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Finding Nature’s Inspiration The Afternoon Prior to my Total Right Knee Replacement

September 17, 2024/in Updates /by Steve Jones

[Note]

I am publishing this photo essay four weeks to the day following my knee replacement surgery. I’m recovering remarkably well. I hope to return to woodland wanderings by mid-October!

The Photo Essay

My scheduled August 20, 2024 total right knee replacement surgery loomed months, then weeks, and then days ahead. Having survived, effortfully rehabilitated, and recovered from my January 2024 left knee replacement surgery, I knew what lay ahead for August 20, and the weeks and months beyond. Knowing that a medical exile from Nature wanderings would extend at least through September, I sauntered two miles (one out; one back) along Madison, Alabama’s Bradford Creek Greenway on the afternoon of August 19. I decided to commemorate my brief traverse with a photo essay highlighting the Nature-Buoyed Aging and Healing elements of this outing.

I’ll begin with this 58-second video near the Heritage School trailhead. I could not have selected a better sky, a more welcoming entrance, and a pleasanter embrace of an old forester seeking fortification for yet another looming major surgery, although not with life and death implications like my June 2023, triple bypass. Without orchestrating the video sequence (perhaps I should have planned the videos more carefully), two tall, large-crowned loblolly pines trees attracted my attention as I panned the camera. Both trees rose to their main canopy dominance by performance. I am reminded that my recovery, while biologically enabled at the cellular level (physiology), is largely paced by my own willingness to perform guided physical therapy.

Nature’s ambience, a simple pleasure, stirred my soul.

I focused dozens of my photo essays on our local greenways, which wisely combine sewer line rights-of-way, otherwise undevelopable wetlands, and an insatiable demand for recreational greenspace in the state’s fastest growing metropolitan area. Here’s my 59-second video capturing the idyllic result of thoughtful community planning:

I wonder how many greenway travelers (pedestrians and bikers) realize that the occasional manholes and sewer-gas-venting candy canes bely the true nature of these very pleasant travel ways?

I seldom allow the sewer reality to distract my appreciation for the beauty, magic, wonder, awe, and inspiration of these arterial natural zones that protect forested flood plains coursing through urban and suburban neighborhoods.

You do not need my feeble narrative to highlight the healing Nature of greenspace. Suffice it to say that I gathered symbolic medication for my pending holistic (body, mind, heart, soul, and spirit) healing and ongoing aging. I carried the elixir with me into the next morning’s pre-dawn appointment for preparation, surgery, and post-op.

The preparatory salve doesn’t require breaking hospital rules about carrying personal medication into the facility!

Nothing in Nature is Static

I’ve visited the greenway during active flooding attributable to prolonged winter/spring rains or following summer frog-stranglers. Runoff from the urbanizing basin flashes Bradford Creek more quickly than just a few decades ago. August 19 revealed a dry streambed punctuated by a few persistent pools and an occasional above ground trickle.

I recorded this 53-second video of one such reflective pool, the otherwise dry bed, and the adjacent greenway:

Madison logs an average of 55 inches of rainfall annually, distributed reliably across the seasons. I’ve measured only 0.29 inches through August 30. The pool below offers hope for eventual rains reviving life in the nearly dormant stream. Averages are the essence of life in any natural system. To prosper over the long haul, any organism must tolerate the extremes, feast and famine…drought and torrent…sauna and freezer. I look ahead to my next saunter on the greenway, when I hope to enjoy cooler temperatures and gurgling waters.

The pool occurrence assured me again and again that stream life will persevere. Water tupelo trees prefer wet feet. The large shoreline trees with gnarled surface roots in the water and buttressed lower trunks are tupelo. Along Bradford Creek, I sense that the tupelo embrace a measure of vanity, appreciating their reflection wherever I see them.

I have visited the 2.6 mile greenway many dozens of times since 2015. Tree reflections (no, not just tupelo) draw my attention, enticing me to absorb the image, no matter the season. Somehow the beautiful image retains fidelity to the substance of what stands above it…leaves, branches, sky, clouds. I have never observed a reflection that leaves a permanent mark. Reflections may be the most ephemeral facet of Nature.

I recorded this 50-second video of limited flow at the base of a tupelo:

Their propensity to grow along these flash-inclined streams subject tupelos to physical punishment from tree debris hurtling downstream. This mid-stream resident bears the scars of abuse, a tree of character.

I’ve admired this American beech near the Heritage School trailhead often. Appearing to stand on stilts, a beech seed germinated 80-90 years ago atop a decaying stump that served as a moist organic-matter-rich nursery soil. The seedling sent roots down the sides of the rotting stump into the welcoming floodplain mineral soil. The old stump has decomposed, leaving only the suggestion of its former shape and purpose in service to the beech seed and seedling at creekside.

I’ve observed often that every tree, every stand, and every forest has a compelling tale to tell. The beech, the tupelos, the stream cycles, and the greenway forest whisper their stories across the seasons. I’m grateful that I can sample their revealing volumes on short notice whenever I need a dose of their endless elixir.

Summer Color, 13-Year Cicada Postscript, and Future Promise

A lifelong fan of spring wildflowers, a spectacular late summer cardinal flower caught my eye trailside, encouraging me to record this 58-second video, focusing first on the cardinal flower, the greenway forest edge, a lone fallen hickory nut, and another look at the sky and the canopy overarching the greenway:

I have a lifelong bias for spring ephemeral wildflowers, a passion fomented where I spent my formative years in the central Appalachians, where the beauties seemed to appear before snow completely melted, and even preceeded the arrival of one or more of what I termed robin snows. I admit that I viewed summer bloomers, which eschewed the dark summer forests where I wandered, as meadow and roadside weeds. Age broadened my appreciation beyond that narrow window between the onset of spring’s early warmth and canopy closure abbreviating forest floor flowering. The cardinal flower grew luxuriately at the forest edge along the greenway. How could I possibly denigrate this exquisite exhibit by declaring it a weed?

Nothing in Nature is static. Just five month earlier, this greenway would have displayed chickweed, violet, spring beauty, henbit, and other species. Hickory trees may have been bursting vegetative and flower buds high above within the still open canopy. I’ve time traveled inexorably through spring into late summer, when a mature hickory nut lies on the same shoulder, visually signaling a new season. I wonder, perhaps feeling a little sorry for myself, how far beyond me do news and concern for my knee replacement extend. Immediate family, yes; a few friends and associates, yes; beyond that, no. Does the hickory nut care, no…absolutely not! I’m reminded, therefore, that while the greenway and its environs are my holistic elixir, there is no reciprocity. Hickory nuts have matured, fallen, and faced whatever fate for untold millennia prior to European settlement and even indigenous arrival. And they will do so for as many generations hence.

We human residents earlier this summer talked incessantly for weeks about the persistent grating hum of male 13-year cicadas, now long since gone for yet another extened period of subsurface renewal. What did they leave? Some frazzled nerves of people far too easily bothered by an inevitable reality of sharing a few weeks every 1.3 decades with a regional co-inhabitant life form. Thousands…no, millions…of 4-to-10-inch dead oak (not exclusively, but mostly oak) branchlets killed by cicada larvae hatched from eggs oviposited by freshly fertilized female adults. Life cycles are more compex for cicadas than for humans, yet I am sure far less drama is involved. The larvae feed on the twig cambium. The twig dies, leaving the small flagged branchlets. The nymphs (a next life stage) drop unhurt to the ground, dig deep, feed, grow, and emerge via new exit holes (this year’s still evident below in the dry floodplain soils).

Near the trailhead, this passion flower, another summer favorite, beckoned me. A weed? No way!

My August 19, 2024, journey covered only 90 minutes, far less than the time I’ve enjoyed translating the venture, its 18 photographs, and five brief videos into a semi-cogent photo essay. Although I have completed my tale for now, the Bradford Creek Greenway story is by no means finished. The Madison Greenways and Trails group is partnering with the City of Madison to extend the Greenway another 0ne-half mile north. Here is my 59-second video recorded where the extension will continue northward from where the current paved greenway veers west to the Heritage School parking lot and trailhead:

The sewer line right-of-way extends northward from the Heritage trailhead, promising mystery and hidden treasures.

Picture the paved extension passing through the deep floodplain forest. I am eager to track progress and to decide on a subsequent visit whether to saunter north or south. Nothing in Nature is static. So, too, should our human connections to Nature be ever-evolving. I applaud and thank those among us who are striving to make some small corner of the Earth better through wisdom, knowledge, and hard work.

Thoughts and Reflections

I offer these observations:

Visiting the Greenway the day before joint surgery afforded symbolic medication for my pending holistic (body, mind, heart, soul, and spirit) healing and ongoing aging.
I have never observed a water reflection that leaves a permanent mark. Reflections may be the most ephemeral facet of Nature.
Nothing in Nature, including the flow of our individual fleeting lives, is static.

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. Please circulate images with photo credit: “©2024 Steve Jones, Great Blue Heron LLC. All Rights Reserved.”

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

Brief-Form #30: Dormant Marshland at Marbut Bend Trail along Alabama’s Elk River!

April 29, 2024/in Updates /by Steve Jones

On January 4, 2024, Judy and I explored the trails at TVA’s Marbut Bend along the Elk River upstream from its juncture with the Tennessee River (Lake Wheeler). This Brief-Form Post highlights the grey winter delights across the marshes that Marbut Bend Trail transits. No winter sunshine brightened the bleak winter morning. The temperature hovered near freezing, a consistent breeze sharpened the damp chill. I regretted not layering a hooded sweatshirt. Although we resided for four years in the brutal cold of Fairbanks, Alaska, we left that domicile 16 years ago. Yet I stubbornly, if not foolishly, cling to the fantasy that I remain cold weather hardened. At the ripe old age of 72 years, my blood and its tolerance to cold have thinned consistent with my current residential latitude of 34.71 degrees North, a far cry from Fairbanks’ 64.84 North!

Grey winter delights? Surely I jest. The day is drab. Only a hint of green punctuates the meadows. Even the loblolly pine appears more black than green on this colorless, heavily clouded morn. I recorded this 360 degree 45-second video across the seeming barren landscape. Seeming barren, yes, but life abounds. The video captures a few plaintive bird whisperings, as though the sources were reluctant to express their joy of life so distant from the spring equinox.

The weathered boardwalk reached behind me (below left) to a near-vanishing point at the roadside trailhead, invisible beyond the copse of loblolly pine trees. A deciduous forest rises with the hillside beyond the pine and across the hidden highway. The grey planks extend beyond me to another stand of pine (below right), where the trail veers to the left before continuing to yet another boardwalk that crosses an extensive mudflat to the Elk River.

I feigned physical comfort in my pose below left. My teeth chattered and my left hand clutched the trekking pole longing for the gloves I left in the car! Mostly out of sight, small birds skittered among the cattails surviving on seeds. I wondered what other small creatures foraged beneath the radar on this crisp sunless morning.

Marsh-water ice corroborated the chill, and accented the mood. I’ve observed often in my essays that nothing in Nature is static. Return to Marbut Bend a dozen times…she will show a dozen faces, each one distinct and worth the trip. The most favorable mood would not be nearly as precious absent the contrasting memory of such a morning as January 4, 2024!

What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness. (John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America)

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. Today, I borrow a relevant reflection from Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009), a modern day realist painter, who I believe would have appreciated and amplified the stark winter magic of Marbut Bend:

I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape. Something waits beneath it; the whole story doesn’t show.

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

Mid-August 2023 First Time Visit to Forever Wild Shoal Creek Nature Preserve

November 1, 2023/in Updates /by Steve Jones

August 18, 2023, while in Florence, Alabama taking photographs in preparation for my October 13, 2023 presentation at the city’s 27th Annual Horticulture and Tree Conference, I stopped by the nearby Forever Wild Shoal Creek Nature Preserve, my first “wildland” venture since triple bypass surgery eight weeks prior. I admit to a bit of trepidation as I wandered from the trailhead. I didn’t penetrate the 298 acres for much more than 15 minutes, turning well short of Shoal Creek, a future destination when I return.

Shoal Creek Preserve (dedicated by Forever Wild resolution as the Billingsley-McClure Shoal Creek Preserve) allows visitors to explore 298 acres of fallow fields, mature upland hardwood stands and scenic creek bottoms in Lauderdale County. Waterways on the tract include Indian Camp Creek, Lawson Creek, Jones Branch and Shoal Creek.

The tract was purchased in part through a Land and Water Conservation Fund grant awarded by the Alabama Department of Economics and Community Affairs, as well as through financial and in-kind contributions from the City of Florence and Lauderdale County.

Two trails totaling 4.3 miles give hikers views of Shoal Creek, Indian Camp Creek, Lawson Branch, and Jones Branch, all on this small 300-acre property.

Jones Creek at the entrance road to the property, SW corner of the 298-acre NP, drains into Shoal Creek where backwaters of Wilson Lake swell Shoal Creek. Shoal Creek enters the Tennessee River at Turtle Point Yacht & Country Club

I felt fortunate to reenter Nature, albeit cautiously, just eight weeks from open heart surgery. The sky could not have been more welcoming…cerulean blue with puffy cumulus. I’m a softy for trailhead signage, especially when graffiti and trash don’t mar the scene. My compliments to those maintaining the area.

I like the red roof over the entrance marquis. Here’s the view from 100 yards within the trail, looking back to the red roof.

Trails at Shoal Creek NP are well marked, a necessity for first time trekkers, and a comfort to those who are returning infrequently.

The interpretive text I quoted earlier mentioned acres of fallow fields. Importantly, nothing in Nature is static. A fallow field transitions in our moist temperate climate rather rapidly from meadow to woody brush to young trees to forest and finally to old growth forest. The photo below shows a meadow still dominated by herbs and forbes, a mixture of annuals and perennials. Come back at ten-year intervals and you won’t believe your eyes!

No one can dispute the beauty, wonder, magic, and awe of Nature’s richness and her grandeur. Can you imagine a yellow more vibrant and rich than the blossom of this partridge pea, a native legume common in such early successional habitats? I wonder, how many partridge pea plants per meadow acre is sufficient? Ideal? The same can be asked of any plant, animal, insect, or life form in an ecosystem. Is there a mathematical formula to derive the optimum mix of taxa? In simplest terms, there is no correct answer. Nature doesn’t need a species diversity comptroller to track and enforce ratios, minima, distribution, variances from norms, and standard deviations.

And yet, today’s societal leanings are embracing a mindset that places great stock on monitoring, categorizing, and meticulously controlling metrics related to human Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, as though some bureaucratic class understands the optimum admixture for human affairs, varieties, races, genders, ethnicities, and predilections. Nature, on the other hand, cares only about the function and outcome from a proven, timeless, and extraordinarily successful sorting mechanism — an effective meritocracy. In human endeavors, some bureaucrat may deem five partridge pea plants per acre as ideal. Nature simply does not care…that hapless staffer knows nothing!

The fallow field below will convert to forest if left to Nature’s devices. I admit, however, to a bias toward mixed habitat. Were this already a closed forest, the lovely sky would lie hidden beyond an enveloping canopy. Bluebirds, grasshoppers, meadow voles, and harriers would yield to species common to the mature forest. We maintain the early successional cover only through active and deliberate management! Prescribed fire is one obvious tool. I don’t know what managers of the preserve plan. I’ll watch with anticipation.

Among other plants thriving within this section of meadow are Eastern red cedar, blackberry, thistle, sweet gum, poison ivy, and many other woody perennials, shrubs, and trees. A new forest is emerging.

Because still photographs fall short of revealing a cogent reality, I recorded this 1:00 video with narration:

Panicoideae grasses, large native perennials, dominate this area. Panic grasses are deeply rooted. Without active management (usually in the form of prescribed fire), forest will succeed. The olde truth prevails…nothing in Nature is static.

Shining sumac is a small, early successional tree. This thriving specimen is producing a full seed crop, attracting meadow-habitat birds that will consume the fruits. Digestive juices will scarify the hard seed, encouraging germination when the birds deposit the seed elsewhere in the meadow. Again, I ask, how many shining sumac individuals is enough? Optimum? What is the ideal number of seeds per acre? How many goldfinches are needed to properly disperse the seeds? Perhaps when we know how many angels can sit on the head of a pin we can answer such questions about Nature and her ideal species numbers and distributions. I shall remain a species comptroller skeptic, just as I will forevermore fail to see real value in business, industry, government, and universities bloating with DEI staff and administrators.

I am certain of my own bias to rich and varied habitat, like this image from the Shoal Creek Nature Preserve website.

SCNP Website

I’m curious to see what the future holds. Does the Preserve have a management plan? Does it prescribe treatments for maintaining habitat diversity? By what means? I feel a little guilty posting this photo essay on the basis of my very preliminary and shallow explorations post-surgery. However, my elation at stepping back into Nature overshadowed my guilt. I plan to return and I will dig more deeply.

Thoughts and Reflections

I offer these observations:

Nothing in Nature is static.
As in our own lives, successional stages carry us from youth to maturity to our senior years.
Experiencing a new (to me) Nature Preserve whets my appetite for deeper exploration and understanding.

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: “©2023 Steve Jones, Great Blue Heron LLC. All Rights Reserved.”

Another Note: If you came to this post via a Facebook posting or by an another route, please sign up now (no cost… no obligation) to receive my Blog Post email alerts: http://eepurl.com/cKLJdL

And a Third: 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 Three Books

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

I began writing books and Posts for several reasons:

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

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

I now have a fourth book, published by Dutton Land and Cattle Company, Dutton Land & Cattle: A Land Legacy Story. Available for purchase directly from me. Watch for details in a future Post.

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