer to the appearance as park-like, a condition that many persons queried in surveys prefer.

I chose the Chalet Trail to focus on the benefits and consequences of prescribed fire as a parkland management tool. Note that the sign is sanctioned by: Alabama Prescribed Fire Council; National Wild Turkey Federation; The Nature Conservancy; and The Longleaf Alliance.

The understory is open, with no brambles or thickets impeding walking and, ostensibly, hiding snakes, critters, and other scary woodland denizens. I speak in jest of scary woodland denizens, yet I, too, prefer parklike stands in an area heavily trafficked around picnic tables, campgrounds, and cabins.

I recorded a 60-second video of the stand managed by fire and evidencing charred trunks.

I observe in nearly every Great Blue Heron photo essay that death is a big part of life in our forests. Whether a wildfire or controlled burn, dead and down woody debris is part of the ground-level fuel. Occasionally even a intentionally administered prescription fire will burn intensely enough to damage cambium at the base, opening a court of fungal infection. The kickory tree at left bears a catface, a hollow resulting from heart decay. The rot extends upward, eliminating any commercial timber value and weakening structural soundness. However, in this park cabin area management regime, timber value is of little consequence. Instead, squirrels, snakes, birds, and other critters value tree cavities! All the better for park wildlife enthusiasts.

Fall colors, open canopy, an orchard stocking level, and a welcoming understory tell me that controlled fire is an effective management tool.

Charred trunks and nearly bare forest floor evidence employed fire success.

Across my 12 years practicing forestry in the southeastern US for a Fortune-500 paper and allied forest products manufacturer, I control-burned tens of thousands of acres of company-owned forest land. Whether site preparation or established stand burning, the tool is essential to meeting our seeming insatiable demand for pulp, lumber, poles, chips, and miscellaneous other probucts. For the record our South Alabama crews once ignited and safely managed a rough-reduction, aerial ignition day when we covered 4,300 acres, a banner accomplishment!

Many surprises in Nature lie hidden in plain sight, including this groundhog head. A burl on a water oak trunk trailside. The critter sports a moustached mouth, abbreviated proboscis, two eyes (its right one with a lichened, overhanging brow), and a plated forebrow. It’s okay to employ a little imagination when searching our forests for obscure mammal residents.

Albert Einstein observed:

Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.

It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.

Closing

I accept the challenge of distilling these Brief-Form Posts into a single distinct reflection.

Aldo Leopold, a preeminent mid-Twentieth Century ecologist, is my conservation hero, and his writing, A Sand County Almanac, is a lyrical conservation classic. Leopold encouraged informed and responsible land management, employing an arsenal of effective, bold practices informed by experience, wisdom, and hard work. He professed:

Prudence never kindled a fire in the human mind; I have no hope for conservation born of fear.

Crispy-Leafed Early Autumn at Leebrook Park in Pennsylvania’s Franklin Park Borough

February 6, 2026/in Updates /by Steve Jones

Judy and I visited our son, Matt, and his family in late September 2025, at their home in Butler County, Pennsylvania, 20 miles north of Pittsburgh. We explored several parks and natural areas, including Leebrook Park, located in Franklin Park Borough, Allegheny County. Come along with Matt, Judy, Hannah, Nate, and me as we view memorable Leebrook Nature attractions on an autumn afternoon.

I always appreciate well-marked trails and informative signage.

Upper Roadside Parking Entrance

We entered by a trailhead distant from the main parking lot, primary entrance, and recreation fields. The second-growth mixed hardwood stand occupied a long-abandoned pasture.

I recorded this 60-second video as we traipsed through the former pasture forest.

This sugar maple, likely the same age as the overstory trees, sports a massive canker, infecting the entire trunk, and accounting for the tree’s distortion and stunted growth.

Nate provided scale.

Eight to ten inch diameter black cherry and red maple trees stand side by side. Germinating decades ago six inches apart, they have closed the gap. Inosculation is the term describing trees that seem to grasp one another, growing eventually as one.

Hannah (18) and Nate (12) stood atop a dead and downed trunk before leaping to the leaf-littered ground. Not a big deal, you say, but in the sunest years of their grandfather, it is a moment worth cherishing.

Rather than hike into the lower forest and needing to climb back to the car, Matt relocated us to the lower, richer slope with a far more interesting forest.

Lower Trail at Playing Field Entrance

Larger trees, greater variety of tree species, and wrinkled terrain drew my interest.

The bowl-shaped ravine supported a stand of cove hardwoods: mixed oaks, sugar maple, black cherry, a single sycamore, shagbark hickory, and yellow poplar, among others.

My 60-second video captured the special essence of the cove.

Trees reach more than 110 feet skyward. Such sites are characterized by deeper soils, greater soil moisture, denser shading by virtue of their lower slope position, and protection from ridgetop winds. I love the look and feel (shade and microclimate) of Appalachian hardwood coves.

The centered tree above (left) is a colorfully-patterned sycamore:

I recorded this 36-second video focusing on the three bird or mammal cavities in the towering top of the sycamore.

Shagbark hickory is as happy and comfortable on the hills of west-central Penn’s-woods as it is on Alabama’s Cumberland Plateau.

Always alert for tree form oddities and curiosities, I had to capture the image of this main canopy sugar maple. Suffering a decades-old upper crown injury, the old denizen has a snout and eye where the stem broke. Two large forks ascend in a prominent U-shape from the snout. The odd creature appears to stand sentry above the sylvan cove.

I find enchantment in such peculiarities, knowing full well that there is a story to be told. A heavy burden of snow or ice decapitated the younger tree? A thunderstorm gust brought its top down? I can only imagine the year, month, and causal agent.

Spiral Grain and Woodpecker Excavation

Spiral wood grain fascinates me. I see it often in downed hardwood trees after decomposition sheds their bark. When I discuss spiraling with others, nearly everyone insists that the spiraling should be apparent in the bark of a living tree. I insist, contrarily, that the phenomenon is completely hidden beneath the bark. Finally, I found direct evidence. This spiraled, standing dead oak has lost much of its bark, revealing the grain (right). The still clinging bark above (right) evidences no external indication of the structural spiraling!

Works of Nature’s creative sculpturing abound. Woodpeckers hungry for grubs and adult insects are assisting decomposition of this standing trunk.

A brief three-generation, leisurely family stroll reveals many secrets, mysteries, and magic in a place close to home, publicly maintained, and accessible free of charge. As I draft this narrative, I am halfway through teaching a six-week adult education course on our US National Parks. At the outset, I offer a Warning/Caution/Alert: Don’t be so smitten, enamored, and captivated by our incredible 63 National Parks that you ignore and shun the incredible beauty, magic, wonder, awe, and inspiration of local special places and everyday Nature. LeeBrook Park is one such example — much closer, less expensive, and less crowded than Yosemite, Yellowstone, or the Grand Canyon! Enjoy pancakes at home, have a sandwich in the park, and be home for dinner.

Thoughts and Reflections

I offer these observations:

A brief three-generation, leisurely family stroll can reveal many secrets, mysteries, and magic in a place close to home, publicly maintained, and accessible free of charge. (Steve Jones)
I find enchantment in tree form oddities and peculiarities, knowing full well that there is a story to be told. (Steve Jones)
Our death is not an end if we can live on in our children and the younger generation. For they are us; our bodies are only wilted leaves on the tree of life. (Albert Einstein)

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

Note: All blog post images created & photographed by Stephen B. Jones unless otherwise noted. Please circulate images with photo credit: “©2026 Steve Jones, Great Blue Heron LLC. All Rights Reserved.”

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

Subscribe to my free weekly photo essays (like this one) at: http://eepurl.com/cKLJdL

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

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

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

Vision:

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

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

Steve’s Four Books

I wrote my books Nature Based Leadership (2016), Nature-Inspired Learning and Leading (2017), Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits: Stories of Passion for Place and Everyday Nature (2019; co-authored with Dr. Jennifer Wilhoit), and Dutton Land & Cattle: A Land Legacy Story (2023) 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. All four of my books present compilations of personal experiences expressing my deep passion for Nature. All four books offer observations and reflections on my relationship with the natural world… and the broader implications for society. Order any from your local indie bookstore, or find them on IndieBound or other online sources such as Amazon and LifeRich.

I began writing books and Posts for several reasons:

I love hiking and exploring Nature
I see images I want to (and do) capture with my trusty iPhone camera
I enjoy explaining those images — an educator at heart
I don’t play golf!
I do love writing — it’s the hobby I never needed when my career consumed me
Judy suggested my writing is in large measure my legacy to our two kids, our five 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

Curiosities, Oddities, and Mysteries In a Sanctuary’s Bottomland Hardwood Forest!

February 2, 2026/in Updates /by Steve Jones

On October 14, 2025, I had nearly two hours to roam before meeting with a colleague to prepare for a scheduled joint seminar the next week. I visited the tupelo swamp on the northeast side of Huntsville’s Goldsmith-Schiffman Wildlife Sanctuary. I had no objective beyond seeing what may lie hidden in plain sight during the dry autumn season. Never disappointed by my routine impromptu explorations, I discovered a portfolio of interesting features.

A Big Oak Topples into the River

Sometime this past summer, this 2.5-foot diameter water oak toppled violently into the adjacent Flint River, blocking at least half of the river’s width. The crown clings to the brown leaves that were in full flush when the tree fell.

I recorded this 58-second video of the toppled water oak.

I wonder whether the crown will hold in place when winter rains swell the river to bankfull and beyond. The force will be powerful. Only Nature knows her limits, yet cares nothing of the consequences. I’ll keep an eye on her antics and impacts.

I observe in nearly every Post, death is a big part of life in our forests.

Another Big Oak Decomposes and Decays

Across eight years of permanent residence in North Alabama, I am learning better how to estimate the pace of decomposition and decay based on observation. Marian Moore Lewis, author of Southern Sanctuary, and I encountered a recently uprooted red oak on November 18, 2020 in this same bottomland forest. Fine roots were still evident; the root ball soil remined intact; bole bark and crown appeared fresh.

The massive root ball is clearly weathering away in my October 14, 2025 photo. Only the largest woody roots remain, yet even they are rapidly decaying. Trunk bark is shredding and stripping. Five years leave a striking mark on a large oak. My eye is calibrating. I am confident that I can estimate time since windthrow within 2-3 years, through the first 20 years. By then, the soil incorporation is in control.

I will continue to Monitor…and Learn.

A Rich Species Mix

With litte necessary narrative, here are some of the tree varieties I encountered.

A nice crop of walnuts beneath a 24-inch diameter black walnut.

A sycamore and an attractive natural forest floor arrangement of peeled sycamore bark, a dropped leaf, and a seed ball.

Sycamore’s peeling bark is one of its distinctive features.

During my frequent Nature interpretive walks, more than half of participants recognize sycamore, provided I offer some hints and prompts.

Carpinus caroliniana is an understory to mid-canopy hardwood that has been a favorite of mine since my undergraduate student days. I learned its common name as musclewood. It resembles the sinewed fibers of a muscled arm. Other common monikers include American hornbeam, blue beech, and ironwood. I photographed two individuals.

I’m a lifetime fancier of tree form oddities and curiosities.

An Attractive Fungal Resident

A twin water oak nestled aged resinous polypore brakets in its fork.

I recorded a 58-second video at the infected twin water oak

Again, death is a big part of life in our forests. The twins are diseased. Mycelia are decomposing and decaying the twin. Death is underway. Although macabre, the truth is that the end begins at the start…for all life on earth.

Answer Me This

Just ten feet from the infected twin, I spotted this galvanized nail in another water oak. Yet another story that I cannot but weakly ponder. Did it mark a survey point? Is it related to transfer of the private property to the city to create the Sanctuary? A scavenger hunt or geocaching site? Pardon the pun, but I am unable to nail the reason!

I will continue finding riddles I cannot solve.

Water Tupelo Swamp

I grew up and attended forestry school far north of the natural range of water tupelo, which may explain my fascination with this forest type. I’ve published at least a dozen Posts about my adventures in this forest type, including several in the Sanctuary. I will offer only an album of photographs without detailed narrative. These buttressed tupelo draw me. The dry season standing water and soil saturation hint at the deeper water ahead in the winter.

You don’t need much beyond my 60-second swamp tour video overview.

Strange tree forms and a haunting aspect dominate.

This is far removed from the upland hardwood forests I wandered in my youth.

I recorded a 48-second video of a massive water tupelo. I estimated its ground-level diameter as 12-14 feet!

I relish the beauty, magic, wonder, awe, and inspiration!

What is the hairy, grizzled, bearded old man of the tupelo forest!?!?

See my related Post (https://stevejonesgbh.com/2025/10/27/brief-form-post-47-strange-bearded-tupelo-trees-air-root-mysteries-and-curiosities/) for the answer!

Thoughts and Reflections

I offer these observations:

Tupelo forests are far removed from the upland hardwood forests I wandered in my youth. (Steve Jones)
Death is a big part of life in our North Alabama forests. (Steve Jones)
I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious. (Albert Einstein)

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

Note: All blog post images created & photographed by Stephen B. Jones unless otherwise noted. Please circulate images with photo credit: “©2026 Steve Jones, Great Blue Heron LLC. All Rights Reserved.”

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

Subscribe to my free weekly photo essays (like this one) at: http://eepurl.com/cKLJdL

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

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

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

Vision:

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

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

Steve’s Four Books

I wrote my books Nature Based Leadership (2016), Nature-Inspired Learning and Leading (2017), Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits: Stories of Passion for Place and Everyday Nature (2019; co-authored with Dr. Jennifer Wilhoit), and Dutton Land & Cattle: A Land Legacy Story (2023) 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. All four of my books present compilations of personal experiences expressing my deep passion for Nature. All four books offer observations and reflections on my relationship with the natural world… and the broader implications for society. Order any from your local indie bookstore, or find them on IndieBound or other online sources such as Amazon and LifeRich.

I began writing books and Posts for several reasons:

I love hiking and exploring Nature
I see images I want to (and do) capture with my trusty iPhone camera
I enjoy explaining those images — an educator at heart
I don’t play golf!
I do love writing — it’s the hobby I never needed when my career consumed me
Judy suggested my writing is in large measure my legacy to our two kids, our five 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

They’re back — Sandhill Cranes Return to Alabama’s Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge!

January 27, 2026/in Updates /by Steve Jones

I visited the Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge Visitors Center on December 19, 2025, my first venture since the winter cranes returned a month prior. I parked in the Center’s lot within 30 minutes of leaving my driveway. Think of it…a world-class wildlife and Nature destination just 20 miles to the WSW. My heart-and-soul bond with these magnificent birds rekindles when I hear the clamorous bugles, rattles, and croaks of 10-15,000 sandhill cranes celebrating their winter feeding and trumpeting their social frenzy in our southern climes.

Cycle fractals define so much in Nature: hydrologic, carbon, nitrogen, food, and life cycles. The same for the rhythms of seasonal, nutrient, migratory, and reproductive pulses, as well as our human birth, youth, maturation, reproduction, child-rearing, aging, sowing seeds, leaving memories, and saying goodbye continuum. Sandhill cranes commonly live 20-40 years. I first witnessed the winter Wheeler cranes 30 years ago (1995). Most of the cranes I saw on December 19, 2025, hatched since then, and yet the teeming flocks seemed unchanged. Such is the beauty, magic, wonder, awe, and inspiration of cycle, rhythm, and pulse fractals.

Reacquainting with the Cranes

Straight down the slope from the Center display and museum building, thousands of cranes crowded the marsh, pecking and scratching for food, cavorting, courting, leaping, communicating, fussing, and likely just plain extolling the glories of their blessed existence on God’s Green Earth. Every day that I visit from Thanksgiving to mid-February reveals carbon copy enthusiasm. I am sure, however, that their life is not so routine and simple. There are predators: coyotes, foxes, gators, snapping turtles, human hunters, and eagles. And hazards: automobiles, biting winds, arctic chills, and flooding winter rains. Surely the marauding cranes eventually deplete a mid-December marshland spot rich with seeds, roots, worms, and other invertebrate treats. For the moment, I observed a morning without need or threat. All was well…with the flocks and with me.

The cranes tell their tale far better than I. This 58-second video expresses their joy and jubilation with the great crane cycle of life!

I retreated the marsh-side, woods-edge observation point to walk the wooded trail to the observation building. Across my many decades of reveling in Nature, I have a storehouse of precious memories. Favorite places, experiences, and even some accomplishments. Listening to the cranes, I mused, what are among my noteworthy auditory memories?

I forced myself to make a list. Number one jumped forward, rising above all others. The unrestrained belly laughter of our infant kids and grandkids…so incredibly magnificent, and oh so ephemeral. Like a woodland spring wildflower, the time of infant and toddler contagious and limitless convulsive chortling is brief. We cycle past it. The memories remain, and resurface when we hear another’s child, bringing mist to our eyes as we remember that our son is 49 (1/25/77) and two of our grandkids are graduating high school in May. As I draft this text on the first day of 2026, I am reminded: To every thing there is a season.

Ecclesiastes (3: 1-8 KJV):

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;

A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

Less sentimental, a second sound without contest is the great music of over-wintering sandhill cranes. A spring morning songbird chorus is among the top ten. When we lived further north, nothing surpassed the first geese migrating south in the fall…or north in the spring. Aldo Leopold said of Sand County Wisconsin geese:

One swallow does not make a summer, but one skein of geese, cleaving the murk of a March thaw, is the spring… A March morning is only as drab as he who walks in it without a glance skyward, ear cocked for geese.

A pack of coyotes deep in the night ranks high. I have never first-hand heard a wolf pack, yet I am sure it would be a contender. Not all grand sounds are of animal origin. Among them are rain on a tin roof. A gurgling stream. A soft summer breeze through leafy tree crowns. Distant thunder promising rain during a summer dry period.

Other sounds I love include squeaky snow underfoot at sub-zero temperatures. Muted blizzard gales through Alaska spruce. Oregon coastal waves blasting the rocky shore. The list is long. During my 20s and 30s, I ran distance recreationally and competitively, logging miles mostly pre-dawn to avoid stealing time from our young family. Many fellow runners trained listening to music. I loved Nature’s orchestral accompaniment.

I recorded this 59-second video along the trail to the observation building.

The observation building nearby brings the cranes indoors, where viewers are invisible to the birds. Microphones pipe in their raucous calls. A perfect day to offer bird images inverted in the water…and to encourage deeper mental reflections on having such a marvel within reach of where I am fortunate enough to live. I recall decades ago visiting Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge in Olympia, Washington. The Nisqually River Delta empties into the Puget Sound. Judy and I loved walking the miles of boardwalk, watching the tremendous tidal surge that rents the delta twice daily. I would love to return to spend a day, but it’s on the other side of the country. It’s not 30 minutes from my garage door to the Nisqually entrance. I will likely not visit again, yet I may check the internet for a video refresher. [Okay, I just watched a seven-minute mini-documentary — a nice break!]

I spotted one whooping crane near the opposite woods edge, an observation that one of the birders with a long lens verified. The cranes in this frame are in constant motion, a parallel to our individual human existence. We are in constant motion, but is it purposed movement?

The cranes are purpose driven. There is never a dull moment on the marshland.

I recorded this 59-second video of the clangorous cranes.

Leopold penned Marshland Elegy in A Sand County Almanac:

Our appreciation of the crane grows with the slow unraveling of earthly history. His tribe, we now know, stems out of the remote Eocene. The other members of the fauna in which he originated are long since entombed within the hills. When we hear his calls we hear no mere bird. We hear the trumpet in the orchestra of evolution. He is the symbol of our untamable past, of that incredible sweep of millennia which underlies and conditions the daily affairs of birds and men.

Leopold’s elegy arose from his concern that the days of viable crane marshes were at risk, perhaps already having crossed a threshold beyond recovery:

The sadness discernible in some marshes arises, perhaps, from their once having harbored cranes. Now they stand humbled, adrift in history.

Such, thank God, is not a sadness at our Wheeler NWR!

Cypress Pond Bonus!

Cranes headline Wheeler’s winter show, but the cypress pond near the Center always beckons this old forester. Slanting shadows, clean lines, tall stems, and needle-carpeted forest floor stir my sylvan soul.

I recorded this 60-second video along the boardwalk.

Cypress draws my eye skyward, where the columnar crowns respect each other’s space. The individual trees don’t touch. The branches are not interlaced. The technical term for the tendency to abide by no touching is crown shyness.

I recorded this 59-second crown shyness video.

These grand birds, with their prehistoric caricature, star in the WNWR winter show, but I consider the cypress pond as a year-long feature act, even though relegated to the sidelines during the annual crane Super-bird Bowl!

Reflecting on the cranes, I think of the sadness not of their demise, but of their seasonal departure by the end of February for their summer breeding grounds. I’ll miss them, but upon reflection I reject the notion of sadness. Instead, I embrace the notion that the cranes, in effect, are departing to a seasonally better place. This morning (January 4, 2026), we sang I’ll Fly Away at church:

Some glad morning when this life is o’er
I’ll fly away
To a home on God’s celestial shore
I’ll fly away (I’ll fly away)

Just a few more weary days and then
I’ll fly away
To a land where joy shall never end
I’ll fly away (I’ll fly away)

The cranes celebrate their annual return North To a land where joy shall never end…at least until next autumn, when chilling winds signal a migratory departure to Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge.

Thoughts and Reflections

I offer these observations:

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven. (Ecclesiastes)
He [the sandhill crane] is the symbol of our untamable past, of that incredible sweep of millennia which underlies and conditions the daily affairs of birds and men. (Aldo Leopold, Marshland Elegy)
The cranes celebrate their annual return North to a land where joy shall never end…at least until next autumn, when chilling winds signal a migratory departure to Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge. (Steve Jones)

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

Note: All blog post images created & photographed by Stephen B. Jones unless otherwise noted. Please circulate images with photo credit: “©2026 Steve Jones, Great Blue Heron LLC. All Rights Reserved.”

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

Subscribe to my free weekly photo essays (like this one) at: http://eepurl.com/cKLJdL

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

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

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

Vision:

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

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

Steve’s Four Books

I wrote my books Nature Based Leadership (2016), Nature-Inspired Learning and Leading (2017), Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits: Stories of Passion for Place and Everyday Nature (2019; co-authored with Dr. Jennifer Wilhoit), and Dutton Land & Cattle: A Land Legacy Story (2023) 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. All four of my books present compilations of personal experiences expressing my deep passion for Nature. All four books offer observations and reflections on my relationship with the natural world… and the broader implications for society. Order any from your local indie bookstore, or find them on IndieBound or other online sources such as Amazon and LifeRich.

I began writing books and Posts for several reasons:

I love hiking and exploring Nature
I see images I want to (and do) capture with my trusty iPhone camera
I enjoy explaining those images — an educator at heart
I don’t play golf!
I do love writing — it’s the hobby I never needed when my career consumed me
Judy suggested my writing is in large measure my legacy to our two kids, our five 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