I am pleased to add the 38th of my GBH Brief-Form Posts (Less than five minutes to read!) to my website. I get wordy with my routine Posts. I don’t want my enthusiasm for thoroughness and detail to discourage readers. So, I will publish these brief Posts regularly.
Grapevine Bonanza!
Alabama State Park Northwest District Naturalist Amber Coger and I hiked the Wells Memorial Trail at Monte Sano State Park on December 4, 2024. We found multiple woodland delights: massive grapevines, incredible mature puffball mushrooms, and a landscape of sinks, pits, mounds, hummocks, and hollows. The aggregate would have overwhelmed a single Great Blue Heron photo essay. Instead, I offer three distinct Brief-Form essays, this one focusing on the grapevine marvels.
The maturing second-growth hardwood forest on the upper slopes along the Sinks Trail shares its upper canopy with numerous large native grapevines. The grapevines do not climb the trees; instead, they grow vertically with the trees, clinging and hitching a ride as the tree extends vertically. Imagine grape seeds deposited by birds in the brushy bramble of a recently harvested forest among seedlings of black locust, Eastern red cedar, hickories, oaks, and others. The grapevines wrap their tendrils among the leafy leaders of the trees reaching year-by-year heavenward, ensuring their position high in the forest canopy 90 years hence.
I recorded this 53-second video at the first tangle we encountered on the middle-upper slope a quarter mile below the Bikers Pavillion.
This vine produced a peculiar curlicue, a mirthful expression 40 feet above the ground. The Sinks Trail is well used by hikers, joggers, and bikers, most too consumed by through-passing to notice, much less pay attention to, the wonders around and above them. As Thoreau observed, and I paraphrase, I have no time to be in a hurry. Life is too short to miss the marvels in front of my nose!
One of my roles as a senior educator, old forester, and mentor to less seasoned Nature interpreters is to open their eyes to the Nature magic that lies hidden in plain sight. I am confident that Amber sees the delights, is intent upon understanding the wonder, and is dedicated to interpreting the mysteries to stir imagination and appreciation among state park visitors, young and old.
This 58-second video presents another cluster of massive vines within a few hundred feet of the first.
Unlike the oak that supports it, this six-inch diameter grapevine serves only as conduit for transporting the stuff of life (water and nutrients) up from the roots and carbohydates down to the roots.
I’ve puzzled for years over the tree/vine relationship. Clearly the vine benefits by positioning its foliar crown in the upper reaches where, for the life of the tree, the vine accesses full sunlight. Is there a commensurate advantage to the tree? I shall continue to explore the question.
Closing
I accept the challenge of distilling these Brief-Form Posts into a single distinct reflection, a task far more elusive than assembling a dozen pithy statements. Henry David Thoreau captured the sentiment I felt as we explored the grapevine tangles:
I have no time to be in a hurry.
Nature’s special treats await our discovery, our understanding, and our interpretation!
https://stevejonesgbh.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/IMG_5637.jpg-12.4.24-Wells-Mem-Trail-Amber-at-Grape.webp16241356Steve Joneshttp://stevejonesgbh.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/gbhweblogo.pngSteve Jones2024-12-13 07:16:152024-12-13 07:25:22Brief-Form Post #38: Tangles, Loops, and Vines in the Hardwood Canopy on Monte Sano
On October 13, 2024, my new right knee (August 20, 2024) and I ambled along the moderate Rainbolt Trail on Madison, Alabama’s Rainbow Mountain Nature Preserve, where I observed the early signs of the coming winter.
Judy and I made 13 interstate moves across our five+ decades of married and professional life. We love autumn, especially where it comes with a flourish with vivid colors, persistent intrusions of cold winds, and harsh signals of what lies ahead. Autumn here in northern Alabama does not make bold statements. It languishes as the heat of summer slowly yields to cooler nights. Already winter has imposed itself where we lived in Fairbanks, Alaska from 2004 to 2008. The two photos below are still shots from the University of Alaska Fairbanks webcam 10/16/24 at 4:00 AM and 10/20 at 8:30 AM. A Winter Storm Warning for 6-9 additional inches is in place for tonight (10/20) through 10/22. During our Alaska tenure, a White Halloween was as certain as a Hallmark White Christmas! As of October 23, Fairbanks had recorded 15″ of snow in October.
The hickory understory leaves along Rainbolt Trail seemed in no rush to show their autumn colors. They were simply wearing out…senescing with brown leaf spots and green fading to yellow.
Understory green ash likewise showed signs of yielding to the inevitable end of the growing season. There will be no bold announcements this year, no curtain call with trumpets and spectacular hues. Last year (2023) was exceptional for our deep south location. I think this year’s lackluster seasonal transition here in north-central Alabama is weather related. I measured less than an inch of rain this August; a total of three inches in September in two episodes; so far (as of 10/20) in October not a drop with an extended forecast for extremely dry.
Some late season wildflowers still bloomed in the trailhead cul-de-sac road shoulder. These are not announcing fall…instead, they state summer’s insistence upon continuing her hold. Partridge pea is finding enough soil moisture to produce its yellow flowers and delicate pinnately compound leaves.
Camphorweed displays as though the first freeze is not lurking in the predawn hours behind a near-term cold frontal passage.
Pokeberry is taking no chances of being ill-prepared for the winter weather that will eventually arrive. Her berries have ripened. Seeds are ready for harvest and dissemination by birds.
Goldenrod continues to attract pollinators.
I should not be so judgemental. Even without fall rains and bursts of colors, I eagerly await our extended November through mid-April season, which I refuse to term as winter. Winter is what we experienced in Alaska, New York, New Hampshire, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. This same period of time in northern Alabama I consider not as winter, but as a fall that gradually transitions to spring, with a few winter-like days thrown in for good measure.
Thoughts and Reflections
I offer these observations:
Winter in northern Alabama is a fall that gradually transitions to spring, with a few winter-like days thrown in for good measure.
No twelve-month period repeats itself exactly as the year prior, the reason we express climate in terms of long-term averages.
Every woodland saunter tells you only the truths and secrets of that single outing, and reveals little about what we can expect a year hence.
Inhale and absorb Nature’s elixir. May Nature Inspire, Inform, and Reward you!
Another Note: I am available for Nature-Inspired Speaking, Writing, and Consulting — contact me at steve.jones.0524@gmail.com
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 (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
https://stevejonesgbh.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/IMG_4960.jpg-10.13.24-Rainbolt-Trail-Senescing-Hickory-Leaves-scaled.webp25601920Steve Joneshttp://stevejonesgbh.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/gbhweblogo.pngSteve Jones2024-12-10 09:29:342024-12-11 05:45:19Hints of Autumn in Mid-October along the Rainbolt Trail at Madison AL's Rainbow Mountain Nature Preserve
On October 6, 2024, a little longer than six weeks since my total right knee replacement surgery, I ventured to Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge to gently explore Buckeye Impoundment, Blackwell Swamp, and Rockhouse Bottom by automobile and dirt road strolling. Not yet ready for woodland trail wandering, I welcomed the fresh air, seasonal transition signs, and diverse meadow, swamp, and Tennessee River.
Because the three ecological units are too much to stuff into a single photo essay, Buckeye Impoundment will serve as Part One of my October 6 exploration.
Buckeye Impoundment
On an August 2023 aerial tour, the impoundment appears as a mosaic of agricultural fields, meadows, and marsh vegetation. On the recent on-the-ground visit I parked within the forest where the east/west HGH dirt road emerges from the east. I walked south to about the edge of the photograph.
I photographed the winter-flooded impoundment on January 6, 2020, when the flooded wetlands attracts waterfowl vacationing from frozen northlands.
The impoundment is a complex and diverse ecosystem that ebbs, flows, and fluxes with the Corps of Engineers-controlled flooding. Marshland water remained in spite of an extended late summer dry period. Although beyond my roadside reach, the meadow vegetation is lush. The forest edge shows no sign of coloring.
I recorded this 60-second video before exiting into the impoundment:
I left the car and the forest shade behind. Bright sun greeted me; the woodland mosquitoes remained behind.
Native vegetation along the road shows the signature of seasonal senscence and dryness. Small birds, grasshoppers, and dragon flies foraged among the drying grasses and herbs.
Some areas seemed oddly wet after such an extended period of limited rainfall.
I soon discovered that the entire impoundment has water control devices that are already impeding natural drainage.
Late in the season, an evening primrose is still flowering at the edge of this marshy area.
I recorded this 60-second video of marsh, primrose, and background crows calling:
Red-centered hibiscus refused to release summer.
I recorded this 56-second 360-degree turn around the impoundment, magnifying one of the two spectacular hibiscus flowers:
I found the diverse herbs fascinating, but with knees still too unstable to allow botanizing beyond the road edge, I settled for photos, videos, and a few generalizations. Aldo Leopold, in my view the nation’s premier conservation philosopher, hinted at my surgery-hobbled wanderings. I covet digging deeply into the plants, communities, and ecosystems I explore. I lean toward perusing the things of Nature…peruse, which contrary to common view of the term, means to study deeply.
Our ability to perceive quality in nature begins, as in art, with the pretty. It expands through successive stages of the beautiful to values as yet uncaptured by language.
The photos I captured do not express beauty so much as a diverse and rich ecosystem I am only superficially appreciating from afar.
A lonely fire ant hill stood at the road edge. I pondered the summer exposure of its location in baking sun. Imagine a powerful July thunderstorm rushing across the impoundment with rain pelting, lightning flashing, and winds howling. Or picture the absolute and isolated loneliness during the dormant months when the Corps raises the impoundment water level to leave a thin north/south strip of gravel road surface between twin lakes of waterfowl habitat.
I wonder do the raccoons that just several weeks before deposited persimmon-laden stools frequent the road surface in winter?
Does the coyote that also fed heartily on Diospyros virginiana fruit venture into the winter impoundment? Perhaps a better question is what creature eats the seeds that pass trough raccoon and coyote?
The dead red swamp crawfish on the gravel hints at another element of the impundment foodchain. I observed but was unable to photograph both a great blue heron and great white egrets, delighted consumers of raw crayfish morsels.
Suffice it to say that Buckeye Impoundment is worthy of ecological study far deeper than I was capable of performing in early October. I’d like to return with knees rehabilitated in the company of a wetand ecologists, herbaceous botanists, and other related specialists. My terrestrial ecology and forestry expertise does not serve me well in the impoundment setting, even when my knees are well!
Regardless, I found delight in consuming the observable ecological and aesthetic morsels on my knee-hobbled outing. Healing progress is palpable…day by day…week by week. I am a unabashed enthusiast for Nature-Buoyed Aging and Healing, and a physical therapy zealot. A former athlete, I believe that every effort warrants training equivalent to prepping for the next race, game, match, etc. Healing is reward sufficient to the effort.
Thoughts and Reflections
I offer these observations:
Our ability to perceive quality in nature begins, as in art, with the pretty. It expands through successive stages of the beautiful to values as yet uncaptured by language. (Aldo Leopold)
A novice at wetlands ecology, I’ve learned enough to inform me that I know nothing!
A former athlete, I believe that every effort warrants training equivalent to prepping for the next race, game, match, etc. Healing is reward sufficient to the effort.
Inhale and absorb Nature’s elixir. May Nature Inspire, Inform, and Reward you!
Another Note: I am available for Nature-Inspired Speaking, Writing, and Consulting — contact me at steve.jones.0524@gmail.com
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 (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
Photo from my August 2023 aerial observation.
https://stevejonesgbh.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/IMG_4876.jpg-10.6.24-Buckeye-Impoundment.jpg20161512Steve Joneshttp://stevejonesgbh.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/gbhweblogo.pngSteve Jones2024-12-05 09:43:442024-12-05 09:43:44Buckeye Impoundment in Early October on the Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge (Part One)
On Sunday, October 13, 2024, I “co-led” a University of Alabama in Huntsville Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) hike on the Rainbow Mountain Nature Preserve in Madison, Alabama. I used the term co-led liberally. I co-chair the OLLI Member Interest Group for hiking and Nature Walks. Just 7.5 weeks past my total right knee replacement surgery, this was my first attempt at a hilly, rocky, and uneven trail designated as moderately difficult. I lagged far behind, returned to the trailhead at the halfway point, and relished this new recovery benchmark!
The fifteen fellow hikers enjoyed the gorgeous weather, wished me well, and hoped I would soon reach the target of again fully participating.
We began at the Rainbolt Trail, a new one-half mile section that meanders approximately 225 feet vertical to the Rainbow Loop Trail atop Rainbow Mountain. I made it nearly to Rainbow Loop. The Rainbolt moniker dates to the original resident, Mr. Rainbolt, his name long since simplified (or bastardized) to Rainbow. Eastern Red Cedar, a common pioneer species, dominates the Preserve’s harsher, drier sites.
The Hardscrabbled Forest
I puzzled over why Mr. Rainbolt found attraction to this rugged 350-foot monadnock of broken limestone, shallow soils, and mixed forest in the midst of an otherwise rich landscape of verdant valley, fertile farmland, and productive forest. Except for the 147-acre Rainbow Mountain Nature Preserve the surrounding landscape has converted to an expanse of residential and commercial development. The southwest-facing hillside that the Rainbolt Trail ascends is particularly harsh, seasonally parched, and covered by scrubby second- and third-growth forest. Don’t look for towering hardwoods, excepting a few big fellows like the leaning oak below left and an occasional respectable shagbark hickory (right).
My 59-second video highlighting the scrubby forest:
The trail wanders along limestone ledges and scattered pole-size hardwoods and cedars. Forget about deep shade, cool hollows, and refreshing breezes. Even with most leaves still clinging to the overstory, ample sunshine penetrates to the forest floor. Tree height is the single best indicator of forest site quality, a surrogate for soil moistire, available nutrients, and microclimate.
High closed canopies typify rich sites. The dead oak snag at left stands under a large opening. In nearby riparian forests such attrited openings fill rapidly. The same snag rises at left from a rock ledge bulwark. Contrast the apparent depth and extent of soil here to the deep expansive soils in the nearby Tennessee River flood plain. The perpetual process of life and death in the respective forest is integral to both sites, but the pace correlates with fertility.
Decay and decomposition perpetuate the carbon cycle, the essentual flow of mass and energy within the forest. Within the Rainbow Mounatain Nature Preserve’s 147 acres, a map of soil site quality, productivity, and the pace of carbon cycling would vary from a low on the W/SW-facing slope where the Rainbolt Trail ascends to the concave lower slope where Rainbow Spring descends to the E/SE. I focused my PhD dissertation on soil-site relationships in the Allegheny hardwood forests of NW PA and SW NY nearly 40 years ago. I am amazed how applicable the findings are across the eastern US mid-lattitudes.
The Rainbolt Trail consistently tells the tale of poor forest productivity.
Here is another 59-second scrub forest video:
The harsh conditions (heat, drought, shallow soils, and westerly wind exposure) do not favor large boles and tall tree growth. A shattered 15-inch-diameter red oak snag and a nearby fallen dead oak of similar size bear testament.
In such a forest, understory stems are often the same age as the main canopy. This three-inch-diameter sapling, deeply hollowed by rot, stood for decades along what a year ago became the new trail. I neglected to examine its wood to identify species. Well, not so much neglected but failed to bring along my pocket knife.
Although I spotted no other evidence of fire history, this charred cedar told the tale of a decades-old event when a westerly wind sent an escaped brush fire upslope, consuming the downed cedar and other brushy debris. When I next traverse the trail I will look for other signs of past burning.
The Preserve has suffered the incidental and intentional abuses of 200 years of human action as the city of Madison slowly encroached what would become the Preserve.
Limestone Mountain Bones
Just as Balance Rock serves as a natural landmark near the Preserve summit, Alligator Rock fulfils the same purpose on Rainbolt Trail, although less prominently and certainly less spectacularly.
See my 49-second video of Alligator Rock:
Perhaps because my recovery-impaired mobility forced me to pay more attention to nuances of my passage, I noticed a stone visage that no one else has mentioned. I see a sphinx-face or a ram’s head with prominent eye sockets and brows, and a strong collar and powerful neck. Was this a fleeting paranormal wisp that took form beyond just my recovery-induced stress of wandering alone on the trail?!
Further below as I descended I saw a bleached catlle skull trailside! Or maybe it’s a piece of weathered limestone. Now that my knees are much better healed, it’s time to retrace the route and test whether the figments (and fragments) remain.
And then there appeared ancient ribbed carcasses. Did Mr. Rainbolt herd poor-site cattle who mineralized on these hardscrabbled, nutrient-poor, moisture-stressed hillside? There are strange tales to be told and relived on the Rainbolt Trail.
I am a natural resource scientist, securing my PhD in 1987. Over the course of my academic career, I competed successfully for a quarter of a billion dollars in grants and contracts. As Chancellor of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, I led America’s Arctic University’s 3,500 faculty and staff. As Chair of the Governing Board of the University of the Arctic, I led a consortium of 90 high-latitude colleges and universities enrolling more that 700,000 students. As I look back across a fulfilling higher education career, I attribute much of my meager success to good humor, vivid imagination, and not taking myself too seriously, hence the ram’s head, bleached skull, and ribbed carcasses!
Einstein nailed it:
I am enough of the artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.
Thoughts and Reflections
I offer these observations:
The Preserve has suffered the incidental and intentional abuses of 200 years of human action as the city of Madison slowly encroached on what would become the Preserve.
Except for the 147-acre Rainbow Mountain Nature Preserve, the surrounding landscape has converted to an expanse of residential and commercial development.
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: Unless otherwise noted, all blog post images are created & photographeerved.”
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 (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
My Introduction to the Little Mountain Forest School and Its Undergirding Philosophy
On October 30, 2024, at the invitation of Beth Barry and Sarah Callaway, co-founders and directors, I enjoyed an orientation visit to the Little Mountain Forest School. I chatted individually with Sarah and Beth as staff-led breakout groups of the 23 students went through hands-on instruction and exploration near the Overlook at Monte Sano State Park. Having written exhaustively about the continuous cycle of life and carbon in forests, I listened with glee to the youngsters talking about decomposition. What could be a better learning laboratory than a 90-year-old hardwood forest?
Albert Einstein would have endorsed the notion of an outdoor school, having observed:
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
The LMFS philosophy is apparent and in concert’s with Einstein’s.
[Image from the LMFS website]
I am a lifetime advocate of outdoor recreation, education, and learning…for people of all ages. Environmental education, including my undergraduate forestry studies, is a contact sport, requiring hands-on, dirty-kneed examination and experience. As President of Antioch University New England, I had the pleasure of knowing and learning from Dr. David Sobel, a renowned American educator and academic, responsible for developing the philosophy of place-based education. He has written extensively on the topic in books and numerous articles. He was a Core Faculty member and Director of Certificate Programs at AUNE. I experienced David conducting a workshop for teachers along the windy shore of Lake Champlain in Vermont. He is a master of his craft. Beth and Sarah arranged for David to visit with them as they launched LMFS. They’ve learned from the best
A few quotes from David evidence that his wisdom is germane and timeless:
You can’t bounce off the walls if there are no walls: outdoor schools make kids happier—and smarter.
We tiptoed the tops of beaver dams, hopped hummocks, went wading, looked at spring flowers, tried to catch a snake, got lost and found. How fine it was to move at a meandery, child’s pace.
What’s important is that children have an opportunity to bond with the natural world, to learn to love it and feel comfortable in it, before being asked to heal its wounds.
[Image from the LMFS website]
Richard Louv is a journalist and author of ten books, including Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder, The Nature Principle, and Vitamin N. Translated into twenty languages, his books have helped launch an international movement to connect children, families, and communities to nature. LMFS exemplifies the tenets of Louv’s philosophy of engaging children in Nature. Richard’s quotes are priceless and his advice more applicable now than ever before:
We cannot protect something we do not love, we cannot love what we do not know, and we cannot know what we do not see. Or hear. Or sense.
Time in nature is not leisure time; it’s an essential investment in our chidlren’s health (and also, by the way, in our own).
Nature-deficit disorder describes the human costs of alienation from nature, among them: diminished use of the senses, attention difficulties, and higher rates of physical and emotional illnesses. The disorder can be detected in individuals, families, and communities.
Every child needs nature. Not just the ones with parents who appreciate nature. Not only those of a certain economic class or culture or set of abilities. Every child.
Reconnection to the natural world is fundamental to human health, well-being, spirit, and survival.
Nature is imperfectly perfect, filled with loose parts and possibilities, with mud and dust, nettles and sky, transcendent hands-on moments and skinned knees.
[Image from the LMFS website]
The Nature of My Visit
This portion of the photo essay will present more like one of my routine woods-wanderings. Keep in mind that I offer it within the context of LMFS, an entity new to me, yet deeply rooted in a philosophy and practice that I have promoted and embraced intellectually for years. I accepted Sarah and Beth’s invitation to serve on the LMFS Board after our morning interactions. Watch for subsequent photo essays as I engage more deeply.
Allow me to introduce my on-site wanderings within the forest where LMFS conducted its morning learning adventures on October 30. Before my 9:15 AM “appointment,” I visited with an old friend, an ancient hollow chestnut oak sentry standing just south of the Overlook along the trail that runs along the plateau edge. The view at left below looks north to the Overlook parking area. The gaping hollow faces the trail.
I recorded this short video of the tree. Listen carefully to background audio of autumn breezes and happy LMFS students!
The hollow offers a line of sight through the tree. Eventually, physics will topple this State Park denizen. An arborist rule of thumb is that a tree is at precarious risk of falling when the diameter of wood rind is less than one-third the diameter of the tree. I will not be surprised if on some future visit, I find the chestnut oak shattered, its carcas blocking the path, decomposing, recycling its essence into the soil.
The autumn-yellow leaves of a sasafras waved in the breeze above the students as they discussed decomposition. How apt!
Six decades ago, when I was their age, I relished my informal learning outdoors with Mom and Dad fishing, hiking, picnicing, and camping. I did not suffer Nature Defecit Disorder or Vitamin D Defieciency, thank God!
Far too many children today aren’t as fortunate as I. It has made all the difference for me, fundamentally shaping my life and charting my career. I am grateful now for the chance to make difference for tomorrow by serving the LMFS Board.
Nature is rich with objects and opportunities for learning. Tree form oddities and curioisities fascinate me, and I believe would likewise have intrigued Albert Einstein:
The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence.
I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.
People like you and me never grow old. We never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we were born.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.
Rather than dig deeply into the many objects spiriting my own curiosity, I will end with photographs of plants, trees, leaves, and other objects that could stimulate learning and inspire curiosity for LMFS students.
Wintergreen barberry, an evergreen shrub with sharp thorns.
Carolina buckthorn.
The long arm of an oak waving to the students heading into the forest north of the area where they had gathered to explore decomposition.
My 57-second video titled Combatting Nature Deficit Disorder at Little Mountain Forest School atop Monte Sano!
A red oak, tortured and swollen with a fungal infection, a primary agent of decomposition.
A chestnut oak, hollowed by decay, backlighted by fall foliage.
Exquisite crown shape, perhaps particularly interesting on this day before halloween.
I am a champion of curioisity as a catalyst for learning. Allow me to close with additional Einstein quotes:
The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.
The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.
My all time favorite conservationist, Aldo Leopold, expressed similar sentiment:
Is education possibly a process of trading awareness for things of lesser worth?
I pledge fidelity to the wisdom of Sobel, Louv, Leopold, and Einstein in my Board service to LMFS!
Thoughts and Reflections
I offer these observations:
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better. (Albert Einstein)
You can’t bounce off the walls if there are no walls: outdoor schools make kids happier—and smarter. (David Sobel)
Nature-deficit disorder describes the human costs of alienation from nature, among them: diminished use of the senses, attention difficulties, and higher rates of physical and emotional illnesses. The disorder can be detected in individuals, families, and communities. (Richard Louv)
Inhale and absorb Nature’s elixir. May Nature Inspire, Inform, and Reward you!
I am available for Nature-Inspired Speaking, Writing, and Consulting — contact me at steve.jones.0524@gmail.com
Reminder of my Personal and Professional Purpose, Passion, and Cause
If only more of us viewed our precious environment through 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
https://stevejonesgbh.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/IMG_5211.jpg-10.30.24-Near-Overlook.jpg21001110Steve Joneshttp://stevejonesgbh.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/gbhweblogo.pngSteve Jones2024-11-21 06:56:232024-11-21 06:56:23Introducing Little Mountain Forest School
I am pleased to add the 37th of my GBH Brief-Form Posts (Less than five minutes to read!) to my website. I tend to get a bit wordy with my routine Posts. I don’t want my enthusiasm for thoroughness and detail to discourage readers. So, I will publish these brief Posts regularly.
On October 30, 2024, 69 days since my total right knee replacement surgery, I ventured solo to the Wells Memorial Trail at Alabama’s Monte Sano State Park. The difficulty is only moderate, yet following five surgeries (including triple bypass) in 16 months, my strength, endurace, and confidence are not up to par. The magnificence of the Well Memorial cove hardwood forest beckoned. I accepted…and subsequently celebrated…the test. I offer these observations, reflections, photos, and brief videos from my afternoon sauntering.
The trailhead is located at Three Benches, a confluence of several trails.
Parked at the bicycle pavillion, I descended toward Wells via the Sinks Trail. The upper slope forest carries thick ropes of grape vine; their leafy vegetation rides the tree canopy, enjoying full sunlight. People assume the grape vines climb the trees. No, the vines originate from seed or vegetative sprouts when the forest begins anew following natural disturbance, agricultural abandonment, or timber harvesting. The young vines reach skyward as the trees grow. The vine on the yellow poplar tree at right did not need to grow a stout trunk to support its wieght; the poplar did the grunt work…the heavy lifting.
My heart soared as I entered the cathedral forest. The trees tower. The changing autumn foliage presented a stained glass backdrop.
My meager words add little…and maybe even detract from…the somber grandeur of this special place.
I recorded this 59-second video along the trail through some hefty, heaven-reaching oaks and hickories:
Conservationist Aldo Leopold once said that he loves trees, then added that he is in love with pine tree. I am in love with northern red oak, the headliner in the Appalachian forests that shaped my life-passion and vocation.
The images of forest and wandering trail need no narrative.
The bird-pecked yellow poplar and its ascent to the heavens asks nothing from me, and in return gives far more than I ask.
One of the three benches and the Wells sign are the surgery-recovery benchmark I sought. I recalled my recreational competetive distance running days (competed against my prior best times) when I crossed the finish line for a marathon. In its special way, reaching the benches was a crossing of equal weight and significance.
I recorded this brief video lying on my back near the trailhead, gazing into the high canopy above me:
Ah, who could ask for more! A large yellow poplar, stunning oaks and hickories, leafy path, and autumn-yellow forest glow.
Here is my 58-second video showing the beckoning trail:
A fallen hollow oak branch served as a hickory nut snackbar.
I ascended back through the upper slope natural grape arbor, completing a notably rewarding hike, a Nature-Buoyed Aging and Healing venture.
I’m grateful that such pleasures are within reach and that I am able to once again thoroughly and delightfully experience them.
I accept the challenge of distilling these Brief-Form Posts into a single distinct reflection, a task far more elusive than assembling a dozen pithy statements. William Wordsworth captured Nature’s magic in simple beautiful verse:
Come forth into the light of things, let Nature be your teacher.
Feeling the Glow of an overdue return to Nature!
https://stevejonesgbh.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/IMG_5136.jpg-10.30.24-Down-to-Wells-Into-the-Hollow.jpg20161512Steve Joneshttp://stevejonesgbh.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/gbhweblogo.pngSteve Jones2024-11-13 08:54:202024-11-13 08:54:20Brief-Form Post #37: Autumn Mid-Day Descent to Monte Sano's Wells Memorial Trail!
On October 4, 2024, five and one-half weeks beyond my total right knee replacement surgery, I continued my recovery and reentry to Nature exploration. Judy and our two Alabama grandsons (Sam, 10, and Jack, just shy of 17) accompanied me. My appreciation for the simple pleasures of the Common in Nature grew during my forced Nature Deficit Disorder period! I was eager to absorb a dose of Nature’s elixir along the nearby Bradford Creek Greenway, a flat paved surface appropriate for this stage of my recovery.
Innumerable times, I’ve introduced adults and kids to the compound, fierce-looking thorns of our native honey locust trees. I seldom include Latin names in these photo essays, yet some scientific monikers, like Gledistia triacanthos, are irresistible! Somehow the sweet, sugary resonance of honey locust belies its fanged thorns waiting to prick and puncture the unwary woods-rambler.
Familiarity breeds contempt, an apt adage. Take a closer look, then back away from the forked spikes. Were I inclined to sate my curiosity, I would dive into an internet rabbit hole to determine the one or many evolutionary impetuses for evolving the loathsome appedages. Perhaps on a day when the fall weather is not so perfect as today’s.
I recorded this video at our prickly friend.
This tupelo tree with its gnarly roots is one I visit frequently. Never have I seen it with such little water. I measured just 0.70″ of rain in August; a little over 3.00″ in September; and just 0.72″ in October. Bradford Creek is demonstrating the serious rainfall deficit.
A few deeper channels hold water sufficient to retain all manner of stream life.
Two and one-half miles south of the Heritage School trailhead, some flow, albeit painfully slow, persists.
My brief video from the south-end bridge speaks softly of our persistent drought:
Nothing in Nature is static. Since my prior visit, an easterly wind pushed a trailside 18-inch diameter shagbark hickory past its critical strength threshold. Toppled, the tree reveals its rotted and weakened east-facing trunk. In so many ways, Nature offers rudimentary lessons in applied physics.
There is no result in nature without a cause; understand the cause and you will have no need of the experiment. (Leonardo da Vinci)
The species’ bark is uniquely distinctive, whether standing vertical or recently resting supine.
Here is my 53-second fallen shagbark hickory video:
The standing tree evidenced the basal rot. Now fallen, the rotten-to-the-core stump leads me to wonder how it stood at all. The tree was not able to withstand the wind. Trees so close to the disturbances of installing the sewer line and constructing and maintaining the greenway sustain injuries that open infection courts for pathogens and decay fungi. Their days are numbered.
No one in our region could complain about an absence of October sunshine.
I recorded the call of a mockingbird celebrating the fine day in the canopy of a cedar tree between the greenway and Bradford Creek.
I’m sure you’ve heard people complaing about hayfever instigated by goldenrod pollen. They are mistaken. Goldenrod pollen is heavy and sticky, the plant relying on insects for pollination. Ragweed is the principal late summer and early fall hayfever culprit.
This ailanthus webworm moth is one of goldenrod’s many pollinators.
Blue mistflower also provided color along the greenway.
Cardinal flower also brightened my return to Nature.
Straw-colored flatsedge carries an apt moniker.
Walking or biking along Bradford Creek occasionally rewards me with a snake sighting, most often a gray ratsnake. Unfortunately, a passerby decided to crush the head of this small copperhead, and leave it on the pavement. In every matter concerning informed and responsible Earth Stewardship, ignorance can be an overwhelming obstacle.
Until my final breath, I will hold fast to my retirment 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.
Thoughts and Reflections
I offer these observations:
A short return to Nature five weeks following surgery pays dividends, amplifying and accelerating physical and mental healing!
There is no result in nature without a cause; understand the cause and you will have no need of the experiment. (Leonardo da Vinci)
The older I get, the more I don’t know.
Inhale and absorb Nature’s elixir. May Nature Inspire, Inform, and Reward you!
And Third: I am available for Nature-Inspired Speaking, Writing, and Consulting — contact me at steve.jones.0524@gmail.com
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 (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
https://stevejonesgbh.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/IMG_4822.jpg-10.4.24-Creek-at-BCGW.jpg20161512Steve Joneshttp://stevejonesgbh.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/gbhweblogo.pngSteve Jones2024-11-06 14:06:522024-11-06 14:06:52An Early Fall Exploration along Madison, Alabama's Bradford Creek Greenway!
On Friday, August 9, 2024, I stopped by Huntsville, Alabama’s Indian Creek Greenway to trek a couple of miles to capture images of mid-summer flowers, trees, seasonal breezes, and the mood of Indian Creek in the late afternoon shade. I wanted to inhale Nature’s summer essence before my total right knee replacement on August 20. I had my left knee replaced on January 23, 2024. I know what to expect. I will be out of my woodland sauntering mode until mid-October when I hope to be on track for the kind of mobility I’ve missed for years! [Note: I’m putting the final touches on this photo essay just a couple of hours after hiking (slowly and cautiously) the one-half-mile Rainbolt Trail on the Rainbow Mountain Nature Preserve in Madison, Alabama on October 13, 2024!]
I entered the greenway at 2:30 PM and enjoyed a drier airmass and lower temperatures. There was no need to deal with the more typical hot, hazy, and humid days of mid-August!
Like so many of our greenways, this one occupies a sewer line right-of-way running through an active flood plain, the overflow triggered several times a year by drenching thunderstorms and prolonged winter and spring rains. The stream ran at a routine summertime flow as I walked along the trail and occasionally penetrated to creekside. I’ll report on my creek-proximate wanderings in a complementary photo essay.
I recorded this 59-second video a few hundred yards from the southern end of the greenway. I began the video with a magnificent green ash tree rising from the forest edge. I remind readers that these urban flood plains are naturally fertile with deep soils routinely refreshed with sediment- and nutrient-laden flood waters. The ash and other riparian forest neighbors express site quality with their height, this ash reaching at least 100 feet above the forest floor.
Here is a still photograph of the subject green ash tree. Well, I must admit that this a screen shot from the video. At the top edge of the photo, leaning in from the opposite greenway edge, a black walnut crown is attempting to close the aerial tunnel over the pedestrian and biking path.
When an old forester (BS in Forestry, 1973) seeks a woodland saunter as he returns home from an OLLI UAH Board meeting, can anyone deny him the joy of focusing a video or two on special trees! I found the mostly sunny skies mesmerizing above the greenway and its trailside forests. This time, I centered the 57-second video around a large shagbark hickory.
There are things I cannot resist, of which one is the complex bark of shagbark hickory, which like the song of a Carolina chickadee says its name.
I am a relentless fan of the writings of Aldo Leopold, America’s consummate conservationist and father of North American wildlife biology. He observed:
Our ability to perceive quality in nature begins, as in art, with the pretty. It expands through successive stages of the beautiful to values as yet uncaptured by language.
Shagbark hickory is a work of art, a consequence of timeless evolution. It’s the only tree of our southern hardwood forests with overlapping plated bark. To what advantage evolutionarily, I ponder? I’ve heard that various woodland bats find shelter under the plates. Do the bats deter foliar-consuming insects, or gobble stem-boring weevils or nut pests? I don’t know the answer, nor did a quick internet query yield an explanation. Leonardo da Vinci may be one of the top five scientific minds of the past 1,000 years. I base my observation that the tree’s bark owes its peculiar nature to evolution on a simple da Vinci quote:
There is no result in nature without a cause; understand the cause and you will have no need of the experiment.
Those in local, state, regional, and national circles of Nature enthusiasts often lament of a species that it is an alien, an invasive, a pest, and other derogatory monikers. Chinese yam is one such interloper growing in profusion at this section of the greenway edge.
An NC State Cooperative Extension online source stated:
Chinese Yam was introduced here as early as the 19th century for culinary and cultural uses and is now considered an invasive plant species in several states. It has spread from Louisiana to Vermont and can form dense masses of vines that cover and kill native vegetation, including trees, within a variety of moist, disturbed habitats. It spreads by seed, tubers and by the small tubers in leaf axils.
I marveled at the small branch tubers, recalling that they are edible. While I do abhor widespread, truly invasive ecosystem-threatening alien plants like Chinese privet and kudzu, I do not get exorcised by Chinese yam. Instead I shall view it as Earth-native and not particularly worthy of calling out the National Guard.
I recorded this 57-second Chinese yam video:
Here is a screenshot of two leaf axil tubers.
Giant ragweed is an impressive plant native. The cluster below has already reached eight feet. An online source spoke of it in ways seeming unkind:
This is an annual herb usually growing up to 2 m (6 ft 7 in) tall, but known to reach over 6 m (20 ft) in rich, moist soils. The tough stems have woody bases and are branching or unbranched. Most leaves are oppositely arranged. The blades are variable in shape, sometimes palmate with five lobes, and often with toothed edges. The largest can be over 25 cm (9.8 in) long by 20 cm (7.9 in) wide. They are borne on petioles several centimeters long. They are glandular and rough in texture.
Ragweed pollen is a common offensive allergen. The plant is a serious agricultural nuisance and a tough weed to control. That it is a native doesn’t make the farmer dealing with it more accepting nor less aggravated.
I’ve been a lifetime proponent of spring ephemeral wildflowers, the woodland beauties that populate the forest floor between the onset of warming days and full leaf-out within the forest canopy. Retirement has enabled me to spend more time appreciating the summer wildflowers that seem happiest along forest edge habitat. Wingstem greeted me along the greenway.
A silvery checkerspot butterfly appreciated the wingstem for reasons other than aesthetic.
Ironweed is a summer perennial member of the aster family. I see it commonly on forest edges. I never tire of its rich color.
I recorded this 34-second video of another common forest edge woody species, osage orange. Maclura pomifera bears many common names, among them: mock orange, hedge apple, bow wood, horse apple, monkey ball, monkey brains, and yellow-wood.
European settlers found that a perimeter of osage orange stakes would self-sprout quickly into a dense fence-tangle of growth effective at protecting vegetable gardens and crops from marauding domestic grazers and foraging wildlife. Native Americans prized the wood for bow-making. I urge readers to dig more deeply into web sources to learn more about this curious and valuable small tree or shrub.
Osage orange is a member of the mulberry family. I recorded this 45-second video of our native red mulberry not far from the osage orange:
European settlers arriving along the Virginia coast in 1607 enthusiastically mentioned the abundance of mulberry, common from Florida to Ontario and west to the plains. Birds consume the sweet fruit and distribute the scarified seeds, which establish readily along edges and across meadows.
Here is my brief red mulberry video:
Black walnut prefers rich well-drained sites along streams like Indian Creek. This cluster of three hefty nuts portends a good walnut crop. Unlike the largely inedible osage orange fruits, many wildlife species lust for big meaty walnuts.
River birch’s moniker does more than hint at its preferred creek and riverside growing sites. I like its pendulant branching and exfoliating bark enough that we planted a three-stemmed specimen in our backyard. Our irrigation system meets its requirement for ample soil moisture even in periodic dry stretches.
I could not resist recording another short video of the greenway, its meadow corridor, the stunning sky, and the narrow forest edge, and a rough path heading to creekside.
Here is the 59-second video that transitions from the greenway through a narrow border forest to creekside:
Note the “candy cane” sewer line ventilation pipe along the greenway.
Were I not scheduled for knee surgery 11 days hence, I may have suppressed my videographic eagerness. However, each is brief and every one offers a unique emphasis. I recorded this 57-second video near my turn-around point at 3:02 PM, focusing on the brilliant sunshine and afternoon breeze (listen to it!), and including a short transit across the forest border to the shore of Indian Creek.
I’ll use this same video to begin my subsequent photo essay highlighting Indian Creek!
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)
Oh, how insulting to something as beautiful as ironweed to include “weed” in its name!
An urban greenway (along a sewer right-of-way) just 4.5 miles from my home supplies an endless stock of Nature’s fine elixir!
Inhale and absorb Nature’s elixir. May Nature Inspire, Inform, and Reward you!
Another Note: If you came to this post via a Facebook posting or by another route, please sign up now (no cost… no obligation) to receive my Blog Post email alerts: http://eepurl.com/cKLJdL
And Third: I am available for Nature-Inspired Speaking, Writing, and Consulting — contact me at steve.jones.0524@gmail.com
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 (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
https://stevejonesgbh.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/IMG_4559-1.jpg-08.09.24-scaled.webp25601920Steve Joneshttp://stevejonesgbh.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/gbhweblogo.pngSteve Jones2024-10-16 13:52:202024-10-16 13:52:20An August Afternoon Stroll along Indian Creek Greenway!
July 30, 2024, my two Alabama grandsons accompanied me on my first visit to the Land Trust of North Alabama’s Hickory Cove Nature Preserve northeast of Huntsville. We sauntered along the 1.75-mile Legacy Loop. I set the slow pace making observations and snapping photographs of mushrooms and other interesting features along the trail. They alternately surged ahead and fell behind, mostly the former.
Every north Alabama trail is rich with human history. Native Americans occupied these lands for 13 millennia, leaving few obvious traces. European settlers left their mark more visibly and indelibly. A few hundred feet into the forest, a side trail directed us to the spring house, a sure indication of prior domestication, and a clear suggestion that Hickory Cove is not wilderness by the untrammled by the hand of man definition. Wildness, certainly; wilderness, no.
Sam stands at the old spring house foundation, likely an early 19th Century refrigeration construct for surviving here in the deep south prior to electricity and modern food preservation. The concrete trough (right) sits 100 feet downhill, still at brimful. I wondered whether our Native antecedents tapped this natural water source.
Trailside Fungi
I repeat often my observation that death is an essential facet of life in the forest. Sometimes an agent of tree death and always a primary decomposer, fungi are ubiquitous in our north Alabama forests. Usually invisible inside wood, among ground-level organic matter, and within forest soils, fungi hyphae are active year-round. They periodically manifest as mushrooms, their reproductive organs, spewing billions of spores to generate new colonies. A curry bolete drew our attention, its red cap waving a banner.
Most boletes are mycorhizal, sprouting from hyphae within the soil adjacent to roots (ectomycorrhizae) or alternatively within tree roots (endomycorrhizae), often symbiotically engaged with fine roots and root hairs of trees. This group of fungi includes neither pathogens or decomposers.
We also identified violet-grey boletes.
Six inches across, wood mushrooms demanded that we stop to examine and photograph.
Pale yellow Amanita had begun to fade and break apart; even decomposing fungi produce mushrooms subject, as are all organisms, to biological breakdown. It’s the common tale of ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
Examining the photo above right, I spotted a rock-critter lurking behind the Amanita. What is this woodland denizen? I asked my immediate family. They saw a bear, dog, bighorn sheep, and turtle. Such it is with clouds, forest limestone rocks, and oddly shaped trees!
I’m reminded once again of Albert Einstein’s delightful fascination with imagination:
Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.
Fairy parachute mushrooms encircle the base of this dead cedar tree. An invasionary airborne fairy battalion dropped in the night prior, now huddled around the cedar awaiting a call to action.
My iNaturalist hesitantly identified these as turkey tail mushrooms (Trametes versicolor), also listing several species from the Stereum genus as possibilities. Rather than declare turkey tail, I will go with genus Stereum. This colony appears to be thriving on a recently fallen red oak.
Toothed crust mushrooms coat this mature hickory. A single deer mushroom stands at the edge. Tree moss clings to the trunk at the far left margin. I recall hiking within the rain forests of southeat Alaska, where nary a forest surface is absent some kind growth. We do not qualify as rain forest, albeit 55 inches annually is a lot of rain.
A closer look at the crust mushroom corroborates its moniker.
We found Trametes cubensis growing among tree moss on the deeply furrowed bark of a chestnut oak.
An edible mushroon, white-pored chicken of the woods visually decried its presence near the trail. The Land Trust prohibits collecting anything on its preserves. The boys and I made our observations, snapped a photograph, and left the mushroom behind.
Many of our native vines (muscadine, scuppernog, Virgina creeper, and poison ivy) ascend into the upper canopy by attaching their air roots to rising tree stems and branches. Supplejack instead climbs by spiraling with companion vines or woody branches of trees and shrubs. I love the weakly striped perennially green stems.
Sam found two whitelips snails flourishing along the trail. We stopped to examine them. They continued along their merry way, at what we assessed as faster than a snail’s pace!
Many trees in our second (or third) growth forests are survivors from the prior generation. Imagine a prior landowner harvesting firewood, fenceposts, pulpwood, and scattered sawlogs around the time of the Second World War. The operation did not remove every tree, leaving hollow snags such as this red oak. It survived until this spring when its thin wood rind could no longer resist the forces of wind and gravity. Sam stands at left beside the hollow shell stump, which half-houses the accumulation of composted organic matter collected over a century or more. Just across the trail, Sam poses at the tree’s top where it leans almost vertically against another tree.
I took delight when Sam discovered the carcas and understood its story. I recorded this 58-second video at the scene. I’ve observed previously in these photo essays that a picture is worth a thousand words, and a brief video is priceless!
Nearly every north Alabama forest I explore dates its origins back 80-90 years. This 12-inch diameter green ash fell across the trail this summer. Crews made a clean chainsaw cut to remove it. Ash rings are very easy to discern and count. This cross-section, just a foot or two above the root collar, reads 86 years!
There are many stories revealed by a walk through the woods with grandsons. Knowing that Pap was scheduled for knee replacement surgery on August 20, the boys tried to stay within sight. My right knee hobbled me, subjecting me to unsteadiness and an inability to recover when and if I stumbled. About halfway, I did lose my balance and go down…it seemed to happen in slow motion. I’ve been stumbling in the woods for 70 years. I was unruffled; they were concerned. It seems just a few turns of the years that I was introducing their Mom (daughter Katy) to woodland wanders, then a few years when I carried these young men as babes when hiking, and now it is they who helped me back on my feet and offered assistence when the footing looked tenuous.
Einstein’s wisdom extended far beyond theoretical physics. Relative to my musings on my relationship to chldren and grandchildren, he observed:
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.
Thoughts and Reflections
I offer these observations:
Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand. (Albert Einstein)
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)
Death and decomposition are a big part of life in the forest.
Inhale and absorb Nature’s elixir. May Nature Inspire, Inform, and Reward you!
And Third: I am available for Nature-Inspired Speaking, Writing, and Consulting — contact me at steve.jones.0524@gmail.com
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 (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
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.
https://stevejonesgbh.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/IMG_4368.jpg-07.30.24-Legacy-Trail-Violet-Gray-Bolete-scaled.webp19202560Steve Joneshttp://stevejonesgbh.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/gbhweblogo.pngSteve Jones2024-10-08 09:03:042024-10-08 09:03:04Fungi and Other Discoveries along the Hickory Cove Nature Preserve's Legacy Loop Trail
On July 30, 2024, my two Alabama grandsons accompanied me on my first visit to the Land Trust of North Alabama’s Hickory Cove Nature Preserve northeast of Huntsville. We trekked along the 1.75-mile Legacy Loop. I set a slow pace making observations and snapping photographs. They alternately surged ahead and fell behind, mostly the former.
So much mystery and magic lie hidden in plain sight. I’ve confirmed from leading dozens of Nature hikes that most people observe little without someone drawing their attention to the unseen. Even Jack and Sam, the frequent objects of my badgering them to look, look, and look, walked past this trailside honey locust and its multiforked thorns until I halted them to LOOK! The compound thorns are unique to this species. I’ve heard from farmers that the spikes can penetrate and flatten a tractor tire. The honey locust’s rigid platy bark is another distinctive feature.
Near the trailhead, this hickory (the trail bears this species’ name) delivered three messages: the diamond trail sign; a fuzzy poison ivy vine, saying ‘stay alert’; and a softball-plus sized burl, encouraging me to look for tree form oddities and peculiarities. I have friends who turn gorgeous bowls from such burls!
We found fallen hickory nuts frequently along the trail. Somehow, in a flash, we’ve gone from spring’s bursting to mature hickory nuts. I’m reminded of my maternal grandmothers’ timeless wisdom, which from my then young perspective seemed absurd, “The older I get, the faster time goes.” Oh, how true…how painfully valid!
Another observation derives from this simple image of the boys (Sam is hidden by Jack’s larger body). I wanted to photograph the trail as they surged ahead. The symbolic meaning is poignant and rich with meaning. The trail and these young men will travel more deeply into the future than I. I am not ready to cease my woods-wanderings, yet I know I am slowing, and in time the boys will trek beyond my final loop. The best I can do is ensure that the memories of these days will accompany them. I’m reminded and comforted by Einstein’s relevant observation:
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.
I recorded this 58-second video that begins with the boys trekking along the trail.
The burl did remind me to be ever alert to forest treasures. To the extent time allowed, I thrilled at the ways of glaciers during my four years in Alaska. Few people sauntering the forests of north Alabama would have seen what appeared to me in the forked white oak image below. The green moss glacier is spilling from the gap between the two towering peaks. I imagine a vast green icefield beyond the gap. But then a mosquito whined, jerking me back to latitude 36-degrees North, 1,100 feet above sea level. Shamelessly again borrowing from Albert Einstein:
Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.
I am sure that a nether world lies within this shrinking three-inch diameter hickory portal, not one of evil spirit, but a dimension alive with the timeless entities that have dwelled within the forests of old and will populate future forests until the last leaf drops. Returning to the objective world of science, I am puzzled that no critter, neither bird nor mammal, is laboring to prevent the tree from completing its efforts to callous over the portal.
Neither oddity or curiosity, tree bark is distinctive enough that AI apps like iNaturalist can identify species somewhat reliably. I have spent enough time woods-wandering that I, too, do reasonably well. I love the foolproof pattern of shagbark hickory (left) and green ash. People who do not possess learned woodland savvy marvel at those of us who spout off species names with just a glance at a tree trunk. Seventy-three years can familiarize even a big dummy with species peculiarities. When my car engine light flashes or I hear unusual engine noises, I open the latch and lift the hood, peering into the threatening morass of wires, hoses, and bolts. I am as lost as the engineer in the woods who can’t tell oak from maple.
The Hickory Cove property is dense with cedars, a north Alabama early successional species, that courtesy of birds consuming cedar berries and disseminating the scarified seeds, colonized this site 90 years ago. Below is one of the more handsome cedars we encountered, standing tall and reaching into the main canopy.
Most of its cohorts have long since succumbed to hardwood competitors that now dominate this evolving forest. Resistant to decay, the old cedar stems remain visible, evidencing their place in stand succession.
Other cedars have died more recently, their slowly decaying stems still standing as understory and intermediate canopy snags.
Others are clinging to life, gathering only enough sunlight to hang on with a barely surviving living branch or two.
I recorded this 57-second cedar-centered video, examining a stand surrounding a remnant eastern red cedar sentry along the trail:
I spotted just this one cedar seedling. Unless some catastrophic event (fire, wind, ice, or harvest) brings widespread sunlight to the forest floor, cedar will not succeed itself.
The forest has many stories to tell. This cedar sported a strand of barbed wire, long since grown over by the tree. Its story? Someone used the living tree as a fence post many years ago, perhaps marking a boundary or unimproved pasture. The abundance of cedar suggests that much of this evolving forest succeeded from abandoned pasture. Not all forest stories are easy to read. Were it my land, I would devote more time to reading its forested landscape.
This old cedar and its neighboring hickory grew for decades side by side. A cedar fork reached across the hickory trunk, agitating the hickory, which did what any vibrant and rapidly growing tree would do…grow around the cedar invading its space!
Like a snake attempting to swallow a hapless frog, the hickory, in decades-long slow motion, appears to be consuming the now dead cedar branch. Now this certainly qualifies as a tree form oddity and curiosity!
Gravity is in fact a persistent, powerful, and abiding force. Two natural and oppositional forces help guide the direction of tree growth. Some species, like our common sourwood are predominately positively phototropic. They often adopt a corkscrew posture as they seek sunlight. Most of our forest main canopy species are negatively geotropic, strict adherents to growing opposite the pull of gravity. Regardless of what guides their vertical growth, gravity eventually pulls them down. Like time, gravity is undefeated. In this case, a large adjacent tree halted the oak’s fall at about 30-degrees from vertical.
I consider this a different class of tree form oddity. Its days as a leaner are numbered. As in all elements of Nature, nothing is static. Gravity has never lost a contest.
I remain a big fan of forest bridges…for two reasons. First, my bum right knee prefers that I not scramble down and back up this steep and stony gully. Second, I admire the aesthetic of a wooden crossing.
I recorded this 40-second video at the bridge, beginning with the boys crossing it.
At age 73, I find reward in where my forest wanderings take me. Decades ago, I demanded thrill, rugged terrain, spectacular vistas, and special features. I recall trails I will never again venture. Among them, ascending Mount Verstovia above Sitka, Alaska; circuiting Jenny Lake at the east base of Grand Teton; and attempting Mount Washington mid-winter. Approaching midway into my eighth decade, I find beauty, magic, wonder, awe, inspiration, and reward in a 1.75-mile loop close to home.
Thoughts and Reflections
I offer these observations:
My criteria for hiking adventure, daring, and reward relax with my age.
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)
Every tree and forest has a story to tell; my goal is to read every forested landscape.
Inhale and absorb Nature’s elixir. May Nature Inspire, Inform, and Reward you!
Another Note: If you came to this post via a Facebook posting or by another route, please sign up now (no cost… no obligation) to receive my Blog Post email alerts: http://eepurl.com/cKLJdL
And Third: I am available for Nature-Inspired Speaking, Writing, and Consulting — contact me at steve.jones.0524@gmail.com
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 (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
https://stevejonesgbh.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/IMG_4377.jpg-07.30.24-HGNP-Fallen-Hollow-Oak.jpg20161512Steve Joneshttp://stevejonesgbh.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/gbhweblogo.pngSteve Jones2024-09-10 15:03:212024-09-10 15:03:21Trees of the Hickory Cove Nature Preserve's Legacy Loop Trail
