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Nature Attractions within Reach of Leighton, a Stop on Alabama’s Singing River Trail!

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Note: I am flagging this photo essay as one of a sub-series that introduces North Alabama’s 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.

 

As a designated Ambassador to the Singing River Trail, I occasionally visit a destination along the route to explore and highlight worthy Nature attractions. I visited historic Leighton, initially known as Crossroads due to its strategic location at the intersection of two early stagecoach roads in Colbert County, on August 21, 2025. I distilled my tour, hosted by Mayor Derick Silcox to two Posts:

  • The Town: A One Square Mile Whistle Stop on the Singing River Trail (https://stevejonesgbh.com/2025/10/01/leighton-alabama-a-one-square-mile-whistle-stop-on-the-singing-river-trail/)
  • Leighton, AL: Nature Attractions within Reach of The Town (This Post)

I focus this Post on Nature Attractions within Reach (15 minutes drive) of The Town.

 

Nature Attractions within Reach of Leighton

 

Leighton is a lovely crossroads community approximately seven miles south of Wilson Lake on the Tennessee River, and 55 miles W/SW of my residence. The internet abounds with recreational and natural amentities associated with TVA’s necklace of impoundments along the river. Wilson Lake lies just downstream from Wheeler Lake and Joe Wheeler State Park, about which I’ve published dozens of these weekly photo essays.

Leighton

 

When we retired to Madison in northern Alabama seven years ago (our daughter and her family live in Madison), I wondered whether I would find the natural beauty, magic, wonder, awe, and inspiration that I would require to sate my Nature passion through my post-employment years. I assure you, supplemented by occasional trips out of state/country, I’ve found this region blessed by abundant forests, waters, meadows, swamps, glades, and both natural and human history attractions. I’ll highlight such attractions Derick introduced to me in the Leighton vicinity.

 

LaGrange Cemetery

 

We visited LaGrange Cemetery,  one such site, just eight miles from Leighton.

Leighton

 

I’ve loved reading Robert Service since residing in Alaska (2004-2008). Service, a Brit who spent time in the Yukon during turn-of-the-century gold rush days 125 years ago, wrote beautiful poetry and ballads of his time in the Far North, including The Spell of The Yukon. Two lines from The Spell came to mind as we had only a few minutes to experience the cemetery. I wanted to peruse (i.e. study deeply) the cemetery…its headstones, the large trees populating it, and the hills and wildlands enveloping it. Aptly, Service declared:

There’s a land–oh, it beckons and beckons,

And I want to go back–and I will,

No, Colbert County is not the great, big, broad land ‘way up yonder, yet it does have special places, like the cemetery, with beauty that thrills me with wonder, and stillness that fills me with peace.

Leighton

 

I’ll return to the cemetery when cooler weather persists and mosquitoes, ticks, and chiggers take leave.

Every gravesite tells a story, some dating back to a birth when our USA was just a child and this rural, raw land was still wild frontier.

Leighton

 

 

 

 

 

I captured a few images, but each monument and gravestone merits study and contemplation. Importantly, for this old forester, I yearned to know the trees and shrubs, and wander the surrounding forests. Like the graves and tombs, each tree, shrub, and hollow has a story to tell.

Leighton

 

Some of the headstones evoke feelings that are best absorbed in quiet, unhurried contemplative solitude. This monument, a mournful tree carved on its face, two artificial roses left at its base, begs such deep reflection. Mary J, wife of Hugh Pennick, lived just 24 years, departing her earthly life 140 years ago. The inscription, which if had sat long enough, would have brought misty eyes: Though lost to sight: to memory dear. I view it through my lens at age 74 and from a marriage now extending through 53 years. I wanteed to share some quiet time with Mary J. The words and the forested hilltop setting stirred emotions.

Leighton

 

The surrounding forest tried its best to draw me in, urging me to come back…and I will!

Leighton

 

Again, each tree has a story, like this dogwood. Who planted it and when? Who does it memorialize? A father; a mother; a child; a grandparent; a friend?

Leighton

 

 

 

When Judy and I lived in west-central Ohio, our son-in-law’s geneology investigation revealed that my maternal great, great, great, great, great grandfather, a Revolutionary War Veteran, was buried  just two miles from our residence. Standing before his tombstone with its grand spreading oak tree, touched me deeply. In some ways, he yet lives in me, some 180 years after his death. Einstein understood:

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 recognize and accept that am but fading leaves on that ancient familial tree of life.

 

LaGrange College and West Point of the South

 

The Colbert County Tourism website is an excellent resource for historic information about the Site Park, Pioneer Village, and Antebellum Cemetery. Having served 35 years at nine universities, I have a keen interest in LaGrange College and its successors. The website paints a compelling story:

In the early 1820’s, LaGrange was established on the crest of a mountain near Leighton, AL with about 400 inhabitants. In the late 1820s, the Tennessee Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church solicited proposals for a site and subscription of $10,000. On December 4, 1828, the Methodist Church accepted the LaGrange proposition. Later that month, the Mississippi Conference joined in the efforts to establish a college. Representatives from the two conferences met at LaGrange on January 10, 1829, and selected a site for the college. On January 11, 1830, “LaGrange College” opened with an enrollment of 70 students and became the first state chartered college in Alabama.

The enrollment peaked at 139 in 1845. Dr. Richard H. Rivers became president in 1854, when the college faced serious financial
problems. In response to an offer of better support, Rivers moved the college to Florence, Alabama in January 1855. Over 150 graduates
received A.B. degrees during its 25-year history. The establishment of LaGrange College in 1830 might well be considered the birth of
collegiate education in Alabama. The move was controversial, some students and faculty remained on the old campus, and the Florence
institution was denied permission to use the name of LaGrange College. It was chartered as Florence Wesleyan University on February 14, 1856, and is known today as the University of North Alabama.

Colleges and universities have played a major role in my life, career, and retirement. I felt no small measure of nostalgia standing on the hilltop reflecting on an institution establed there 195 years ago and operating more or less through today as UNA.

Leighton

 

The view is north across the Tennessee Valey to Leighton and beyond to Florence. From the University of Alaska Fairbanks, where I served as Chancellor (CEO) from 2004 to 2008, a clear day provided a view of 20,310 foot Mt. Denali (McKinley), North America’s highest peak. The overlook is perhaps 750 feet above sea level, hardly on the crest of a mountain, yet the view is pleasant and rewarding, providing a sense of the current landscape mosaic of forest and farmland.

Leighton

 

 

 

From the same website:

After LaGrange College moved to Florence in January 1855, a group of LaGrange citizens organized a college in the vacant buildings under the old name. Rev. Felix Johnson was elected president. To increase the patronage, a military feature was introduced in 1857. Major J.W. Robertson became superintendent and classes were suspended while a third major building was erected for the cadets. The college reopened in February 1858, as LaGrange College and Military Academy. The new institution’s financial situation was dismal until the State of Alabama provided military equipment and scholarships. The Academy soon flourished and became known as the “West Point of the South.” In 1860, the name was changed to LaGrange Military Academy. By 1861, the enrollment was almost 200 cadets. During its existence, 259 cadets from nine states attended the Academy.

In 1861, many LaGrange cadets left to join the Confederate Army. Consequently, the Academy was forced to suspend classes on March 1, 1862. Only two cadets had graduated. Major Robertson was authorized to organize the 35th Alabama Infantry Regiment, C.S.A.
He was elected colonel and the remaining cadets formed part of one company. The regiment was mustered into the Confederate Army on March 12, 1862, for three years. On April 28, 1863, the 10th Missouri Calvary of the Union Army, known as the “Destroying Angels,” commanded by Col. Florence M. Comyn, burned the Military Academy, the nearby La Fayette Female Academy, many businesses, and homes. The village of LaGrange dwindled away. In 1995, LaGrange Park was transferred from the Alabama Historical Commission to the
LaGrange Living Historical Association. Thereafter, the site of Alabama’s first chartered college was enhanced and stands today as a historical landmark.

The monument and sign memorialize the College and Military Academy.

LeightonLeighton

 

 

 

The Site Park restoration comprises mid-19th century buildings relocated to the site, along with buildings constructed in period style.

Leighton

 

We chose a perfect summer afternoon to visit the hilltop. A picture-perfect sky; comfortable humidity; tolerable temperature. Although I was not able to engage in my more typical Nature wanderings, I took palpable joy in breathing fresh air while peering into the countryside wildness within sight.

Leighton

 

The sign reads: LaGrange Welcome Center, Open Sundays 1-4 pm or by Appointments (446-9324).

Leighton

 

While not a dedicated imbiber, I do appreciate a convivial sip (well, maybe not just a sip) of purely organic spirits prepared from all natural ingredients, locally produced. The Dawson Distillery Moonshine Headquarters, Leighton, AL, distills its special essence along the access road to the Park Site and LaGrange Cemetery. Alas, my only disappointment from my visit with Derick, the distillery was closed. I was ready and poised enthusiastically to invest in the Leighton community economic enterprise. Another compelling reason to return!

Leighton

 

Had it not been for my recruitment to the exalted rank of SRT Ambassador, I may have never visited this small town Alabama crossroads and its area Nature attractions. I am sure that the SRT will eventually provide mulitple such compelling whistle stops along its route.

 

Thoughts and Reflections

 

I offer these observations:

  • A key component of understanding and enjoying Nature is getting into the out there. (Steve Jones)
  • Curiosity rewards Nature enthusiasts who explore whistle stops along and near the SRT! (Steve Jones)
  • There’s a land–oh, it beckons and beckons; And I want to go back–and I will. (Robert Service)

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: “©2025 Steve Jones, Great Blue Heron LLC. All Rights Reserved.”

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

 

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 trail will prominently feature many off-shoots of the core trail. Leighton, Alabama is representative of the unique whistle stops and special places along the trail. My hope is that SRT venturers can search these Great Blue Heron Posts to better understand the Nature of our region.

As a lifelong devotee of hiking/sauntering, running, biking, and Nature exploration, I envision multiple other Great Blue Heron weekly photo essays 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.

 

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

 

 

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 trail will prominently feature many off-shoots of the core trail. The Richard Martin Trail is an 11-mile (22 out and back) route segment reaching from Athens to the Tennessee line. My hope is that SRT venturers can search these Great Blue Heron Posts to better understand the Nature of our region. Here is my May 2022 Post on the Richard Martin Rails to Trails: https://stevejonesgbh.com/2022/06/07/early-summer-on-the-richard-martin-rails-to-trail/

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.

 

 

Hiking the Homesite Trail at Rocky Gap State Park

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On July 29, 2025, my older Alabama grandson, Jack (17), and I hiked the Evitts Homestead Trail on Maryland’s Rocky Gap State Park. We ascended 1,100 feet from Lake Habeeb to Evitts’ 2,200-foot summit. I wanted to share the magic of the place with Jack and rekindle my aging memories. Still in high school, I had explored Rocky Gap Canyon and Evitts Mountain before authorities created the state park and built the dam. We discovered the beauty, magic, wonder, and awe of Nature hidden in plain sight along the trail.

 

Those youthful excursions are now two generations past. I was about 17; Jack’s age. He is my daughter’s son. Time marches on at 24 hours per day, just as it did 57 years ago, yet its relative pace accelerates. I heard my maternal grandmother say more than once, “The older I get, the faster time passes.” I thought she was old and confused; I now recognize her wisdom.

 

Ascending the Trail: Moss, Ferns, and Fungi

 

I recognize another truism: the older I get the more challenging trails become. I hiked this trail five years ago, prior to a series of surgeries: shoulder replacement; triple bypass; bilateral inguinal hernia repair; two total knee replacements; and kidney stone blasting. Add in a minor stroke. It’s no surprise that my recent hike proved tougher. I view summitting Evitts as a major recovery benchmark…and a family milestone. This time next year, Jack will have departed for college and a demanding and rewarding life journey. I pray that he carries the memory of his Evitts hike with Pap into a bright and promising future.

The trail is an old jeep path, rising at a steady rate. I noticed greater erosion and rutting since my 2020 ascent. Park crews are not controlling surface water flow. Instead, runoff is in control, seeking and finding a route with no concern for trail integrity. I saw no recent evidence of constructed water bars, broad-based dips, or other measures to usher overland flow from the trail. Without immediate attention, the trail will degrade beyond easy repair. Ongoing road maintenance cannot be ignored.

 

Okay, so much for critiquing park trails and their management. Across my decades of wandering eastern forests, moss is ubiquitous. Pincushion moss embraces tree bases and often covers rocks (right).

 

This patch of broom forkmoss welcomed the dappled sunshine penetrating the forest canopy. An online dictionary defines moss as a small flowerless green plant that lacks true roots, growing in damp habitats and reproducing by means of spores released from stalked capsules.

 

Ample rain during the early summer stimulated prodigous mushroom growth. Mushrooms are the reproductive (spore-producing) structures of common fungi in our eastern foressts. Fungi include tree disease organisms, decomposers, and mycorhizza. Two-colored bolete is a beautiful polypore mycorhizzal fungus, this one with a pink/red umbrella and a smooth cream/yellow undersurface. Although some boletes are choice edibles, I haven’t achieved a necessary level of confidence in distinguishing among the group members. This bolete is symbiotically engaged with oak species.

 

A distinctly polypore underside.

 

I like the moniker of yellow American blusher, another mycorhizzal fungus associated with oak. this one is gilled. Mushrooms of the Southeast offers an explanation of what prevents me from expanding my culinary foraging to species about which I am not 100 percent certain:

In North America Amanita rubescens has historically been considered edible and relatively distinctive; however, since it is related to some of the most toxic mushrooms, we cannot recommend eating it.

Life in our eastern upland hardwood forests is amazingly complex.

 

Yellowing rosy ruella, or brittlegills, is a gilled Russula mycorhizza fungus, common in hardwood forests. Considered edible but seldom occurs in numbers sufficient to collect.

 

iNaturalist identified these tiny golden mushrooms as clubs and corals, genus Clavulinopsis. Mushrooms of the Southeast steered me to golden fairy club, C. laeticolor, but the book image differed somewhat from my photographs. One reference declared this fungus a mycorhizza; another said that it’s a forest litter decomposer.

 

I am a mushroom novice. My fascination with their unique kingdom of life grows with each woodland Nature excursion, where I learn how little I know.

White-pored chicken-of-the-woods (or sulphur shelf) is a decay fungus at home on both living trees, primarily oak, or dead individuals of the same host group. The speices is a choice edible when young and tender, like this one growing at the trail edge.

 

Were I wandering closer to home other than on a state park, where the rule is to take only what you bring, I would have made several meals from this perfect specimen! I wondered how many more flourished within 100 feet of our six-mile circuit.

 

Umbilicaria mammulata, smooth rock tripe, is among the largest lichens in the world. The species forms large sheets (rarely, up to 2′ across), like aged curling leather sheets, on cliffs and boulders. This patch is on a sandstone boulder. The sheets are attached at only a single point (hence the genus Umbilicaria). They are reddish- or grayish-brown on top, and velvety black below.

 

From an online source regarding edibility:

An hour of boiling is said to convert this leather-like lichen into an edible source of protein, palatable by itself or when added to soup or stews. Soak for 2-3 hours first to remove acids that, while not dangerous, may send you running to the bathroom in a hurry. Even after all this soaking and boiling, you’d better be good and hungry—many say it still tastes like shoe leather.

I will not be adding this species to my foraging list!

 

I recall moist forests in Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, and New Hampshire, all former woodlands haunts where I’ve rambled, covered with common bracken fern. I noticed only this single specimen.

 

Our journey covered the distance with as much haste as I could muster. I would do it again on a mid-60s-degree October day, devoting hours to extensive study and exploration. Drafting this narrative reminds me to saunter future wanderings with greater attention to full discovery, seeking more than a surficial inventory of what lay hidden in plain sight.

 

Ascending the Trail: Turtles, Millipedes, Invasive Plants, and Sign-Eating Tree!

 

An eastern box turtle hurried across the trail. Yes, he moved quickly, not at an exagerated turtle’s pace.

 

I captured his rapid gate in this 21-second video.

 

An American giant millipede compelled us to take a closer look.

 

A dense growth of mile-a-mintute-vine infesting at least an acre of forest, stopped me cold.

 

A Penn State Cooperative Extension online resource tells the tale of this aggressive invasive:

Mile-a-minute (Persicaria perfoliata) is a trailing vine with barbed stems and triangular leaves. In contrast to other invasive vines, mile-a-minute is an herbaceous annual, meaning it dies each fall and new plants grow from germinating seeds in the spring. Originally from India and East Asia, this species was first reported in York County, Pennsylvania, in the 1930s in contaminated nursery soil. Mile-a-minute is listed as a “Class B” noxious weed by the State of Pennsylvania, a designation that restricts sale and acknowledges a widespread infestation that cannot feasibly be eradicated. The dense foliage of this invasive weed blankets and slowly suffocates native vegetation, making it extremely destructive and persistent despite being an annual plant.

 

I wondered whether park managers are aware of this infestation. When we returned to the Lake Habeeb dam I told a maintenance worker of our discovery. He seemed concerned. Enough to take action?

I always remain alert for tree form oddities and curiosities, including sign-consuming black cherry trees!

 

I love the Central Appalachian forests of my childhood and early professional days. Rocky Gap State Park drew memories, warm and fuzzy, from more than five decades ago. At age 74, I can say with confidence and satisfaction that those were the good old days…and that blessedly these, too, are the good old days. Life was…and is…good!

 

Thoughts and Reflections

 

I revisited my October 10/15/20 post from the prior Evitts Mountain ascent: https://stevejonesgbh.com/2020/10/15/a-tough-hike-and-deep-reward-at-rocky-gap-state-park-in-western-maryland/

I offered three lessons from my late September, 2020, solitary trek:

  • The extraordinary Nature of place is indelibly written in my head, heart, mind, body, and soul. I am a creature and product of place… place defined by Nature.
  • Countless days in Nature define my life across these 69 years — I look, see, and feel Nature’s beauty, magic, wonder, and awe… and find immeasurable lift.
  • My connection to Nature is unmistakably SACRED!

Today, five years later, I would modify only minimally: My connection (across these 74 years) to Nature (and Family) is unmistakably SACRED!

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: “©2025 Steve Jones, Great Blue Heron LLC. All Rights Reserved.”

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

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Leighton, Alabama, A One Square Mile Whistle Stop on the Singing River Trail!

/in /by

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

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.

 

As a designated Ambassador to the Singing River Trail, I occasionally visit a destination along the route to explore and highlight worthy Nature attractions. I visited historic Leighton, initially known as Crossroads due to its strategic location at the intersection of two early stagecoach roads in Colbert County, on August 21, 2025. I distilled my tour, hosted by Derick Silcox, the Mayor, to two Posts:

  • The Town: A One Square Mile Whistle Stop on the Singing River Trail
  • Leighton, AL: Nature Attractions within Reach of The Town

I focus this Post on The Town.

The Town

 

I am a consumate forest scientist, naturalist, educator, conservation advocate, and lifelong Nature enthusiast. Presenting Leighton through that dense filter demanded concentrated focus. I will play with the term nature, using:

  • All the animals, plants, rocks, etc. in a locale and all the features, forces, and processes that happen — my realm.
  • The basic or inherent features of something — the more human sphere.

I met Mayor Silcox at the Leighton Museum. The banner embraces my realm, The Land, and the human sphere, The Lives and The Legacy. The three are intimately interdependent.

 

SRT’s Leighton backbone runs along Main Street south to the intersection at the woods line (left) and north past the railroad crossing (see further below).

 

The composite of the forest evident to the south, the urban trees across the street from the museum, and the summer sky above reminds me that every place includes natural features, The Land, as well as The Lives and the Legacy. I’ll touch on all three.

 

Historical Roots (Lives and Legacy)

 

I recorded this 30-second video as a coal train passed west to east through Leighton, just north of the Leighton Museum where I began my tour of town and some regional nearby environmental, economic, and historical attractions.

 

The coal train epitomizes our absolute dependence on The Land. In this era of divergent opinions on fossil fuel use, renewable energy, and climate as existential risk, or not, we cannot yet live and thrive without power sources derived from The Land. The train barrels through Leighton transporting 100 or more gondolas from mine to power plant.

Electricity, most likely generated from coal (or perhaps TVA hydro), powered the museum’s illumination of the enormous 350 million-year-old fern fossil, found nearby at LaGrange Cemetery, a site I’ll visit in my subsequent Leighton Post. Native Americans occupied this region for 13,000 years, leaving the mark of their Lives on the Land and Legacy (museum exhibit at right).

 

Leighton’s music wall mural (Missy Miles 2023) highlights Leighton’s own Percy Sledge and fellow R&B singer Jimmy Hughes, both part of Florence’s Fame Recording Studios legacy.

 

Here is my 46-second video recording at the music wall and mural.

 

The SRT will transit the sidewalk keyboard, recognizing the town’s rich musical heritage. Visitors can plan a trip during Sledgefest, a lively festival celebrating Percy Sledge, Leighton’s award-winning R&B, soul, and gospel singer.

 

The museum features other important elements of Leighton’s Lives and Legacy.

 

This old forester cannot do justice to The Town’s Lives and Legacy, with this brief Post. Allow me, instead, to pay a little more attention to the Nature of Leighton.

 

Nature of Leighton

 

My expertise is in the Nature of wild places: a bachelors degree in forestry; PhD in applied ecology; 12 years in the forest products industry; 35 years at nine different universities; eight years writing, speaking, and teaching in retirement. I will stretch into exploring the Nature of a small town whistle stop along the SRT, broadly characterized as The Land. I took many photos emphasizing Nature; I won’t burden you with a lot of narrative. I hope to provide a teaser, tempting readers and SRT enthusiasts to take a closer look.

As the former Director of the Alabama Cooperative Extension System (1996-2001), I was pleased to see this partnership sign. I speak often of the beauty, magic, wonder, awe, and Inspiration of Nature. Hallelujah!

 

A key component of understanding and enjoying Nature is getting into the out there, where seeing, feeling, listening, smelling (inhaling), and touching are conduits.

 

Founders Park lies on the east side of The Town, offering a great orientation to The Land. Agricultural fields, the railroad, the firmament (sky or heavens) arching overhead, a grove of trees, and an historical sign aggregate to portray The Land and the park.

 

 

 

 

I recorded this 36-second video at Founders Park.

 

The old forester (that’s me) enjoyed the spreading oak and relished a skyward view through its massive canopy.

 

We slipped south to Leighton’s athletic park and sports complex. Mayor Silcox proudly showcased a beautiful retention lake behind a chainlink fence, hinting at plans to develop the pond as a recreational feature. The egret at right has already assumed possession of this natural asset.

 

Leighton’s Outdoor Classroom and Nature Park represents another partnership, this one with the Alabama Forestry Commission. I’ve learned across my 74 years that there is little we can do in isolation. Partnerships, whether within families, communities, corporations, higher education, or rural towns are essential. I compliment Mayor Silcox for reaching out and engaging with allied groups and agencies.

 

 

 

 

A park greeter welcomed us. We encountered a female river cooter depositing eggs in the lawn near the classroom seating.

 

 

 

 

 

Interpretation signage identifies this black oak tree.

 

A shaded pathway ushers visitors through the forest. I seldom miss a chance to direct attention vertically into the canopy. Trees vigorously compete for sunlight, just as roots seek their share of soil space, nutrients, and moisture. It’s a dog-eat-dog world in our forests. Only the strong survive and thrive.

 

We completed our square-mile Leighton auto-tour at a couple-acre park, with an an impressive state-of-the-art playground.

Leighton

 

Accessory Attractions

 

Back at our museum starting point, Derick showed me the Leighton Bump on a Log! I’ll always be a sucker for corny humor!

 

I persuaded Derick to provide a measure of scale for this massive oak. I’m sure that this full-crowned Quercus has many stories it could tell of this wonderful Crossroads town.

 

My eye for tree form oddities and curiosities remains alert for specimens in the forests that I wander, as well as in urban settings. This backyard loblolly pine beckoned me for a closer look. The circumferential ridges extend along the entire bole up to the live crown. This feature results from the tree’s response to yellow-bellied sapsuker drill wounds. See my March 2024 Post for explanation: https://stevejonesgbh.com/2023/03/24/brief-form-post-on-loblolly-pine-tree-form-curiosity-at-joe-wheeler-state-park/

 

Leighton, Alabama is a Nature-enriched special place, a whistle-stop along the Singing River Trail!

 

Thoughts and Reflections

 

I offer these observations:

  • A key component of understanding and enjoying Nature is getting into the out there. (Steve Jones)
  • Nature’s gifts are hidden in plain sight whether in wild forests or along small town streets. (Steve Jones)
  • I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious. (Albert Einstein)
  • Curiosity rewards Nature enthusiasts who explore whistle stops along the SRT! (Steve Jones)

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

 

Note: All blog post images created & photographed by Stephen B. Jones unless otherwise noted. Please circulate images with photo credit: “©2025 Steve Jones, Great Blue Heron LLC. All Rights Reserved.”

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

 

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 trail will prominently feature many off-shoots of the core trail. Leighton, Alabama is representative of the unique whistle stops and special places along the trail. My hope is that SRT venturers can search these Great Blue Heron Posts to better understand the Nature of our region.

As a lifelong devotee of hiking/sauntering, running, biking, and Nature exploration, I envision multiple other Great Blue Heron weekly photo essays 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.

 

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

 

 

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 trail will prominently feature many off-shoots of the core trail. The Richard Martin Trail is an 11-mile (22 out and back) route segment reaching from Athens to the Tennessee line. My hope is that SRT venturers can search these Great Blue Heron Posts to better understand the Nature of our region. Here is my May 2022 Post on the Richard Martin Rails to Trails: https://stevejonesgbh.com/2022/06/07/early-summer-on-the-richard-martin-rails-to-trail/

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.

 

 

Part One 175-Year-Old C&O Canal Pawpaw Tunnel: Where Nature Meets Engineering and History

/in /by

I once again visited the Pawpaw Tunnel on the Chesapeake and Ohio (C&O) National Historical Park on July 28, 2025. Alabama grandsons, Jack (17) and Sam (11), accompanied me. I grew up 30 miles upstream along the Potomac River in Cumberland, Maryland. I wanted the boys to experience the Nature, history, and engineering marvel of the tunnel and canal. We walked east through the 3,600-foot tunnel, traversed a mile beyond it, and then hiked the Tunnel Hill Trail over the mountain to return to the parking area. Part One (this Post) carries us through the tunnel; Part Two takes us back over the Tunnel Hill Trail.

 

The Tunnel

 

Jack and Sam stand above the west end of the tunnel, completed in 1850 (175 years ago!). The structure has stood the test of time. The east end is a pinprick of distant light. Midway through, the darkness is near total.

 

Here is my 59-second video at the west (upstream) entrance.

 

I’ve been to the tunnel scores of times across my seven decades. Camping with my parents and siblings beside the tunnel-tender’s canal-era house adjacent to the river. Fishing on the bank, often at night for catfish. I recall once Dad and me holding frantically to tent poles during a fierce storm that threatened to tear away our shelter. Cooking chili on a Coleman stove. Breakfasts of sauage, eggs, and hashbrowns. The list of indelible memories reaches endlessly. My experiences from those formative years shaped me, sculpted my lifetime addiction to Nature…propelled me to a forestry degree, a meaningful career committed to natural resources sustainability, and a retirement dedicated to:

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

 

Because I neglected to photograph the tunnel’s interior in July, I borrowed a photo I took in November 2019.

C&O Canal

 

The east (downstream) end of the tunnel is forever etched in my memory. Immigrant laborers with picks and shovels, black powder, wheelbarrows, drag-sleds, and horse/mule carts began construction in 1836; the first boats passed through 14 years later. Crews worked from both ends and from two 360-foot vertical shafts. I’d like to visit in 2036, the centennial anniversary of pickaxes first striking the shale. Eleven years hence takes me to age 85. What are the chances of me retaining life, health, vigor, endurance, and mental acuity for another 4,015 sunrises? There is no guarantee even that I or any one of us will witness tomorrow’s dawning. I take comfort that I will seek the goal one step after another, visiting special places and enjoying everyday Nature as I’m able.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This photo from the National Park Service Pawpaw Tunnel brochure during operations more than 100 years ago shows little difference from today’s image. The tunnel is timeless, except that the decades have moved beyond it. I can’t imagine much change between now and 2036.

 

Interestingly, the brochure notes:

In the span of a lifetime, canals faded from beacons of a dawning age to quaint reminders of a bygone era. From 1828 to 1850 thousands of immigrants found work–and hope for a new life–building a canal. Families worked and lived on the long, narrow boats, and children often tended the mules. 

Nature doesn’t care about the blossoming and disappearance of technologies, the tough life of hopeful humans tending the boats, or the miserable fights among immigrant laborers. Moss grows on the dripping sidewalls at the tunnel exit, shrubs sprout on the shale scree, and spring rains temporarily flow in the long-abandoned channel. Decomposers relentlessly attack the wooden decking. My ken is to follow the process over the fleeting years of my lifetime, when little of the tunnel’s countenance has changed from the quaint reminder I relish.

 

I recorded this 53-second video at the east portal.

 

I ponder whether Jack and Sam will catch the fever enough to visit when I and my Pawpaw Tunnel Blog are little more than their own quaint reminder. I wonder who else will care. From the east end exit, the boardwalk stretches through the cut into the distance. How far into the decades will my passion persist?

 

Those thoughts accompanied me as the boys and I sauntered beyond the tunnel and its deep cut through the shale. Perhaps a better verb suggests that my ruminations haunted me. Lift lock 66, numbered consecutively upstream from the Georgetown terminus, captured our interest and spurred our imagination. Like the tunnel, the lock resonated with faint echoes of the thousands of long-gone souls who worked, lived, played, and prayed along the canal. This was the future…fading to a quaint reminder. Nature lives on, finding and claiming its place. My role in leading our trek, planting seeds for tomorrow in the boys, and probing was to encapsulate our experiences in this weekly photo essay.

 

I recorded a 58-second lift-lock video, chronicling Nature finding and claiming its place.

Nothing in Nature is static, including the works of man. Were the 184.5 miles of the canal not preserved as a National Historical Park, Nature would hve revegetated the towpath, canal, infrastructure, and associated memories to obscurity. I recall celebrating in 1971, when the tireless efforts of Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas prompted Congress and the President to secure protection and preservation for the important recreational and environmental landmark. There was talk of converting the landmark to a Blue Ridge Parkway kind of roadway. Douglas penned a seminally persuasive letter to the Washington Post:

I feel that if your editor did [walk the towpath with Douglas], he would return a new man and use the power of your great editorial page to help keep this sanctuary untouched. … He would see strange islands and promontories through the fantasy of fog; he would discover the glory there is in the first flower of spring, the glory there is even in a blade of grass; the whistling wings of ducks would make silence have new values for him. Certain it is that he could never acquire that understanding going 60, or even 25, miles an hour.

I was 20 years old, a junior in forestry school, and already addicted to the magic of the C&O Canal. My memories run deep and indelibly for this sacred (to me) recreational and environmental landmark!

I will repeat the circuit another time, when I return, preferably during the dormant season. Like so many of my special places and the everyday Nature that defines them, the C&O Canal and Pawpaw tunnel extend tendrils deep into my mind, body, heart, soul, and spirit. Where do those intense feelings and vivid memories go when we are called Home? Perhaps fragments will live on through my children, Matt and Katy, and in Jack and Sam, Katy’s boys. Robert Louis Stevenson nailed the sentiment:

Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.

 

Thoughts and Reflections

 

I offer these observations:

  • Nature is a mosaic of place, time, and use; every landscape reflects the past and portends the future. (Steve Jones)
  • Nature lives on, finding and claiming its place. (Steve Jones)
  • My experiences from those formative years shaped me, sculpted my lifetime addiction to Nature…propelled me to a forestry degree, and a meaningful career committed to natural resources sustainability. (Steve Jones)

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

 

Note: All blog post images created & photographed by Stephen B. Jones unless otherwise noted. Please circulate images with photo credit: “©2025 Steve Jones, Great Blue Heron LLC. All Rights Reserved.”

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

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Mid-August Morning at the Goldsmith-Schiffman Wildlife Sanctuary: A Great Blue Heron Encounter

/in /by

[Note: I dedicate this Post to the memory of Charlie Kirk, a bold, courageous pioneer who tirelessly promoted a life of Faith in God’s merciful love, Patriotism, and Family. Two days after his assassination, his widow Erika said of Charlie: He loved nature, which always brought him closer to God. I echo those sentiments. Nature never fails to bring me closer to God.]

On August 15, 2025, fellow retired forester Chris Stuhlinger and I explored the western reaches of Huntsville’s Goldsmith-Schiffman Wildlife Sanctuary, a special place I’ve visited dozens of times since retiring to northern Alabama. I come back again and again, not to see the same thing, but to observe a universe of things that change minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day, and across the seasons and years. Take a walk with Chris and me to see some things that will never look exactly the same again. Nothing in Nature is static; special places offer infinite treats to those of us who seek them.

David George Haskell, professor of biology at the University of the South, published The Forest Unseen: A Year’s Watch in Nature (2012). From the back cover:

Visiting a one-square-meter patch of old-growth Tennessee forest almost daily for one year, biologist David Haskell traces nature’s path through the seasons and brings the forest and its inhabitants to vivid life. Beginning with simple observations — a salamander scuttling across the leaf litter; the first blossoms of spring wildflowers — Haskell spins a brilliant web of biology, ecology, and poetry. He explains the science that binds together the tiniest microbes and the largest mammals, and describes the ecosystems that have cycled for thousands — sometimes millians — of years. Written with remarkable grace and empathy, The Forest Unseen is a grand tour of nature in all its beauty and complexity.

Such is my mindset when I repeatedly visit the sanctuary, touring its 400 acres in all of its beauty and complexity.

 

Mid-Summer Morning Trek from Hidden Spring to Jobala Pond

 

Most of its infinite treats are hidden in plain sight, requiring only that we get into the out there from time to time, and that we understand enough of Nature to know how and where to look. Hidden Spring rises within a hunrdred feet of the Taylor Road entrance. Luxuriously vegetated with wetland trees, shrubs, and herbs, the marsh below the spring widens to several hundred feet. Heavy overcast, moistened air, and foliage still dripping from a morning shower set the other-world mood. I imagined an Old World fen.

 

We observed the transition from wide marsh to Hidden Spring Brook, the channel that extends through a series of beaver dams into Jobala Pond, and eventually the Flint River.

 

I recorded this 60-second video of what I termed on that special morning, an other-world marsh.

 

Clear water reflected the cloudy sky and overhead branches, amplfying the other-world mood.

 

 

Beaver enjoy the tasty and nutritious leaves, bark and cambium of native hardwood trees, stripping branches and stems, and then employing the stripped stems to repair and reinforce their structures.

 

This dam held back 15-18 inches of ponded water. Excuse the pun: beavers are dam-good engineers!

 

I’ve told the story of Jobala Pond many times. Human road engineers mined sand, clay, and gravel from the area to construct Route 431 in the 1950s, creating a borrow pit, a barren excavated depression accepting, holding, and then releasing the flow from Hidden Spring. Nature is remarkably resilient, superbly adept at healing her own wounds as well as convalescencing human insults to the land. The old borrow pit has naturalized over eight decades.

 

We found a puzzling phenomenon, 100-feet from the shore and out of our reach, on the upstream section of Jobala Pond. Two clearly living red maple trees (Acer rubrum), standing in water, called out to us with a pinkish circumferential ring 2-4″ immediately above the water line. I magnified the image up to the limits of resolution clarity, showing the fibrous nature of the feature. I shared via social media, generating speculation. Chris and I agree with several persons who suggested that the trees, attempting to survive the saturated soil environment, sprouted air roots above the water for supplemental aeration.

 

Chris and I plan to return with either a canoe or waders to more closely examine the mysterious growth.

Here are two more images of the richly-vegetated upper end of Jobala.

 

I hope that you agree that this is a special place.

 

My Avatar: Great Blue Heron

 

The great blue heron is the totem for my Dad, who passed away in 1996. The heron appeared as an avatar at sunrise on the frigid morning of Dad’s memorial service. Look for the story on my website. I consider every sighting of a great blue heron as Dad checking on me. He lives within me.

A heron passed noiselessly as Chris and I stood at Jobala. He (my sentimental assumption of gender) alighted beyond the pond’s outlet. We stalked the bird to within camera range.

 

I recorded this 50-second video when I dared not get closer.

 

The video and photos are not magazine-worthy, but they are soul-value priceless to me.

 

Again, all special places bless us with infinite treats.

 

Seasonal Flora

 

I give you some of the special floral delights we noted along our summer morning route, with no more narration than necessary. A red buckeye carries ripe fruit, its glossy fruit still within its husk.

 

Elderberry in full ripe fruit.

 

Trumpet vine sporting its late summer bugles.

 

Delicate partridge pea and sensitive pea.

 

Sensitive fern.

 

Tall ironweed.

 

Wild hibiscus.

 

I’ve begun to lose my bias for spring wildflowers; these late sumer beauties are hard to beat!

Nature spins a brilliant web of biology, ecology, and poetry.

 

Area’s Native American Presence: Archaeology and Anthropology at GSWS

 

I won’t devote more than a few sentences to these two images. Chris and I took advantage of our need to be on-site for a session to discuss the Native American archaeology and anthropolgy on the property with noted local archaeologist Ben Hoksbergen. Marian Moore Lewis, author of Southern Sanctuary, Bill Heslip, director of a 13-minute video about the Sanctuary, and Bill’s wife Becky gathered for a couple hours with us at a picnic table near the entrance. We made plans to visit pertinent sites on the Sanctuary when cooler weather arrives.

 

 

 

Watch for updates in a subsequent Post.

Thoughts and Reflections

 

I offer these observations:

  • Every walk in Nature can be a grand tour of her beauty and complexity. (Steve Jones)
  • Look deep into Nature, and then you will understand everything better. (Albert Einstein)
  • Nothing in Nature is static; special places offer infinite treats to those of us who seek them. (Steve Jones)
  • He loved nature, which always brought him closer to God. (Erika Kirk)

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

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

Vision:

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

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

 

Steve’s Four Books

 

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

I began writing books and Posts for several reasons:

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

 

 

 

 

 

Observations from the Narrows in Western Maryland: A Step back to My Roots!

/in /by

I grew up in Cumberland, Maryland, one of the transportation gateways to and over the Appalachian Mountains, a portal to the Ohio frontier and beyond. The Potomac River Valley rises over 600 feet from Washington, D.C.’s tidewater to Cumberland. I visited my hometown in late July 2025. My two Alabama grandsons, Jack (17) and Sam (11), accompanied us. On July 28, we three sauntered two miles through the Narrows along the Great Allegheny Passage (GAP), a 144-mile Rails-to-Trails that stretches from Cumberland to Pittsburgh, PA. I offer photos, brief videos, reflections, and observations on the intersection of human and natural history, overlain by my personal musings.

This view is downstream from the western terminus of the C&O Canal. Years ago, I biked from this point on the foreground gravel trail, the 184.5-mile towpath to Georgetown. Flood control construction in the 1950s erased the canal and towpath infrastructure at this location, leaving the gravel path along the levee for beginning the trek to Washington. West Virginia, across the river, rises to the right.

 

The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal began as a dream to wealth in the West. Operating for nearly 100 years, it was a lifeline for communities along the Potomac River as coal, lumber, and agricultural products floated down the waterway to market. (National Park Service)

Railroad commerce proved economically superior and better able to withstand river flooding, which in 1924 forced the canal’s closure.

Today the canal (A National Historic Park) endures as a pathway for discovering historical, natural, and recreational treasures.

[Dedication: I dedicate this Post to John Milford Parker, Jr. who passed away September 3, 2025. John was among the three people who accompanied me on the bicycle trip to Georgetown. We also occasionally fished, hunted, and hiked together when I returned to western Maryland to visit family. From his obituary: The hunt is over; the woods are still. May he rest in peace on God’s eternal hill.]

From the same point, Cumberland’s hilltop steeples rise where colonial Fort Cumberland once commanded the frontier transportation hub. Beyond the churches, Haystack (left) and Wills (right) Mountains tower nearly 1,000 feet above the Narrows gorge.

 

This 60-second video sets the stage for my trek with Jack and Sam through the Narrows.

 

The historic  railroad station stands less than a quarter mile from the 184.5-mile canal photo point. In my younger years I biked the GAP from Pittsburgh to this endpoint. Sam explored the eastside plaza. Six and one-half decades earlier, at about Sam’s age, I watched my maternal grandfather depart the station for his final B&O Railroad train run to Pittburgh. A World War I veteran, Pap engineered both steam locomotives and diesels. I watched his departure with rapture and deep envy. Rapture because I revered Pap and loved trains. Envy because my teenage brother sat in the cab waving with Pap as they tooted farewell heading to Pittsburgh.

 

 

 

 

 

As the three of us completed our morning walk through the Narrows, the Western Maryland Scenic Line locomotive surprised us departing, like Pap so many decades ago, from the station outbound through the Narrows.

 

I recorded this 60-second video of the mighty engine departing Cumberland.

 

The fading train reminded me that I’m gazing at my own metaphorical sunset from a long and distant dawn, when Mom and Dad brought me to see Pap’s retirement departure. I’ve been blessed to have lived well across the decades, returning repeatedly to these Allegheney Mountains, and their Nature that has nourished and enriched my life and living. So much in my own life, and across Nature, distills to seasons, chapters, and volumes. I’ve enjoyed 74 spring surges in ecosystems and terrains where I’ve resided…from these mountains to the Adirondacks to Alabama’s southern Appalachians to New Hampshire’s Whites to the Alaska Range and more. Different sections in Earth’s physical and life library.

 

So much for my home-woods nostalgia. Let’s head to the Narrows. My recollection is that the Narrows GAP trail is the only paved segment of the 144-mile total length. The shrub-vegetated strip borders the trail on the highway 20-feet below, which hugs Wills Creek another 20-feet below it. The far side at the base of Wills Mountain carries two tracks of the still active Chessie System. The RR sign below signals bikers and pedestrians to carefully cross the rail ahead as the GAP crosses to the tail-slope side of the trail.

 

The Narrows is a natural canyon. Its geologic history is complex. Wills Creek occupies the canyon that separates Wills and Haystack. The Creek did not cut down through the continuous ridge called by the two different names. Instead, the ridge rose up during the Appalachian-building process, and the stream cut its path as the landmass uplifted. I will stop there before I venture even deeper into a science remote from my own.

 

I recorded this 52-second video of the Narrows near our turn-around point two miles from Cumberland.

 

We began our trek 15 minutes before a heavy shower forced us under the eaves of a commercial building near the trail. We dried as the skies cleared and a hot summer sun baked us.

 

I recorded this 57-second video offering commentary on my 74-year personal and professional story that began in these Allegheny Mountains.

 

The Haystack Mountain tailslope forest provides afternoon shade for the trail. Knowing the long period of coal-fired rail traffic, I wondered how many times hot cinders ignited the forest. The current stand has likely not burned since the onset of diesel locomotives.

 

We found a large patch of Japanes knotweed, an aggressive invasive. I reluctantly admit that the plant has particularly attractive shiny foliage.

 

After the shower, the boys stand dripping beside one of the benches, acknowledging a longtime GAP proponent and supporter.

I could not resist posting this snapshot as one of 15-or-so rail pedal-carts trundled toward Cumberland. The recreational vendor boards passengers at Frostburg, about a dozen miles up the GAP from Cumberland. I’ve biked the route, enjoying a nearly pedal-free coast to the Narrows and then a flat ride to the railway station. The occupants pedaled past us. In Cumberland, the passengers return to Frostburg aboard the Western Maryland Scenic Line. The vendor somehow transports the carts back to Frostburg. Perhaps a diesel engine pulled them as a train?

 

An historic frontier transportation and industrial hub, Cumberland now draws sustenance from its Natural beauty and recreational amenities. The place I loved as a youth, that shaped my future direction and life, has deepened and polished its Nature-luster, drawing me to its breast…nurturing me and fanning a nearly latent homing instinct. No, don’t fret…I won’t be vacating my retirement domicile, but I did feel the attraction.

 

Thoughts and Reflections

 

I offer these observations:

  • A historic frontier transportation and industrial hub, my hometown now draws sustenance from its natural beauty and recreational amenities. (Steve Jones)
  • The place I loved as a youth, that shaped my future direction and life, has deepened its Nature-luster. (Steve Jones)
  • Our death is not an end if we can live on in our children and the younger generation. For they are us; our bodies are only wilted leaves on the tree of life. (Albert Einstein)

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

 

Note: All blog post images created & photographed by Stephen B. Jones unless otherwise noted. Please circulate images with photo credit: “©2025 Steve Jones, Great Blue Heron LLC. All Rights Reserved.”

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

 

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

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

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

Vision:

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

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

 

Steve’s Four Books

 

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

I began writing books and Posts for several reasons:

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

 

 

 

 

 

Brief Form Post #46: Singing River Trail at Richard Martin Rails-to-Trails in Elkmont, Alabama

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Note: I am flagging this photo essay as one of a sub-series that chronicles the Nature of 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.

 

I am pleased to add the 46th of my GBH Brief-Form Posts (Less than five minutes to read!) to my website. I don’t want my enthusiasm for thoroughness and detail to discourage readers. So, I will occasionally publish these brief Posts.

 

I co-led a group of University of Alabama in Huntsville OLLI (Osher Lifelong Learning Institute) members on a Sunday afternoon Nature Walk on July 13, 2025 on the Richard Martin Rails to Trails segment of the Singing River Trail. We departed from Elkmont, Alabama, and sauntered along the trail south to the September 1864 site of the Battle of Sulphur Creek Trestle. I was pleased to see the SRT signage in Elkmont.

SRT

 

Elkmont is an historic whistle stop mid-way between the Tennessee line and Athens. Completed in 1859, the railine brought Union troops and war materials south druing the Civil War. Elkmont is a gem along the otherwise woodland and agricultural 11-mile Rails to Trails.

SRT

 

 

 

 

The scenic crossroads is rich with history and rural beauty. Signage at Elkmont tells the story.

 

SRT

 

 

 

Some of our group biked the trail; others walked.

SRT

 

I enjoy the quaint village, yet I relish trailside Nature. I recorded this 60-second video south of Elkmont.

 

Next year, I vow to plan no mid-afternoon OLLI Nature activities during peak summer months. I will limit my summer ventures to morning outings. When we retired to southern climes, I recognized that hot season outings should begin at dawn and end before noon. I violated that rule to accommodate hosting OLLI participants. I now affirm that I’ve been there…done that. My retirement spirit demands of me that I will lead and co-lead future ventures on my heat-of-the-day terms.

I find delights hidden in plain sight on every walk in the woods. Charlotte directed my attention to one such marvel. A three-inch diameter dead tree hung suspended in mid-air, held aloft by a clinging supplejack vine. She and Dave demonstrated that the tree’s base, since rotted away, no longer supports the stem. This is my first photograph of sylvan suspended animation.

SRT

 

 

Here is my video approaching the battle site as we walked across the earthen fill that carried the railroad traffic across the span where the trestle once stood.

 

Although uncomfortably warm in the open, we enjoyed the shaded trail. Small wonder I am a lifelong fan of full canopies. John Muir mused:

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

SRT

 

 

 

I recordeed this 59-second video at the Battle of Sulphur Creek site.

 

Although we did not tally the tree species we encountered, I believe we exceeded a dozen during our meager one-mile sojourn to the battle site and return. A cool season exploration will be perfect for such intensive woody botanizing.

Several summer flower photos merit inclusion in my Post. Brown-eyed Susans populated the trailsides, the edge between trail and forest.

 

Moonseed vine earned its place in our brief journal, its dark green foliage meriting a photograph.

SRT

 

A member of the aster family, giant ragweed is common along roads and trails across north Alabama. Like brown-eyed Susans, giant ragweeds proliferate wood edges.

SRTSRT

 

Domesticated hydrangeas in Elkmont proclaimed their urban beauty.

SRT

 

I published a Great Blue Heron photo essays from my May 17, 2022 Richard Martin Trail venture, providing more detail than this Brief-Form Post: https://stevejonesgbh.com/2022/06/07/early-summer-on-the-richard-martin-rails-to-trail/

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. The dual identity (SRT and the Rails-to-Trails) belies the multiple dimensions inherent in this linear stretch of diverse Nature (from swamp to forested upland to streams to meadow to pastures to small town Elkmont) and rich history (Civil War to cotton gin to railroad to Grand Ole Opry stars). The Delmore Brothers, Elmont natives, captured the essence of their whistle-stop hometown:

I’ll be riding that midnight train when I’m leaving
And I’m goin away to stay
Always wanted to know where this engine did go
Gonna go where it goes today

Nature’s special treats await our discovery, our understanding, and our interpretation!

Go to my website (https://stevejonesgbh.com/) – subscribe to my free weekly Nature Blogs!

 

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 trail will prominently feature many off-shoots of the core trail. The Richard Martin Trail is an 11-mile (22 out and back) route segment reaching from Athens to the Tennessee line. My hope is that SRT venturers can search these Great Blue Heron Posts to better understand the Nature of our region. Again, here is my May 2022 Post on the Richard Martin Rails to Trails: https://stevejonesgbh.com/2022/06/07/early-summer-on-the-richard-martin-rails-to-trail/

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.

 

 

Native American Influence on Today’s North Alabama Forests

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Preparing for my July 15, 2025, presentation to the Madison Historical Association on the pre-European settlement forests of our Huntsville, Alabama region, I visited two regional Native American historical sites on June 10, 2025: Florence Indian Mound and Museum; Oakville Indian Mounds and Education Center. My working title for July 15 — Thirteen Millennia of Speculation on the Forests of North Alabama (Later revised to fit on the Library’s announcement: North Alabama’s Forests in 1775!). I wanted to supplement my literature research with what I could learn from the Florence and Oakville museums and collections, and perhaps soak up some knowledge and wisdom from physical contact with the mounds and sensing the spirit echoes of ancient occupants.

 

Florence Indian Mound and Museum

 

We (wife Judy and our Alabama grandsons Jack (17) and Sam (11)) thought we had made a wrong turn as we drove through a concentrated light industrial area just north of the Tennessee River (Lake Wilson). I anticipated that the mound and museum would be in a less developed setting. Not so, as the parking lot, museum, and adjacent wooded mound suddenly appeared among the buildings, empty lots, and railroad sidings.

Judy and Jack descend 70 stairs (43′) from the mound summit to the handsome museum, framed to eliminate its incongruous surroundings.

 

Displays chronicle thousands of years when Natives occupied, ultimately domesticated (to varying levels), and civilized north-Alabama and all of America. This placard reads, “In Early Woodland time, 2,800-2000 years ago, small family groups in this area lived in semi-permanent base camps along the Tennessee River. The Valley provided most of their hunting and fishing needs, so there was little call for distant travel…”

 

The text continues, “A significant development during Early Woodland time was the widespread adoption of ceremonial and mortuary practices.” The 43-foot high Florence Ceremonial Mound is one such example. Oh, the mysteries that lie buried by time — literally and figuratively! If only we could shake away the obscuring blanket of the past 200 years of European agricultural and industrial disturbance. How large, elaborate, and extensive was the village/community surrounding this magnificent mound?

Florence Mound

 

The literature I’ve perused summarizes:

  • Nearly all eastern Natives lived in villages
  • Surrounded by fields
  • Growing a rich variety of crops
  • Sturdy, defensible, and weatherproof wooden structures
  • Forestland beyond

I am grateful that the City of Florence salvaged a fragment, albeit merely a provocative glimpse, of the past that shaped and defined the Valley culture for many centuries.

Florence Mound

Florence Mounds

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I felt an abslute sadness for what modern-day human development has erased. Power lines, railroad spurs, warehouses, and other advancements dampen the educational contributions of the well-executed museum.

Florence Mounds

 

I often observe that I am an enthusiast of special places and everyday Nature, elements woefully lacking at Florence Mound and Museum. Regardless, I compliment those who reserved the mound and created the museum and collections to preserve the memory of the grandeur of Native culture and civilization. I can almost imagine the ancient landscape as the mound emerged from the Early Woodland landscape along the mighty river.

Florence MoundFlorence Mound

 

The plaque reads, “During Late Woodland time, 1,500-1,000 years ago, expanding population led to more competition for resources and increased fighting between camps. Settlements were more self-sufficient with increased dependence on cultivated crops, like corn, squash, and beans.”

Florence Mound

 

We departed Florence for the Oakville Mounds and Education Center, hoping to see something less disturbed by a vibrant modern-day city along a commercial impounded river.

 

Oakville Indian Mounds and Education Center

 

“Rising 27 feet high, this is the largest woodland mound in Alabama, with a base covering 1.8 acres and a flat top of over an acre. Built by Copena Indians, the mound is 2,000 years old… and was used for ceremonial, religious, social, and cultural purposes.”

Oakville Mounds

 

So nice to stand atop the primary mound and see less-altered place, meadows, and tree edges. However, center docents reminded us that two centuries of intensive agriculture have obliterated less significant mounds, ramps, dikes, ditches, and other village/community remnants. The view from the 27-foot mound surpasses the light industrial blemish dominating the viewscape at Florence Mound. Yet I yearned to see what existed a millennium prior.

Oakville Mounds Oakville Mounds

 

I recorded this 59-second video from atop the ceremonial mound.

 

I accepted the peek into a shaded grove below the mound’s northwest edge.

Oakville Mounds

 

The site also preserves an associated remaing burial mound.

Oakville Mounds

 

How many were interred here? Over what period of time? Who was the first? The last? Who knows their story?

Oakville Mounds

 

 

Who could ask for a more fittingly tranquil final resting place, softly mounded under a forest canopy?

 

 

Laborers constructed the ceremonial and burial mounds from sand, silt, and clay excavated one basket at a time from what is now Oakville Lake. Located on the Oakville Mounds and Education Center property, the lake is open to fishing and pedestrian trails circuit it. Across how many generations did the lake mirror life at the village?

Oakville Mounds

 

I recorded this 59-second video of the pond.

 

The museum collections are expansive and warrant time spent in appreciation and study.

Oakville MoundsOakville Mounds

 

I found an online illustration: “Native American Culture of the Southeast,” which shaped my image of what the Oakville and Florence communities may have resembled 500-2,000 years ago.

 

The image depicts all but the surrounding forests that I will discuss in my July 15 presentation.

I repeat for emphasis the five defining characteristics of our Native American predecessors:

  • Nearly all eastern Natives lived in villages
  • Surrounded by fields
  • Growing a rich variety of crops
  • Sturdy, defensible, and weatherproof wooden structures
  • Forestland beyond

 

North Alabama Forests and Landscapes Today

 

The Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge occupies 35,000 acres adjacent to Wheeler Lake, just one impoundment on the Tennessee River upstream from Florence’s Lake Wilson. The refuge is a varied landscape of open fields (planted for winter waterfowl food), forests, marshes, swamps, streams, and open water.

 

How different did these lands appear 500 to 2,000 years ago?

Buckeye ImpoundmentHGH

 

Prior to Wilson Dam construction the dynamic Tennessee River influenced what is now the refuge. Seasonal flooding, periodic course shifting, inflow stream (e.g., Flint River, Paint Rock River, Limestone Creek, Elk River, and others) fluxes, nomadic beaver ponding, and debris damming and release, among other natural forces changed the complexion of those perennially fertile lands. Native agriculture, communities and land uses likewise shifted with the natural changes. Native land use and the corresponding impact to the land varied across the centuries and millennia.

I’ve written often about the epic changes in the land since Wheeler Dam closed its gates 90 years ago. The lake innundates fields, forests, and communities — both modern day and Native. Acres of adjoining uplands acquired as buffer included tilled and grazed agriculture since regenerated naturally to forest. Nothing in Nature is static, whether influenced by 13,000 years of Native occupation or more than two centuries of European domestication.

Huntsville’s Goldsmith-Schiffman Wildlife Sanctuary lies along the Flint River, a tributary that empties into Wheeler a handful of miles upstream from the refuge. I met in May with local archaeologist Ben Hoksbergen, who conducted an archeology survey on the 400-acre sanctuary. He identified four Native sites. He will visit one or more of the sites with me in the fall. I mention the refuge and the sanctuary only to emphasize that Natives occupied our region for at least 13,000 years. Their impact is not insignificant, nor is ours.

Southern SanctuaryNovember 2020

 

They used the land for all manner of life, living, sustenance, habitat, shelter, community, religious pratice, commerce, trade, and even warring. A casual look doesn’t signal their prior occupation, but I can assure you that the field below holds artifacts (points, shards, chips, pottery fragments, and other evidence of Native life) in its surface soil, in addition to Ben’s four discreet sites.

 

Our pre-European forests were certainly wild. Can we describe them as wilderness? Not by the 1964 US Wilderness Act: A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain. Our north Alabama forests, instead, were trammeled by man for at least 13,000 years! Native Americans began their North American occupation as nomadic hunter/gatherer units, eventually progressing to semi-permanent agricultural communities. They lived on and from the land:

  • fished the waters
  • gathered shellfish
  • foraged herbs, nuts, fruits
  • hunted game
  • harvested forest products
  • cleared forests
  • tilled the land
  • grew crops (beans, maize, squash…)
  • burned fields and forests
  • maintained forest and stream routes for travel and commerce

What affect did hunting wooly mammoths, mastodons, and saber-tooth tigers to extinction have on forest and range ecosystems? The same question stands for extirpating eastern elk and bison. Natives used fire extensively to maintain forage crops and game habitat. To enhance visibility around villages to protect from marauders and invaders. Humans impact our environment, measurably and continuously. Native impact was extensive across the ages, yet those 13 millennia in aggregate changed the land. Our impact over the past 200 years is intensive. Aldo Leopold, who is judged by some (me among them) as America’s greatest conservation practioner and philosopher, lamented conservation of wildness thusly:

All conservation of wildness is self-defeating, for to cherish we must see and fondle, and when enough have seen and fondled, there is no wilderness left to cherish.

A Sand County Almanac (Aldo Leopold 1949)

We humans have seen, fondled, and extracted much from our precious Tennessee River Valley for the 13 millennia we have resided here. We can and must practice informed and responsible Earth stewardship. The Wheeler Refuge and the Goldsmith-Schiffman Sanctuary are evidence that we recognize our imperative to do just that. The Natives had a lighter touch; their numbers required less. The Land is forgiving; Nature is resilient.

 

Conclusion

 

I said at the outset of this photo essay:

I hoped to supplement my literature research with what I could learn from the Florence and Oakville museums and collections, and perhaps I could soak some knowledge and wisdom from physical contact with the mounds and sensing the spirit echoes of ancient occupants.

Did I accomplish my objective? I think so. Can I now describe definitively the Native-shaped landscape that greeted the first European settlers reaching our Tennessee Valley? No, but I can state with greater confidence that the Valley bears the influence of millennia of Native life and living, and that change and human influence remain a constant. But for the accelerating rate of human trammeling, flora (trees, shrubs, and herbs) and their successional constants continue to operate. The mosaic, again except for scale and pace, remains unaltered. If we could assess blind to the explosive expansion of human infrastructure, we could slip back 100, 500, 1,000 years and beyond without needing to learn a new ecology (the branch of biology that deals with the relationships of organisms to one another and to their physical surroundings).

An old axiom applies to my dive into the complex and ongoing interplay of humans, Nature, and landscape here in our Tennessee Valley:

The more things change the more they stay the same. 

The first recorded use of this expression is by French critic, journalist, and novelist Alphonse Karr in 1849 in Les Guêpes, a monthly journal he founded.

 

Thoughts and Reflections

 

I offer these observations:

  • Nature is a mosaic of place, time, and use; every landscape reflects the past and portends the future. (Steve Jones)
  • Understanding Nature demands looking back and gazing ahead. (Steve Jones)
  • All conservation of wildness is self-defeating, for to cherish we must see and fondle, and when enough have seen and fondled, there is no wilderness left to cherish. (Aldo Leopold)
  • The more things change the more they stay the same. (Alphonse Karr)

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: “©2025 Steve Jones, Great Blue Heron LLC. All Rights Reserved.”

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

 

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

 

Florence Mounds

 

 

Part Two — Huntsville’s Goldsmith-Schiffman Wildlife Sanctuary: Tenth Anniversary of Southern Sanctuary!

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Part Two

 

I initially developed this Tenth-Anniversary photo essay as a single post. However, its length exceeded even my generous tolerance for content and length. Here is the link to Part One: https://stevejonesgbh.com/2025/07/18/part-one-huntsvilles-goldsmith-schiffman-wildlife-sanctuary-tenth-anniversary-of-southern-sanctuary/

I repeat the opening paragraph of Part One:

I visited Huntsville, Alabama’s Goldsmith-Schiffman Wildlife Sanctuary on May 17, 2025, with Marian Moore Lewis, author of Southern Sanctuary: A Naturalist’s Walk through the Seasons ((2015), Bill Heslip, Director of A Tale of Two Extraordinary Women (2022; a 14-minute video telling the tale of the Sanctuary), Chris Stuhlinger, a fellow retired forester, and me (I produced the video). We wanted to keep our friendship and love for the Sanctuary vibrant, and once more discover the delights we would find hidden in plain sight. Objective accomplished; we pledged to do it again in October!

Part One carried our venture from Hidden Spring through the marsh and down Hidden Spring Brook to the third beaver dam discharging the creek into Jobala Pond.

 

Jobala Pond

 

I’ve devoted significant narrative in some prior GSWS photo essays to the history of Jobala Pond. I won’t repeat here except to say that highway engineers created the pond by mining sand, clay, and gravel for road construction in the 1950s. All the vegetation and the complex associated ecosystem resulted from naturalization. John Muir missed nothing in Nature. Jobala Pond’s recovery from the mining ravages would not have surprisedthe inveterate Mr. Muir:

Earth has no sorrow that earth can not heal.

I never tire of the beauty, magic, wonder, awe, and inspiration that this old borrow pit presents and evokes (left). Marian caught images of two cooters from across Jobala (right).

Jobala Pond

 

I am hopelessly addicted to tree form oddities and curiosities. As others enjoyed the pond, I drifted to the swampy slough across the gravel path. The old snag was watching us and, with what I thought was a wink of one of the two eyes (at right), beckoned me to take a closer look. I credit woodpeckers, fungi, insects, and other critters with the sculpting. Note that the snag still supports a clinging vine, the tree’s lifelong companion. A new actor will lead the next act in this Nature drama — gravity will once again prevail. The fallen log will decompose into the rich soil. Nothing in Nature is static!

 

Nearby, its feet anchored in the same slough, a tree (I failed to identify the species on-site) stands on stilted legs…a living natural bridge. One might question the cause of such an odd form. Imagine decades ago a decaying tree stump offering a favorable site for a fallen seed to germinate. The seedling nourished on moisture and nutrients available in the decomposing stump, even as it extended roots downward along the stump into the rich mineral soil where the prior tree grew. In time the stump decomposed in full, leaving the stilted-root tree embracing thin air…the ghost of a stump.

 

Leonardo da Vinci, a ghost-spirit of a different sort, inspires me to question, puzzle, and offer explanation for the Nature mysteries I encounter:

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

I’ve watched this burled water oak near the outlet of Jobala Pond for several years. Since June 6, 2020 (image at right), the burl has more than doubled its girth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Whether I’m writing about a North Alabama Land Trust Preserve, one of our 22 Alabama State Parks, the Sanctuary, or some other special place, I urge the managing entity to establish permanent photo points to chronicle the change that is ongoing, inevitable, and significant. The paired photos above tell the story far better than the “inimitable Dr. Jones” standing at the tree claiming, “This burl is twice as big as it was five years ago.” Only one AL State Park has created photo points: Monte Sano with funds I helped raise. Education is a fundamental mission element for the Park system, the Land Trust, and the City of Huntsville. Are these entities falling short of meeting their education imperative? You be the judge.

Here is the 59-second video of Marian offering her thoughts on our tenth anniversary explorations at Jobala Pond.

 

I recorded this 59-second video just below Jobala.

 

Enjoy the tranquil beauty of the iron bridge and Hidden Spring Brook flowing beyond it, seeking its confluence with the Flint River.

 

I recorded this 58-second video below Jobala at the iron bridge crossing Hidden Spring Brook.

 

Chris Stuhlinger, Bill Heslip, Marian Moore Lewis, and Becky Heslip posed at the wetland mitigation area.

 

I recorded this 59-second video of the wetland mitigation. Note, I refer to Bill in the video narrative as the Sanctuary video’s Producer; instead, he directed the production. He kindly declared me the Producer.

 

Closing

In closing, the Sanctuary is a speciel place. My third book, Weaned Seal and Snowy Summits: Stories of Passion for Place and Everyday Nature, captures the ecological, spiritual, and emotional nature of such special places. I offer this text from my Introduction to the book:

Awakening to Nature does not require a trip to the Grand Canyon or a trek across the Gobi. Nature is in our backyard, a nearby city park, or a state park just down the road. Anyone can develop a relationship with Nature wherever you are, a point I reiterate in each essay and a message I exhort in each and every nature-inspired life and living address I deliver. My relationship with Nature is spiritual. I view my engagement as a calling, and a noble cause to sow seeds so that others might do their own part to change some small corner of this Earth for the better through wisdom, knowledge, and hard work.

Sharing a special place with special friends multiplies the reward:

There’s a land–oh, it beckons and beckons,

And we want to go back–and we will!

 

Thoughts and Reflections

 

I offer these observations:

  • Nature reaches far into my heart, soul, body, mind, and spirit. (Steve Jones)
  • Awakening to Nature does not require a trip to the Grand Canyon or a trek across the Gobi. (Steve Jones)
  • Any glimpse into the life of an animal quickens our own and makes it so much the larger and better in every way. (John Muir)

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

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

Vision:

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

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

 

Steve’s Four Books

 

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

I began writing books and Posts for several reasons:

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Return to the Alum Hollow Trail at North Alabama Land Trust’s Green Mountain Nature Preserve

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34 photos and 6 videos

My two Alabama grandsons (Jack Disher, 17, and Sam Disher, 11) accompanied me on June 24, 2025, to the North Alabama Land Trust’s Green Mountain Nature Preserve. We explored the Alum Hollow Trail, where I was scheduled to lead a Land Trust Nature Hike on June 28, 2025. I wanted to scout the trail for features worthy of focus for the planned Land Trust nature venture. Most importantly, I treasure time in Nature with Jack and Sam. I want my passion for the natural world to live in them far beyond my fleeting time on this pale blue orb. Come along with me (and Jack and Sam) through observations, reflections, photos, and brief videos.

Green MountainGreen Mountain

 

Four days later I led the Land Trust Hike with ten eager Nature enthusiasts.

Green MountainGreen Mountain

 

 

The trail is relatively flat along the 1,400 to 1,500 foot plateau top of Green Mountain. Mixed second-growth upland hardwood is the dominant forest cover, yet shortleaf (below) and Virginia pines occupy the WSW-facing ridge rim where the trail took us. I’ll say more about the preserve’s pine, represented here with a trail marker sign.

Green Mountain

 

Every time I saunter along a forest trail I find magic, wonder, beauty, awe, and inspiration hidden in plain sight. The Alum Hollow Trail was no exception.

 

Notable Non-Tree Species

 

Vaccinium aboreum is a species new to me since retiring to Madison, Alabama in 2018. It’s the largest member of the blueberry genus. My fascination may or may not derive from its mirthful common names: farkleberry, sparkleberry, and winter huckleberry. An NC State University online Cooperative Extension publication describes this large vaccinium:

Sparkleberry is a small, deciduous to evergreen shrub or tree that may grow 10 to 20 feet tall. It can be found in rocky woodlands, sandy woodlands, and on cliffs. The leaves are alternate with a smooth or finely toothed margin. The bark is shredded and patchy with reds, browns, and grays present. In early summer, small, white, bell-shaped flowers mature. In the fall, this plant has excellent color. The tall shrub produces a black fruit that matures in the fall and is a good food source for wildlife.

It’s a tough lower-story shrub, seeming to prefer harsh dry sites. I admire it for thriving where more demanding species fear to tread.

Green MountainGreen Mountain

 

We found cedarglade St. John’s wort in flower. Also from an online NC State sourse:

St. John’s Wort is native to SE USA and in NC it is found in the western mountain areas. It is a small, dense shrub that grows 2-4 feet tall and wide with a rounded dense form. It inhabits glades and dry limestone ledges. The foliage may appear slightly bluish-green and is evergreen in its southern range. The showy yellow flowers are bright yellow with numerous stamens on new wood and appear in June-July.

Its foliage and yellow flower drew me in for a closer look.

Green Mountain

 

Greater tickseed is a member of the aster family and is found across Alabama from the Gulf coast to the Tennessee line. I love its whorled leaves.

Green Mountain

 

We feature hydrangea (oakleaf; endless summer; little lime) in our home landscaping. Near the falls the boys and I found wild hydrangea in full flower. Grandson Sam snapped these images.

Green Mountain

 

Although I missed seeing naked-flowered tic-trefoil with the boys, the Land Trust group oohed over its delicate pink blossoms. Note its tri-leaf (i.e. trefoil) foliage. The species is a Legume, a member of the pea family.

Green Mountain

 

I had never asked Jack or Sam to record a brief interpretive video. They have heard me record many, when their role was to be quiet for a moment. I decided to give Sam a try. Without hesitation he recorded this 39-second sassafras identification lesson. He performed as though he’d done it a dozen times! Jack and I walked far enough away not to distract him. He needed only one take. I am grandfather-proud of the result — he may be catching the Nature bug!

 

We’ll hone his and Jack’s video artistry time and time again!

 

Selected Curiosities

 

My third book, Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits (co-authored with Dr. Jennifer Wilhoit), highlighted our passion for place and everyday Nature. The term everyday Nature is adequate but falls far short of sufficient. My eyes wander, seeking the unusual, the bizarre, oddities, and curiosities. I say that, yet I must confess that unusual, bizarre, odd, and curious are within the realm of everyday Nature. Nothing in Nature is strange; some things may be unexpected…but strange in Nature is commonplace!

A vividly green vine spiraling a pole-sized hickory tree may strike the uninformed as strange, but its not at all uncommon for a supplejack vine to have hitched a ride to the full sunlight of an upper story hickory.

Green Mountain

 

A large chestnut oak pointed ahead to the left as we progressed. Jack stood atop the tree’s crook. Some would opine confidently that Native Americans modified the then much smaller stem long ago to create an Indian Marker Tree. Sorry to disappoint, but some natural force (branch or fallen tree) clobbered the young erect tree, bending and breaking it about five feet above ground. The bend remains, supporting a new vertical stem that reaches into the main canopy. Nature’s primary life-imperative is to secure a pathway to immortality, whether me through Jack and Sam, or a crushed chestnut oak by way of an adventious bud sprouting a new shoot that reaches skward. The bridge to immortality extends through generations.

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John Muir, too, spoke of immortality.

After a whole day in the woods, we are already immortal. 

Nothing in Nature is static. A few weeks prior, this chestnut oak’s crown spread over one-fifth of an acre. One of its progeny may already be feeling the sunshine streaming in from the vacated canopy above. Adjacent trees will extend branches laterally to fill the void. The forest will persist even as individual trees succumb.

But in every walk with Nature one receives far more than he seeks. (John Muir)

I recorded this 59-second video of the fallen chestnut oak and a larger one standing regally nearby.

 

To many trail trekkers, a windthrown oak is merely an obstacle. To the trail maintenance crew…a task. To me, a prompt for mental wandering and contemplation. I wondered whether Native Americans traversed Green Mountain across their 13-15 millennia of occupation. How many times over those 140 centuries did a windblown chestnut oak bar their transit?

 

Southern Pine Beetle Outbreak

 

Summer 2024 was a banner year for southern pine beetle infestations across central and northern Alabama, killing thousands of acres of pine forests. Although upland hardwoods dominate the preserve, the Alum Hollow Trail passes through several hundred linear feet of mostly Virginia pine and, to a lesser extent, shortleaf pine. Beetle-killed pine trees posed a threat to trail users.

Green Mountain

 

Land Trust crews felled dead trees. Jumbles of dead pine debris line the trail. Importantly, the forest persists. Species composition has changed. The piles of pinewood will decompose. Adjacent trees will reach into the crown opening; new stems will grow from the forest floor.

 

Sam found intrigue in a dead pine carcass recently fallen below the trail.

 

Curiosities and oddities are commonplace. Strange encounters are the norm to those sauntering and paying attention.

 

Fungi along the Alum Hollow Trail

 

Beetles belong to the animal kingdom; oak trees represent the plant kingdom; fungi are members of their own kingdom. Mushrooms are the spore producing reprodctive organs of fungi, which variously decay living organic matter, consume dead biomass, or grow symbiotically with living plants. I won’t go beyond that generalization. Go to the Blog page of my website (https://stevejonesgbh.com/blog/) and search for mushrooms, which will direct you to multiple photo essays focusing on my mushroom encounters. I give you below a few photos of fungi we found along the Alum Hollow Trail.

 

Coker’s amanita (Sam’s photos) is a common pure white gilled mushroom.

Green Mountain

 

iNaturalist does a good job identifying mushrooms when given top, side, and underside photo views.

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Red chanterelle (Sam’s photos) attracted us with their vivid laterns along the trail. A coarsely gilled edible mushroom genus, chanterelles are mycorrhiza fungi with mycelia growing within tree roots, benefitting both the tree and the fungus.

Green Mountain

 

Flaming gold bolete, a member of a polypore (hollow tubes rather than gills) group common in northern Alabama.

Green Mountain

 

Some bolete species are mycorrhizal; other species are parasitic. Some are delectibly edible, while others are not table-worthy; distinguishing among species can be difficult. The boletes are not among the mushrooms I forage!

 

Alum Shelter and Waterfall

 

On both days, we turned at the waterfall and shelter.

I asked Jack to record a brief video at the falls. Like Sam, he performed well, recording this 25-second video.

 

I’ve seen the falls with greater flow, and I’ve visited with far less.

Green Mountain

 

Uncertain of my ability to clamber down to the falls after my two 2024 total knee replacements, I recorded this 59-second video from the trail above the falls.

 

The Alum Cave is a misnomer. It’s a ledge overhang.

Green Mountain

 

Protected from sunlight and rain, the shelter provides a pleasant spot for resting and reflecting.

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I recorded this 60-second video at the shelter.

A child of the central Appalachians, I feel at home in the preserve’s rugged terrain. Pausing at the shelter prompted me to step back six decades. Nature has a way of transporting me, physically, mentally, and spiritually!

 

A Final Critter

 

Although the final image in my photo essays, this eastern fence lizard greeted the Land Trust entourage early on our venture. I offer it in closing only because I did not concieve it as a good place to start.

Green Mountain

 

Thoughts and Reflections

 

I offer these observations:

  • He who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead, a snuffled-out candle. (Albert Einstein)
  • The cycle of life is without end…as long as our sun shines, rain falls, and Earth remains otherwise inhabitable. (Steve Jones)
  • Nothing in Nature is static, whether a mountain range or a northern Alabama upland forest. (Steve Jones)

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: “©2025 Steve Jones, Great Blue Heron. All Rights Reserved.”

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 (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

 

 

Green Mountain