Brief-Form Post #59: Nashville, TN: Finding Nature Where You Are
I am pleased to add the 59th 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 occasionally publish these brief Posts.
I normally restrict my weekly photo essays to “wild” Nature, urging readers to Venture into the Out There! Allow me to stray from my standard with this brief-form post. Judy and I devoted an 11-hour day on March 9, 2026, touring Nashville, Tennessee, by bus (a 13-stop, on-and-off transit) and on foot. My objective for the Great Blue Heron photo essay was to find and reveal Nature wherever our journey took us. We enjoyed unlimited Music City Magic…sights, sounds, history, culinary delights, archeological wonders, and perfect spring weather. I won’t cover that part of our special Discovering Nashville Day. Instead, expect a few Nature highlights I discovered in plain sight along our route.
Nashville’s Centennial Park, the Parthenon, the lake, and sprawling grounds offered Nature in doses. A willow, in full pendulous spring foliage, frames the at-scale Greek temple.
A magnificent mishapen purple catalpa opened welcoming arms within sight of the temple. Its gnarled trunk supported its nameplate.
I recorded a 59-second video of the purple catalpa tree in Centennial Park. The tree expressed its weathered character proudly. I wondered how many visitors and squirrels have stood beneath its summer shade and scampered among its branches.
How often have aspiring musicians strummed and crooned seeking a break-through melody, the perfect pitch, and a deep-hearted message?
The squirrels may know, but don’t query them for an answer. They care little beyond whether visitors may toss a peanut, corn kernel, or cracker.
A wonderfully contorted cousin stood at lake-edge, framing a view to the temple and reflecting thoughtfully upon the placid water.
A not-so-pretty-itself domestic Muscovy duck stood on a limb reaching out and resting upon the lake surface.
A Chinese witch-hazel in full spring flower likewsie grew at water’s edge.
A nearby possumhaw still held last season’s fruit.
Following 35 years at nine diffeerent universities, I felt beckoned by the Belmont University belltower (carillon) and quadrangle. I can resist neither deep forest or university campus.
Belmont’s beautiful campus and landscaping reminded me of Horace Mann, founder of Antioch University and a patriarch of modern education philosophy and practice:
The earth flourishes, or is overrun with noxious weeds and brambles, as we apply or withhold the cultivating hand. So fares it with the intellectual system of man.
The Belmont campus exemplifies the cultivating hand, suggesting that the spirit extends to the university’s intellectual system. Just as my heart, mind, body, soul, and spirit soar when I saunter in deep woods and special woodland places, I rise in the presence of meaningful research, discovery, learning, and intellectual fledging.
I imaging the young vibrant minds that have rested and reflected by this ornamented southern magnolia on the Belmont quadrangle.
I regretted in looking back that as a senior university administrator, including serving four universities as president/chancellor, I did not find or make time to discover, enjoy, and savor the Nature of the respective campuses. I’d like to return to each, dedicating several days to the respective campus. Oh, what a trove of delicacies for future photo essays.
Humans find bounty and build settlements along rivers and streams. Nasheville is no exception. Rivers have little respect for cities crowding their banks. In late April and early May 2010, the Cumberland River overflowed its banks, forcing evacuation of downtown Nashvile. Cities and rivers have a longstanding love/hate relationship.
Judy and crossed a pedestrian bridge (former road bridge) across the Cumberland River, admiring its lifeline through Nashville (upstream left).
A river exists only to convey its load of water, debris, and sediments to Earth’s oceans. Their charter expresses nothing about protecting natural or manmade structures impeding their basic work. Just as glaciers despise mountains, rivers are dedicated relentlessly to thier designed mission. They did so in late spring of 2010, Nashville be damned!
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.
Judy and I traveled to Nashville to explore its history, culture, architecture, music, and food. I added an element of Nature…because that is part of who and what I am. I distill my closing to Belmont University’s beautiful campus and landscaping, which reminded me of Horace Mann, founder of Antioch University and a patriarch of modern education philosophy and practice, who observed:
The earth flourishes, or is overrun with noxious weeds and brambles, as we apply or withhold the cultivating hand. So fares it with the intellectual system of man.
I looked at the City of Nashville through the same prism. Belmont University excels. We found delight in the city, yet like any center of human habitation, we found pockets of noxious weeds and brambles, but not enough to disuade future visits.