Note: I am flagging this photo essay as one of a sub-series that introduces the emerging Singing River Trail:

A 200+ mile greenway system that strengthens regional bonds and creates new health and wellness, educational, economic, tourism, and entrepreneurial opportunities for the people and communities of North Alabama.

 

On March 8, 2025, at the request of local history buff Gilbert White, I visited the Mooresville, Alabama Cemetery as a group of a dozen friends of the 200-year-old graveyard (Madison History Association) cleared brush and storm debris. I snapped photographs and recorded brief videos to develop a photo essay with observations and reflections. I envisioned a tale of the multi-tiered web of life and death (Nature and Human) interweaving across this hallowed land, a permanent resting place for more than 100 deceased former residents. Volume Two looked deeply into the elements of interaction and overlap. Volume Three explores the spookier (and lighter) side of Mooresville Cemetery.

The story of Mooresville Cemetery encompasses several components:

• The overlapping natural environment and human community over time and generations (https://stevejonesgbh.com/2025/04/08/mooresville-alabama-cemetary-a-new-dimension-to-life-and-death-in-the-forest-volume-one/).
• A deeper view into the elements of interaction and overlap (https://stevejonesgbh.com/2025/05/14/mooresville-alabama-cemetary-a-new-dimension-to-life-and-death-in-the-forest-volume-two/).
• The macabre (and lighter) dimension of an old forested cemetery (This photo essay).
• Another story along the fledgling 200+ mile Singing River Trail.

 

Loved ones placed memories and engraved headstone words of love and honor for the deceased humans interred here. I wonder who momorializes (or cares about) the fallen trees; who sings their song? I suppose to only us humans does it fall to remember our dead.

 

Trees bear wounds, scars, and internal ailments in ways often evident, like this old lightning strike that reveals full-scale decay reaching deep into the hollow. Some hollow trunks are hidden from external examination. Likewise for people, some illnesses and maladies are hidden; like my three blocked arteries until a catheterization led to my July 2023 triple bypass surgery. This large hickory tree provided a literal portal into the heart of the matter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A nearby massive oak likewise had a hollow trunk, this one invisible at the tree’s base, but evident when its top splintered.

 

The lower trunk appreared sound, belying the rot that predisposed this cemetery giant to its crown shattering.

 

I recorded this 56-second video of the massive oak above and the burled oak below.

 

The oak below, fittingly appropriate for a tree standing guard over a cemetery, thrusts a spear, perhaps to ward against evil…to protect the spirits within their final resting places…and is heavily armored by its massive burls. Wounds, blemishes, scars, and telltale signs of magic and power. I wondered whether Washington Irving could have devised landscape-accents better suited to a 200 year old gravesite? A lightning-scarred hollow tree; a topless oak giant; a burled oak?

 

Our human lives twist and twine across time and we bear the burden and enjoy the pleasures of life alternatively surging, dragging, inspiring, suffering, and saddening. The cemetery inhabitants lived thusly…celebrating, mourning, cheering, enduring, living, and remembering. This supplejack vine reveals its past ventures, embraces, struggles, and survival in its tortured form. I am certain that individual humans laid to rest here bore the emotional, physical, and spiritual twists, scars, and influences that shaped their lives.

 

Trees exhibit external signs of internal stress and factors otherwise unseen. Black knot fungus infected this black cherry tree, expressing an unpleasant visage — an ugly gnarled burl.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We humans can hide some feelings; others rush to reveal themselves. This black locust tree failed the poker face test. Were I facing this cemetery woodland denizen on a Halloween mid-night, with wind rustling the dried leaves, and a full moon weakly brightening the forest through racing clouds, I might have assumed the fetal position.

 

Its countenance shouts, Out of my way!

 

We humans have an ugly side unrelated to appearance. Ours is expressed through intolerable actions, insufferable offenses committed with absolute disrespect to Nature and to each other. Trash despoiled the boundary marking the cemetery’s edge with the Refuge.

 

I implore all people I reach to pratice informed and responsible earth stewardship. It’s so easy to practice: Leave No Trace Behind!

I noticed rectangular ground depressions throughout the cemetery, indentations in the forest floor that I could not make my trusty iPhone reveal to the viewer. I came close below left, but the image is not evident without my narrative directing you. In time the ground gives way as the casket (wooden I suppose) yeilds to its own decomposition. Were I not alert to my cemetery surroundings, I may not have noticed the rectangular dimples that lie hidden in plain site. I admit to frustration in trying to capture hiding depressions. Dare I seek the help of one of the volunteers?

.

 

Yes, I dared! I was pleasantly surprised when Michael immediately and eagerly agreed to assist, revealing the otherwise hidden depressions. I hope this spirited volunteer did not attract ticks or chiggars. I hope I meet him again, especially if its near an establishment where I can reward his selfless efforts with an appropriately fermented or distilled beverage…or two! He did not stay long in the trench. I saw with relief that he had regained verticality before I departed the grounds.

 

Nature effectively heals her own wounds, and she superbly masks signs of human life and living. Trees care nothing of preserving marble and granite nuiscances. Given enough time, the Mooresville Cemetery would fade into oblivion, as many of its former human inhabitants aleardy have.

 

Again, who mourns the dead and fallen trees? We notice their departure only by the calamity of crashing among and into the gravestones. I failed to inquire when the most recent guest arrived at Mooresville. How long until no more survivors remain? How long until periodic cleanup days cease? I cling to a hope that such memories and care will extend many generations. The forces of Nature, without cause, motivation, or emotion, will act incessantly to oppose human efforts to maintain cemetery order.

Alfred Noyes might have been thinking of a place like the Mooresville Cemetery when he penned these lyrics to The Highwayman:

The wind was a torrent of darkness upon the gusty trees,

The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas…

That’s the atmosphere and mood I imagine when the Macabre Mooresville Cemetery haunts the night, when the ghastly tree shouts, “Out of My Way!”

As I said at the outset, the story of Mooresville Cemetery encompasses several components:

• The overlapping natural environment and human community over time and generations.
• A deeper view into the elements of interaction and overlap.
• The macabre (and lighter) dimension of an old forested cemetery.

Another story along the fledgling 200+ mile Singing River Trail.

 

The Nature of the Singing River Trail

 

The Singing River Trail will be a 200+ mile greenway system that strengthens regional bonds and creates new health and wellness, educational, economic, tourism, and entrepreneurial opportunities for the people and communities of North Alabama.

 

 

The SRT is headquartered just two miles west of the cemetery. The trail will prominently feature Mooresville. As a lifelong devotee of hiking/sauntering, running, biking, and Nature exploration, I envision another Great Blue Heron weekly photo essay series focused on The Nature of the Singing River Trail. I will incorporate individual essays into my routine Posts that total approximately 450 to-date (archived and accessible at: https://stevejonesgbh.com/blog/). I offer these Mooresville Cemetery related photo essays as an orientation to the new component series.

 

Thoughts and Reflections

 

I offer these relevant quotes from Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow:

• There is something in the very air of Sleepy Hollow that seems to breathe forth enchantment.
• The night grew darker and darker; the stars seemed to sink deeper in the sky, and driving clouds occasionally hid them from his sight.  
• His heart began to thump, and he fancied he could hear it.
• Ichabod had no boding of the danger that lurked so near.

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

 

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

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

Vision:

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

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

 

Steve’s Four Books

 

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

I began writing books and Posts for several reasons:

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