nature preserve Archives - Steve Jones Great Blue Heron

Autumn Stroll at Huntsville Alabama’s Goldsmith-Schiffman Wildlife Sanctuary!

January 2, 2025/in Updates /by Steve Jones

On November 1, 2024, 72 days since my total right knee replacement surgery, I sauntered within Huntsville’s Goldsmith-Schiffman Wildlife Sanctuary with dear friends Marian Moore Lewis, Chris Stuhlinger, Bill and Becky Heslip, and Judy (my bride of 52 years)! I felt the lift of a new month, the freshness of an early fall day, and the joy of knowing that both knees (left replacement in January 2024) are far better than in late 2023. My recovery epitomizes the power of Nature-Buoyed Aging and Healing!

Where do I begin with my 26th Great Blue Heron photo essay dedicated to the Goldsmith-Schiffman Wildlife Sanctuary? I skimmed the list of the first 25 topics and foci. I found no reason for concern about repeating prior themes, photos, observations, and reflections. Nothing in Nature is static. Every parcel of the 400-acre sanctuary is unique. Change is constant across the hours of a day, the days of a week, the weeks of a month, the months, the seasons, the years…the decades…the centuries. Were I to live the years of Methuselah, I might publish a thousand GSWS photo essays without repetition.

Let’s start at the westside entrance on Taylor Road. The observation shelter 100 feet from the parking lot looks over Hidden Spring, where mountain water lifts from the ground, fills Hidden Spring Creek, flows into Jobala Pond, and then empties into the Flint River bordering the sanctuary.

Here’s my 60-second video from above Hidden Spring:

The rain-moistened, lichen-coated water oak trunk stands near the shelter. Even an overnight autumn rain transforms a single tree trunk, highlighting its lichen tint, which will once again dry during the day. The light will shift from dull morning stratus to peaks of bright sunshine. I could have stationed myself at the prior evening’s gloaming near this lone oak. I recorded 0.77″ of rain overnight. The stem at dusk was dry and remained unaffected by the rain until stemflow whetted it before dawn. Occasional photographs would have chronicled the process. Daylight came in form of easing rain, lots of canopy dripping, and wispy fog under thick stratus. Nothing in Nature is static; every moment has a story to tell. The world is like that, whether a natural tale or a human narrative.

The deck faces north into the wetland forest canopy 40 feet above the spring surface. Dripping, limited birdsong, lingering overcast and disruptive road noise gave little identity to the time of day (1:00 PM). Had I been beamed into the moment, all signals would have directed me mid-morning.

As we entered the Sanctuary, the persistent stratus lifted, the day brightened, and we accepted the reality that the day had moved beyond noon. Observations and reflections, both literal and philosophical, stimulate musings. Seventy-five years ago, Jobala Pond was a raw borrow pit where road engineers had mined gravel, sand, and clay for nearby road constructiion. Archival photos show a barren shoreline, a scar upon the land. Nature’s healing powers are nearly without limit. During my lifetime, Mount Saint Helens “destroyed” hundreds of square miles of blasted forest; today the acreage is green with vibrant young forest. Savage 2016 wildefires blackened 70,285 acres in Yellowsone National Park. When I toured the park just five years later, burned forests stood as blackened skeletons underlain by green carpets of new growth. John Muir aptly observed:

Earth has no sorrow that earth cannot heal.

Nature knows disturbance, for disturbance is the way of life and the architect of adaptation and evolution. And so it is with Jobala Pond, now a naturalized stream/pond ecosystem.

Here is the brief video I recorded along Hidden Spring Creek as it entered Jobala Pond.

Beavers are primary influencers of stream flow, function, and structure. Their 18-inch-high dam diagonally crosses the stream at left. A bark-stripped beaver-chew stem segment floats streamside at right.

A red swamp crayfish strenguously demanded some kind of passage toll, posing defensively as we approached. The crawdad, like the beaver, has no idea his habitat was once a destroyed landscape, transformed from an ugly worthless borrow pit to a vibrantly functioning natural ecosystem.

In the prime of my outdoor adventure life (say the 1980s), I would have scoffed at the notion of six (four in the photo and two others of us) ancient grandparents wandering and wondering in emerging wildness, once ignominously carved from pre-Columbian wilderness. Our shared vision is the guarantee of re-emergent wilderness in decades hence. My hope is that these photo essays will serve one small step toward ensuring that eventuality. Ninety years ago Louis Bromfield said of his efforts to restore his beloved Ohio Malabar Farm:

The adventure at Malabar is by no means finished… The land came to us out of eternity and when the youngest of us associated with it dies, it will still be here. The best we can hope to do is to leave the mark of our fleeting existence upon it, to die knowing that we have changed a small corner of this earth for the better by wisdom, knowledge and hard work.

As we reached the point where the creek broadens to Jobala Pond, the thick stratus began to break.

The serpentine water oak branch extending over the pond reflects perfectly on the still water.

The old iron gate adds a touch of nostalgia, harkening back to decades of agricultural production combatting seasonally saturated soils, periodic Flint River flooding, and marauding deer, raccoons, and other crop-consuming critters.

Roundleaf greenbrier produced a bumper crop of deep blue berries.

Similar in habit and appearance to greenbrier, Carolina snailseed (also known as Carolina moonseed and corbead) is a deciduous, woody vine that climbs with thin twining stems or scrambles along the ground, and primarily occurs in rocky open woods, wood margins, glades, fence rows, roadsides and stream/pond margin. Attractive features are its foliage and its autumn red berries!

Before departing the sanctuary, we drove to the east entrance.

To The Sanctuary’s East Side as Sunset Nears

The riparian forest comprises diverse species, straight boles, and stems reaching 100 feet. The Flint River floods much of the forest at least several times annually. Once farmed 70-80 years ago, the mixed forest regenerated naturally.

A stemflow-wetted beach trunk presented a parting lichen-painted visual gift.

Wildness is returning to the several hundred acre sanctuary. Preserved in perpetuity, wildness will transition in decades to an old growth forest condition. I won’t see that long-term result, yet I can take satisfaction knowing the process is underway.

Thoughts and Reflections

I offer these observations:

The best we can hope to do is to leave the mark of our fleeting existence upon it, to die knowing that we have changed a small corner of this earth for the better by wisdom, knowledge and hard work. (Louis Bromfield)
Nothing in Nature is static; every moment has a story to tell. The world is like that, whether a natural tale or a human narrative.
Nature knows disturbance, for disturbance is the way of life and the architect of adaptation and evolution.

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.”

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

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

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

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

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

Vision:

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

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

Steve’s 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

Mixed Forest along the Lower Slope of Green Mountain Trail

December 27, 2024/in Updates /by Steve Jones

On October 25, 2024, fellow retired forester Brian Bradley introduced me to the lower mile of the two-year-old Green Mountain Trail, beginning at the Astalot Trailhead. Cognizant of my August 20, 2024 right knee replacement surgery, Brian planned sauntering approximately a mile to what I’ve come to call the Halloween Forest. We had no reason to hurry, taking time to examine and enjoy every element of wonder, awe, inspiration, and beauty we encountered. This photo essay focuses on the lower trail’s mixed mesophytic forest.

The Land Trust of North Alabama’s 818-acre Green Mountain Nature Preserve is in South Huntsville. The Green Mountain Trail stretches 3.2 miles from Riverview Drive to Green Mountain Road. I am not yet ready for that distance. Perhaps by January 1!

The Astalot Trailhead, where Brian and I met, departs from a parking area at the Astalot Trailhead. The 0.06 mile Connector joined the NE-to-SW Green Mountain Trail. We ascended four prominent switchbacks to the Halloween Forest located approximately where the trail bends southward near the western property line. This Lower Slope photo essay covers the terrain and forest ending at the contour-denoted drainage feature that trends from SE-to-NW about midway from the upper switchback to the western property line.

Patches of flowering white snakeroot peppered the lower slope, a surprising artifact of the late summer season.

A Native Smoketree Teaser

A few smoketrees greeted us well before we approached the Halloween Forest, teasing me with what Brian indicated we would see in profusion once we reached into higher terrain. American smoketree (Cotinus obovatus) is a relatively rare species, native to the southern United States, growing in the rocky mountain soils from Kentucky, Tennessee, and northern Alabama westward to Oklahoma (NC State Cooperative Extension online bulletin).

Smoketree is neither common nor does it have commercial value, and its range does not overlap where I attended forestry school and took dendrology and tree identification. Hence, at the tender age of 73, this was, to my recollection, my first and only exposure to the native species. Other species of Cotinus, native to southern Europe and Asia, are commonly used for landscaping.

The native species stems are contorted, convoluted, gnarled, and fit my characterization as tree form oddities and curiosities.

The leaves were already senescing, their green fading and yellow deepening. I am eager to return when fresh leaves emerge and spring flowers earn the smoketree moniker.

The stems appear ancient, well-weathered, and tortured.

View this brief introdction via the small smoketree patch we encountered near the trailhead as a trailor of sorts, stirring your appetite for the full Halloween photo essay that will follow.

The Mixed Mesophytic Forest

White oak is a major component of the main canopy.

White oak, a long-lived species, will dominate the forest for many decades. Black locust, an early successional species, secured the cutover land 80-90 years ago, and is now departing, succumbing to old age and black cap polypore decay, its bracket mushrooms ubiquitous.

This tall dominant individual bears brackets 30+ feet up the bole.

Lying on the ground, this stem shows both the hollow created by a squirrel or woodpecker courtesy of the decay-softened wood. It will serve no more as a bird or squirrel den, yet for a few more years a snake, mouse, or chipmunk may lay claim.

We pondered the tooth marks on this trail sign. Did a squirrel seek to sharpen its teeth? Was there some special nutritional or mineral attractant in the finish? Once again, the answers to Nature’s puzzles and mysteries are not always apparent. Over 73 years of hiking, I have never seen similar sign defacement. Were I still in a New England forest, I would attribute blame to a porcupine, a forest critter reputed to eat anything!

Resistant to ground contact decay, black locust makes great fence posts. Oak and other upland species rot more quickly. This toppled black locust root mass and its still-barked trunk may lie intact for decades. I pictured (and secretly coveted) the root-arms without the trunk as a landscape sculpture, much like a shoreside driftwood.

This unusual pair caught my eye. A mockernut hickory, straight and true, stands to the left of what appears to be an ancient white oak…its stem bent and its bark aged and unusually flaked (I thought at first yellow buckeye).

The oak bears a barrel-sized burl 25 feet above the ground, another suggestion that this tree is a residual from a prior stand. I will examine more closely when I revisit.

Brian shared my curiosity as we passed along the trail.

I recorded this 59-second video of a large mockernut hickory. We wondered whether this, too, is a residual from another generation.

My knee would not allow me to assist Brian measuring diameter. Writing the narrative five weeks after our hike, I am confidant I am now able to scramble on the hillside!

This is one handsome tree. Brian masterfully measured its diameter…a horizontal D-tape placed at 4.5-feet above the stump on the high side! We estimated 36 inches; the measurement gave us just shy of 35! Not bad for a couple of old foresters!

I grew up in the heart of the pawpaw tree range, the central Appalachians, my home just 30 miles from Pawpaw, WV. Less common here in northern Alabama, the tree excites my homing instinct. We stopped to examine a pawpaw patch

Here is my 57-second video of the pawpaw patch we encountered:

Its long leaves deep in understory shade are distinctive.

A traditional Appalachian native fruit staple, the song inspired a popular children’s verse from a song that I remember from my youth:

Where, oh where is pretty little Susie?
Where, oh where is pretty little Susie?
Where, oh where is pretty little Susie?
Way down yonder in the paw-paw patch.

Pickin’ up paw-paws, puttin’ ’em in her pockets,
Pickin’ up paw-paws, puttin’ ’em in her pockets,
Pickin’ up paw-paws, puttin’ ’em in her pockets,
Way down yonder in the paw-paw patch.

Come on, children, let’s go find her,
Come on, children, let’s go find her,
Come on, children, let’s go find her,
Way down yonder in the paw-paw patch.

I have yet to find a pawpaw tree bearing fruit here in Alabama. During the three college-year-summers when I worked for the Maryland Forest Service in western Maryland I sampled pawpaw fruit, enjoying what I described as a texture and taste similar to bananas.

We discovered a native buckthorn, nicely striated, more distinctively than any I had previously observed. I’ll look for more when I return.

The mid-summer sun barely penetrates our dense forest canopies. By late October its rays brighten the forest floor and illuminates snags like the one below right. I welcome the changing season and its portent of an extened period of dormancy. What glory would there be in spring without the relative gloom of Nature’s December through February rest?

Experiencing the positive evidence of Nature’s indisputable Power of Healing amplified by dedicated phyisical therapy lifts my body, mind, heart, soul, and spirit.

Thoughts and Reflections

I offer these observations:

The answers to Nature’s puzzles and mysteries are not always apparent.
What glory would there be in spring without the relative gloom of Nature’s December through February rest?
Experiencing the positive evidence of Nature’s indisputable Power of Healing amplified by dedicated physical therapy lifts my body, mind, heart, soul, and spirit.

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

Note: Unless otherwise noted, all blog post images are created & photographed by Stephen B. Jones. Please circulate images with photo credit: “©2024 Steve Jones, Great Blue Heron LLC. All Rights Reserved.”

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

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

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

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

Vision:

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

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

Steve’s Four Books

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

I began writing books and Posts for several reasons:

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

Halloween Forest of Rare Smoketrees (Cotinus obovatus) on Green Mountain Nature Preserve!

December 16, 2024/in Updates /by Steve Jones

I don’t recall ever seeing our north Alabama native smoketree (Continus obovatus) nor learning about it so many years ago when I took Dendrology in 1970. The species does range as far north as West Virginia, much less where I began my undergraduate studies in western Maryland. I didn’t know what to expect when fellow retired forester Brian Bradley offered to introduce me to smoketrees at what he believed to be the largest smoketree stand in America, on the North Alabama Land Trust’s Green Mountain Nature Preserve.

On October 25, 2024, Brian and I met at the Astalot Trailhead and walked the couple of hundred feet to the Green Mountain Trail and then slowly ascended from 800 feet to 1,100. A little more than nine weeks after total right knee replacement surgery, I had achieved perhaps 60 percent strength, stability, and confidence. I intend to return in spring when the species in full flower earns its smoketree moniker. Our October venture took us into the macabre stand that I dubbed the Halloween Forest, timely just a week before the spooky day.

Our trek traversed a portion of the North section of the 818 acre preserve in South Huntsville. We are fortunate to have such an active Land Trust. Although I’ve heard several fellow Madison, Alabama nature enthusiasts express consternation that most of the Trust’s preserves lie east of Huntsville, the reason is painfully obvious. The Cumberland Plateau lifts the local topography from the 555′ elevation of Lake Wheeler through the average valley floor at Huntsville of 800′ to the 1,600′ summit of Monte Sano. Most of Madison, Alabama and points west into Limestone County have been in agricultural production for two centuries. The best we can do in the Tennessee Valley physiographic province is to eke some costly purse from a sow’s ear. Silk purses of natural beauty and forest wildness already exist naturally in the rugged Plateau terrain. The Trust did not need to convert the Green Mountain Nature Preserve from agriculture, an old borrow pit, a prior industrial site, or an abandoned quarry. See my June 2024 photo essay exploring the idea of creating succ a silk purse from the abandoned Madison Limestone Quarry (https://stevejonesgbh.com/2024/06/18/perpetual-wasteland-or-future-preserve-madison-alabamas-abandoned-limestone-quarry/).

The two maps track the path we ascended. I believe we made it to about the south end of the grey shaded parcel on the upper map.

The map below depcits greater topographic detail.

Brian assisted with trail construction over the past two years. I consider the design and construction superb. Well-placed large heavy stones assured a smooth surface suitable for an old forester recovering from knee surgery. This wall stands three feet above the ground level beneath it. Those stones were not for the faint of heart.

I relished returning to forest wanderings, appreciating the tremendous Nature-Buoyed Aging and Healing, lifting me in body, mind, heart, soul, and spirit. How can we place value on early autumn sunshine streaming through the yellowing hardwood crowns? Or the signature scaling bark of a shagbark hickory?

Or the fading green leaves of the first smoketrees I have ever knowingly encountered. Who says an old dog (or forester) can’t learn some new tricks!? I felt the thrill of meeting a native tree species new to me, sparking a primal, spiritual nerve deep within my forester heart, mind, and even soul. Einsteing new the feeling and, I imagine, experienced it often:

In every true searcher of Nature there is a kind of religious reverence.

The Halloween Forest moniker rushed into my mind. How could I call it anything else? Early European settlers saw the eastern forests where they landed variously as dark and foreboding, foul and repugnant, and populated by savage beasts. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow surfaces similar sinister apparitions. I can only imagine what a nightime traveler, lubricated by several drams of adult beverage, wandering these sideslopes along a lonely pathway, riding his faithful steed, might encounter erupting from the shadows.

I felt hair rising on the back of my neck even in the bright autumn sun. Okay, I’m fueling my imagination. Einstein encouraged such figmental ministrations:

I am enough of the artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.

Enough of imagination. An online NC State Extension source enlightens us on our spooky smoketree:

American smoketree is native to the southern United States, growing in the rocky mountain soils from Kentucky, Tennessee, and northern Alabama westward to Oklahoma. Growth can also be found in central Texas. Its native habitat includes limestone glades and rocky limestone bluffs on north or east facing slopes. It is a medium-maintenance small tree or upright shrub in the Anacardiaceae family. It prefers a well-drained infertile loam soil in the full sun but does tolerate a wide range of soils including clay and shallow rocky soil. The sap from American Smoketree has a strong odor.

The name smoketree comes not from the 6′-10″ flower clusters (green-yellow, insignificant, dioecious) which bloom in the summer, but from the airy smoky pink to pink-purple hairs on the spent flower clusters that give the tree a hazy, smoke-like puffy appearance. The summer “smoke” display makes this a striking accent plant. It also produces some of the best fall color of the native American trees and shrubs. It looks great massed or planted at the back of a shrub border. It does use a fair amount of water, especially in dry conditions. This plant is resistant to damage by deer.

The wood from this plant was used as fence posts, tool handles and for making yellow dye.

I recorded this 60-second smoketree video along the Green Mountain Trail:

The trunks are convoluted, tortured, gnarly, and appeared weathered.

Often multiple-stemmed, some trunks are covered in flaky bark.

Others are deeply fissured with distinct ridges and valleys. Each element emphasizes the Halloween image.

I found it hard with superficial examination to distinguish snags from living trees. The top on the ground at right doesn’t look much different from standing individuals. I am eager to return when I am more mobile than I was in late October. I will inspect much more cosely.

I had never seen anything like the tree’s yellow wood!

At the risk of you reading words repeated, I loved the beauty, magic, wonder, awe, and inspiration of this unique Halloween Forest of American SMoketree!

Thoughts and Reflections

I offer these observations:

I am enough of the artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world. (Albert Einstein)
In every true searcher of Nature there is a kind of religious reverence. (Einstein)
I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious. (Einstein)
Introduced to a native tree species new to me, I am transported back to my forestry youth. (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 & photographeerved.”

And Third: I am availabd by Stephen B. Jones. Please circulate images with photo credit: “©2024 Steve Jones, Great Blue Heron LLC. All Rights Resle for Nature-Inspired Speaking, Writing, and Consulting — contact me at steve.jones.0524@gmail.com

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

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

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

Vision:

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

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

Steve’s Four Books

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

I began writing books and Posts for several reasons:

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

Exploring the Forest along Lake Wheeler at Point Mallard Park!

October 22, 2024/in Updates /by Steve Jones

On September 29, 2024, I co-led a University of Alabama in Huntsville OLLI (Osher Lifelong Learning Institute) Nature Walk at Point Mallard Park in nearby Decatur, Alabama. We departed a picnic shelter at 3:00 PM as a shower associated with superstorm Helene was abating.

The Park borders Dinsmore Slough and Flint Creek on the west extension of the Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge, on the south side of the Refuge. The Tennessee River (Wheeler Lake) and the Refuge reach some 20 miles upstream to Ditto Landing, on the north side of the river southeast of Huntsville. I view the Refuge as one of my go-to places for Nature wandering. The view below to the east and southeast looks exclusively over the west end of the Refuge.

Randy and Kim’s hat and umbrella evidence that the rain had not yet ceased as they provided foreground to the expansive lake and Refuge forest edge at the far shore.

Nature alone provides amusement and sparks curiosity and imagination. Over the past 13 millennia, since Native Americans first populated this region, the Tennesee River provided food, transportation, and sites for gathering and habitation. Humans have left the mark of their occupation in countless ways across those 130 centuries. I wonder how many Native men, women, and children leaned a stone against a young sycamore tree, and then witnessed the tree slowly grow around it, a seeming act of consumption. Maybe none. However, one of our recent inhabitants propped a five-foot slab of cement against this sycamore 10-20 years ago. Darrell and Kim stood near it for scale. Certainly the effect is amusing, curious, and sparks immagination…but the result is not Nature acting alone.

Rain pften enriches my forest wanderings, even as it dampens the way and soaks my garb. Since retiring to northern Alabama, I’ve grown fond of the perrenial green and smooth bark of supplejack vine. I don’t recall ever seeing the wetted vine showing prominent white vertical striations. I’ll henceforth pay more attention. This may turn out to be a unique individual or perhaps this is a common feature hidden in plain sight without the accent provided by the earlier shower.

The eight-inch diameter sycamore below left likewise drew my attention…and camera lens. The half-green and white trunk punctuated with brown flecks would, without the recent wetting, have been nothing special. I hadn’t noticed one of our OLLI group walking along the trail in the distance until I examined the photo. The background elements enhance the image of the tree.

The nearby 10-inch-diameter sycamore, backdropped by the slough, does not project the same attractive bark countenance.

Always on the lookout for tree form curiosities and oddities, I found intrigue and mystery in water oak. The bloated, convoluted form signals internal decay…or alternatively viral and or bacterial infection emanatring from an old wound. In reality, I can’t say for certain. The tree is grossly mishapen due to some combination of physical and biological factors. The tree may be hollow…or it may have exotic wood grain within. Were I a bowl-turner of wood craftsman, I might have greater interest in what lay hidden beneath the bark.

Here is my 51-second video of the contorted water oak:

Although we classifed our OLLI outing as as a Nature Walk, the group soon advance beyond me in the damp afternoon. I was content to proceed at a Nature Walk pace, seeking novelties hidden in pain sight.

Woodland Fungi

Numerous and varied mushrooms attracted my attention. Oysters, one of my favorite edibles, grew on a downed trunk just off the trail. I harvested a cluster, with a primary purpose of showing the group far ahead what they had missed as they commited the unpardonable sin of walking through the forest rather that sauntering within the forest. I admit to a secondary purpose — making sure that I protected enough of the cluster to saute with tomorrow morning’s eggs!

Not nearly as large and conspicuous, trooping crumble cap mushrooms appeared to live uo to their name, marching across the sodden litter.

I failed capture a decent photo of the large colony of amber jelly mushrooms we encountered after we connected with the full OLLI group as we returned to the parking lot. All local jelly mushrooms are edible. I the interest of Nature education and interpretation, I collected a handful of the jellies. These were among the largest individuals I have found. Were I foraging on a property where I had permission to harvest, I could have collected a bucketful of both amber jelly and oysters. Here are my educational samples cleaned and ready for simmering, should my interpretive purposes be fulfilled!

Only during retirement have I begun my pursuit of edible mushrooms, beginning with oysters and evolving through a currect set of nearly one dozen species more or less common in northern Alabama. Lion’s mane is my favorite; I don’t find it as often as I would like. I love morrels, but I am afriad that we lie south of their preferred range. I even like the common puffballs and meadow mushrooms that I find in neighborhood lawns and athletic fields. I hold fast to several foraging rules I have adopted:

Eat only those species for which my certainty is 100 percent
Never consume an uncooked mushroom
Clean harvested mushrooms to remove most of the associated insect and slug protein
Urge potential foragers to do extensive homework — don’t take my word for anything
Don’t chew off more than you can bite — a twist on the more common advice to not bite off more than you can chew

The process of foraging, cleaning, cooking, and packaging is time consuming. At the completion of this chanterelle foraging venture three years ago, I felt like I had chewed off more than I could bite!

Mushroom foraging is an active hobby, and a great way to learn about new facets of the forest ecosystem. Both oysters and jellies are the reproductive organs (spore-producing), chanterelles are associated with myc0rhizal fungi which form essential symbiotic relationships with tree roots.

Clearing Sky

We’ve watched the news of Helene’s devastation from Category Four impact at Florida’s Big Bend to its record-setting rainfall and flooding through Georgia, the Carolnas, Virginia, and Tennessee. Much of the most flood-ravaged region lies within the upper Tennessee River Basin. Almost without exception, the storm delivered from five to 30+ inches upstream from Chattanooga, including the French Broad Basin and Asheville. I measured just 1.51 inches in my Madison, Alabama backyard gauge. We were fortunate to be far west of the track. The clearing sky at Point Mallard revealed no damage…only the damp beauty of parting clouds.

I recorded this 46-second video of promising evening freshened by the departing showers.

I great egret likewise welcomed the drying weather. With the slough behind me, the egret stands in a wetland pondadjacent to the Park golf course. Egrets and herons elevate the esthetic value of such recreational venues, and amplify the ecosystem integrity and ecological complexity of revirside Park.

I felt blessed just five weeks after total right knee replacement surgery to return to Nature’s glory on such a placid evening on gentle trails. I’m rekindld, rejevenated, and grateful!

Thoughts and Reflections

I offer these observations:

Gloomy skies and rainy days can lift routine Nature to a level of exceptional beauty.
Nature’s ferocity (i.e. Helene in the southern Appalachians) often displays a softer side, in this case, three days of gentle showers in the Huntsville area.
When we contemplate the whole globe as one great dewdrop, striped and dotted with continents and islands, flying through space with other stars all singing and shining together as one, the whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty. (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 & photographeerved.”

And Third: I am availabd by Stephen B. Jones. Please circulate images with photo credit: “©2024 Steve Jones, Great Blue Heron LLC. All Rights Resle for Nature-Inspired Speaking, Writing, and Consulting — contact me at steve.jones.0524@gmail.com

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

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

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

Vision:

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

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

Steve’s Four Books

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

I began writing books and Posts for several reasons:

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

Fungi and Other Discoveries along the Hickory Cove Nature Preserve’s Legacy Loop Trail

October 8, 2024/in Updates /by Steve Jones

July 30, 2024, my two Alabama grandsons accompanied me on my first visit to the Land Trust of North Alabama’s Hickory Cove Nature Preserve northeast of Huntsville. We sauntered along the 1.75-mile Legacy Loop. I set the slow pace making observations and snapping photographs of mushrooms and other interesting features along the trail. They alternately surged ahead and fell behind, mostly the former.

Every north Alabama trail is rich with human history. Native Americans occupied these lands for 13 millennia, leaving few obvious traces. European settlers left their mark more visibly and indelibly. A few hundred feet into the forest, a side trail directed us to the spring house, a sure indication of prior domestication, and a clear suggestion that Hickory Cove is not wilderness by the untrammled by the hand of man definition. Wildness, certainly; wilderness, no.

Sam stands at the old spring house foundation, likely an early 19th Century refrigeration construct for surviving here in the deep south prior to electricity and modern food preservation. The concrete trough (right) sits 100 feet downhill, still at brimful. I wondered whether our Native antecedents tapped this natural water source.

Trailside Fungi

I repeat often my observation that death is an essential facet of life in the forest. Sometimes an agent of tree death and always a primary decomposer, fungi are ubiquitous in our north Alabama forests. Usually invisible inside wood, among ground-level organic matter, and within forest soils, fungi hyphae are active year-round. They periodically manifest as mushrooms, their reproductive organs, spewing billions of spores to generate new colonies. A curry bolete drew our attention, its red cap waving a banner.

Most boletes are mycorhizal, sprouting from hyphae within the soil adjacent to roots (ectomycorrhizae) or alternatively within tree roots (endomycorrhizae), often symbiotically engaged with fine roots and root hairs of trees. This group of fungi includes neither pathogens or decomposers.

We also identified violet-grey boletes.

Six inches across, wood mushrooms demanded that we stop to examine and photograph.

Pale yellow Amanita had begun to fade and break apart; even decomposing fungi produce mushrooms subject, as are all organisms, to biological breakdown. It’s the common tale of ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

Examining the photo above right, I spotted a rock-critter lurking behind the Amanita. What is this woodland denizen? I asked my immediate family. They saw a bear, dog, bighorn sheep, and turtle. Such it is with clouds, forest limestone rocks, and oddly shaped trees!

I’m reminded once again of Albert Einstein’s delightful fascination with imagination:

Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.

Fairy parachute mushrooms encircle the base of this dead cedar tree. An invasionary airborne fairy battalion dropped in the night prior, now huddled around the cedar awaiting a call to action.

My iNaturalist hesitantly identified these as turkey tail mushrooms (Trametes versicolor), also listing several species from the Stereum genus as possibilities. Rather than declare turkey tail, I will go with genus Stereum. This colony appears to be thriving on a recently fallen red oak.

Toothed crust mushrooms coat this mature hickory. A single deer mushroom stands at the edge. Tree moss clings to the trunk at the far left margin. I recall hiking within the rain forests of southeat Alaska, where nary a forest surface is absent some kind growth. We do not qualify as rain forest, albeit 55 inches annually is a lot of rain.

A closer look at the crust mushroom corroborates its moniker.

We found Trametes cubensis growing among tree moss on the deeply furrowed bark of a chestnut oak.

An edible mushroon, white-pored chicken of the woods visually decried its presence near the trail. The Land Trust prohibits collecting anything on its preserves. The boys and I made our observations, snapped a photograph, and left the mushroom behind.

Many of our native vines (muscadine, scuppernog, Virgina creeper, and poison ivy) ascend into the upper canopy by attaching their air roots to rising tree stems and branches. Supplejack instead climbs by spiraling with companion vines or woody branches of trees and shrubs. I love the weakly striped perennially green stems.

Sam found two whitelips snails flourishing along the trail. We stopped to examine them. They continued along their merry way, at what we assessed as faster than a snail’s pace!

Many trees in our second (or third) growth forests are survivors from the prior generation. Imagine a prior landowner harvesting firewood, fenceposts, pulpwood, and scattered sawlogs around the time of the Second World War. The operation did not remove every tree, leaving hollow snags such as this red oak. It survived until this spring when its thin wood rind could no longer resist the forces of wind and gravity. Sam stands at left beside the hollow shell stump, which half-houses the accumulation of composted organic matter collected over a century or more. Just across the trail, Sam poses at the tree’s top where it leans almost vertically against another tree.

I took delight when Sam discovered the carcas and understood its story. I recorded this 58-second video at the scene. I’ve observed previously in these photo essays that a picture is worth a thousand words, and a brief video is priceless!

Nearly every north Alabama forest I explore dates its origins back 80-90 years. This 12-inch diameter green ash fell across the trail this summer. Crews made a clean chainsaw cut to remove it. Ash rings are very easy to discern and count. This cross-section, just a foot or two above the root collar, reads 86 years!

There are many stories revealed by a walk through the woods with grandsons. Knowing that Pap was scheduled for knee replacement surgery on August 20, the boys tried to stay within sight. My right knee hobbled me, subjecting me to unsteadiness and an inability to recover when and if I stumbled. About halfway, I did lose my balance and go down…it seemed to happen in slow motion. I’ve been stumbling in the woods for 70 years. I was unruffled; they were concerned. It seems just a few turns of the years that I was introducing their Mom (daughter Katy) to woodland wanders, then a few years when I carried these young men as babes when hiking, and now it is they who helped me back on my feet and offered assistence when the footing looked tenuous.

Einstein’s wisdom extended far beyond theoretical physics. Relative to my musings on my relationship to chldren and grandchildren, he observed:

Our death is not an end if we can live on in our children and the younger generation. For they are us; our bodies are only wilted leaves on the tree of life.

Thoughts and Reflections

I offer these observations:

Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand. (Albert Einstein)
Our death is not an end if we can live on in our children and the younger generation. For they are us; our bodies are only wilted leaves on the tree of life. (Albert Einstein)
Death and decomposition are a big part of life in the forest.

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

Note: Unless otherwise noted, all blog post images are created & photographed by Stephen B. Jones. Please circulate images with photo credit: “©2024 Steve Jones, Great Blue Heron LLC. All Rights Reserved.”

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

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

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

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

Vision:

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

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

Steve’s Four Books

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

I began writing books and Posts for several reasons:

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

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.

Brief Form Post # 36: Late August Afternoon along Indian Creek

October 2, 2024/in Updates /by Steve Jones

I am pleased to add the 36th of my GBH Brief Form Posts (Less than five minutes to read!) to my website. I tend to get a bit wordy with my routine Posts. I don’t want my enthusiasm for thoroughness and detail to discourage readers. So, I will publish these brief Posts regularly.

On Friday, August 9, 2024, I stopped by Huntsville, Alabama’s Indian Creek Greenway to trek a couple of miles to capture images of mid-summer flowers, trees, seasonal breezes, and the mood of Indian Creek in the late afternoon shade. I focus this brief form Post on my creekside wanderings off of the greenway.

Here is the 59-second video that takes us from the greenway to Indian Creek:

I’ve seen the creek at this placid mid-summer level and I’ve visited the southern trailhead when flood water lapped at the signpost. An urban stream, Indian Creek flashes quickly with summer thunderstorm downpours and drenching winter and spring rains. On this August afternoon, the creek flowed placidly within its forest-sheltered bed and trickled to the right at a diversion deposited by a spring flood.

I recorded this 60-second video creekside:

I saw a short video recently. Its brief caption read, “A picture paints a thousanad words; a video is priceless.” I believe that by including these brief videos, I leave you with a deeper understanding of and appreciation for the beauty, magic, awe, inspiration, and wonder of the special places I visit here in my northern Alabama region. I remind readers that nothing in Nature is static. For example, Indian Creek is moody, showing this placid demeanor during the low flow of dry summer periods, and contrarily expressing flooding ferocity in response to summer downpurs and dormant season monsoonal spells.

I wondered when I spotted this 30-inch-diamter streambank sweetgum whether its scarred base evidenced floodwater debris battering, which would have made a convincing segue from the floodwater narrative. However, the tortured base is at 90 degrees to the stream flow. Instead, I have seen similar scarring on trees gnawed by beavers many years earlier. The chewing opens an infection court to decay fungi. Long after the guilty rodent fails to fell the tree and departs the scene, the scar persists and the wound deepens.

I return to the peaceful waters with this 40-second video:

This late summer creeping lilyturf in full flower caught my eye with its deep green grass-like foliage and sparkling white spikes. Even its name attracts and retains attention.

I leave you with this final 56-second video of streamside trees and the creek, a gnarled old easern red cedar, and a view back to the greenway:

While soothing and peaceful on this late summer afternoon, this is a harsh environment. Streambank scouring exposes roots. Flood-borne debris punishes trees and shrubs, and torrents power stream channel meanders that alter the creek’s passage across its wide floodplain. Again, nothing in Nature is static.

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. John Muir captured Nature sentiments far better than I, hence I borrow his reflection on flowing waters:

The rivers flow not past, but through us, thrilling, tingling, vibrating every fiber and cell of the substance of our bodies, making them glide and sing.

[Note] I’m publishing this Post six weeks following my August 20, 2024 total right knee replacement surgery. Progressing rapidly, I will soon be surpassing the strength, endurance, and stability afforded me on August 9, when I plodded along Indian Creek to capture images and videos for the photo essay.

Bats Emerging at Sauta Cave National Wildlife Refuge

September 25, 2024/in Updates /by Steve Jones

I co-led an Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (University of Alabama in Huntsville) outing on August 2, 2024, to observe 200-400,000 gray bats emerge at Sauta Cave National Wildlife Refuge. We arrived at 7:00 PM anticipating the 7:45 PM sunset triggering the mass exodus. I first visited the cave in September of 2023, realizing that the bats had already migrated from their summer home. We were hoping for greater success on this excursion.

Arriving at the Refuge

We arrived an hour before sunset and entered the 264-acre refuge to explore with time to spare before posting at the cave for the grand sunset bat show.

I recorded this 59-second video as we entered the refuge.

The cave lies just several hundred feet beyond the parking area. We stopped by the viewing deck which is positioned to see the gated and secured cave, the sheltered forest within a natural amphitheatre backed by a cliff face framing the cave opening, and surrounded by a bowl of protective forest with open sky above.

The setting reminded me of an Appalachian Mountain cove, rich with deep limestone-derived soils, dark shade, abundant seeping moisture, and lush shrub and tree growth. Elderberry loaded with ripening fruit stood at the deck railng (left). Tall ironweed in full flower was nearby at right.

The cave literally emerges from the rock ledges. I wondered how many millennia have gray bats sought diurnal seasonal shelter at this location. US Route 72 is within earshot. That’s relatively recent in the tale of Sauta Cave. To what extent has it affected the bats? Lake Guntersville’s backwaters lap at the old road edging the Refuge. The lake stretches 75 miles and covers 69,100 acres of easy pickings for insect-foraging bats. Prior to the 1930s, the undammed Tennessee River extended those same 75 miles. Have the bats noticed the change since engineers completed the dam? When Native Americans first occupied the valley 13,000 years ago, did the bats notice…or care? The Refuge placed steel bars at the cave’s entrance. Prior to that, I suppose humans occasionally sought shelter. Did the bats mind?

Awaiting the Period of Emergence

With time to spare before sunset triggered bat emergence, we walked the old road that took us past the cave and its viewing deck, Lake Guntersville backwaters and marsh to our left and forested hillside to the right. A typical humid summer evening embraced us.

This 59-second video captures the group passing time returning to the cave as the sky darkened prematurely ahead of the sunset.

We crossed a power line, presenting a view of the wooded hills, wherein the cave resides, and the clouds building to our west.

We encountered bears foot in flower along the trail. I suppose its large leaf earns the moniker.

Brown eyed Susans also flourished at the road’s edge.

A hillside seepage crossed the old road and entered the Lake Guntersville mud flats.

Rain began in earnest as we returned to the viewing platform. I recorded this 57-second video as we hunkered against the passing shower.

One who is uncertain about being in the presence of so many airborne mammals might find the cave and its environs dark and foreboding. I viewed the rain-drearied entrance with anticipation and exhilaration. I awaited the first emergents nearly breathlessly. Raw Nature inspires me to the core.

The iron gate keeps humans out, but does not impede bat passage.

Alas, our friends did not disappoint us. Tons of insects were about to sate the massive appetite of hundreds of thousands of hungry bats. I wonder how much each bat consumed. What insect species and by what proportion? How far did the bats range? What other colonies intermixed over the Sauta foraging range? Nature’s mysteries never fail to encourage me to look more deeply. Albert Einstein shared my sentiments:

Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better. I have no special talents; I am only passionately curious.

Here is the 59-second video I recorded during peak flow:

Because bat movement is rapid, I tried this 35-second video that ends with a brief period recorded in slow motion:

Nature-Buoyed Aging and Healing Reflections

I’m drafting the narrative for this photo essay on September 6, 2024, 18 days since my total right knee replacement surgery. We visited Sauta Cave 18 days before the replacement, within the range of growing pre-operative anxiety. I knew what to expect from having my left knee surgery in January 2024, and that heightened my angst. Recovery physical therapy is demanding and painful. Serious swelling exacerbated my January/February rehabilitation. By August 2, 2024, my left knee performed better than it had in many years, and here I was about to muscle through another joint surgery and rigorous PT.

Good news! Just two-and-one-half-weeks since the right knee surgery, I am walking in the neighborhood with only a trekking pole, having graduated from a walker to a cane and now cane-free. I’ve averaged two hours of PT per day. Swelling has not been unusual. My recovery pace far exceeds what I experienced in January. I see ahead an enticing sequence of greenways, gentle woods trails, and eventually tough, hilly, and rocky forest ventures as we enter the joyous cool days of our dormant season.

Noone among us knows how many more hikes lie before us.

Thoughts and Reflections

I offer these observations:

This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never all dried at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal sunset, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls. (John Muir)
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better. I have no special talents; I am only passionately curious. (Albert Einstein)
When we contemplate the whole globe as one great dewdrop, striped and dotted with continents and islands, flying through space with other stars all singing and shining together as one, the whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty. (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. Please circulate images with photo credit: “©2024 Steve Jones, Great Blue Heron LLC. All Rights Reserved.”

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

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

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

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

Vision:

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

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

Steve’s Four Books

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

I began writing books and Posts for several reasons:

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

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

September 17, 2024/in Updates /by Steve Jones

[Note]

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

The Photo Essay

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nothing in Nature is Static

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thoughts and Reflections

I offer these observations:

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

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

Note: Unless otherwise noted, all blog post images are created & photographed by Stephen B. Jones. Please circulate images with photo credit: “©2024 Steve Jones, Great Blue Heron LLC. All Rights Reserved.”

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

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

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

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

Vision:

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

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

Steve’s Four Books

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

I began writing books and Posts for several reasons:

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

Trees of the Hickory Cove Nature Preserve’s Legacy Loop Trail

September 10, 2024/in Updates /by Steve Jones

On July 30, 2024, my two Alabama grandsons accompanied me on my first visit to the Land Trust of North Alabama’s Hickory Cove Nature Preserve northeast of Huntsville. We trekked along the 1.75-mile Legacy Loop. I set a slow pace making observations and snapping photographs. They alternately surged ahead and fell behind, mostly the former.

So much mystery and magic lie hidden in plain sight. I’ve confirmed from leading dozens of Nature hikes that most people observe little without someone drawing their attention to the unseen. Even Jack and Sam, the frequent objects of my badgering them to look, look, and look, walked past this trailside honey locust and its multiforked thorns until I halted them to LOOK! The compound thorns are unique to this species. I’ve heard from farmers that the spikes can penetrate and flatten a tractor tire. The honey locust’s rigid platy bark is another distinctive feature.

Near the trailhead, this hickory (the trail bears this species’ name) delivered three messages: the diamond trail sign; a fuzzy poison ivy vine, saying ‘stay alert’; and a softball-plus sized burl, encouraging me to look for tree form oddities and peculiarities. I have friends who turn gorgeous bowls from such burls!

We found fallen hickory nuts frequently along the trail. Somehow, in a flash, we’ve gone from spring’s bursting to mature hickory nuts. I’m reminded of my maternal grandmothers’ timeless wisdom, which from my then young perspective seemed absurd, “The older I get, the faster time goes.” Oh, how true…how painfully valid!

Another observation derives from this simple image of the boys (Sam is hidden by Jack’s larger body). I wanted to photograph the trail as they surged ahead. The symbolic meaning is poignant and rich with meaning. The trail and these young men will travel more deeply into the future than I. I am not ready to cease my woods-wanderings, yet I know I am slowing, and in time the boys will trek beyond my final loop. The best I can do is ensure that the memories of these days will accompany them. I’m reminded and comforted by Einstein’s relevant observation:

Our death is not an end if we can live on in our children and the younger generation. For they are us; our bodies are only wilted leaves on the tree of life.

I recorded this 58-second video that begins with the boys trekking along the trail.

The burl did remind me to be ever alert to forest treasures. To the extent time allowed, I thrilled at the ways of glaciers during my four years in Alaska. Few people sauntering the forests of north Alabama would have seen what appeared to me in the forked white oak image below. The green moss glacier is spilling from the gap between the two towering peaks. I imagine a vast green icefield beyond the gap. But then a mosquito whined, jerking me back to latitude 36-degrees North, 1,100 feet above sea level. Shamelessly again borrowing from Albert Einstein:

Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.

I am sure that a nether world lies within this shrinking three-inch diameter hickory portal, not one of evil spirit, but a dimension alive with the timeless entities that have dwelled within the forests of old and will populate future forests until the last leaf drops. Returning to the objective world of science, I am puzzled that no critter, neither bird nor mammal, is laboring to prevent the tree from completing its efforts to callous over the portal.

Neither oddity or curiosity, tree bark is distinctive enough that AI apps like iNaturalist can identify species somewhat reliably. I have spent enough time woods-wandering that I, too, do reasonably well. I love the foolproof pattern of shagbark hickory (left) and green ash. People who do not possess learned woodland savvy marvel at those of us who spout off species names with just a glance at a tree trunk. Seventy-three years can familiarize even a big dummy with species peculiarities. When my car engine light flashes or I hear unusual engine noises, I open the latch and lift the hood, peering into the threatening morass of wires, hoses, and bolts. I am as lost as the engineer in the woods who can’t tell oak from maple.

The Hickory Cove property is dense with cedars, a north Alabama early successional species, that courtesy of birds consuming cedar berries and disseminating the scarified seeds, colonized this site 90 years ago. Below is one of the more handsome cedars we encountered, standing tall and reaching into the main canopy.

Most of its cohorts have long since succumbed to hardwood competitors that now dominate this evolving forest. Resistant to decay, the old cedar stems remain visible, evidencing their place in stand succession.

Other cedars have died more recently, their slowly decaying stems still standing as understory and intermediate canopy snags.

Others are clinging to life, gathering only enough sunlight to hang on with a barely surviving living branch or two.

I recorded this 57-second cedar-centered video, examining a stand surrounding a remnant eastern red cedar sentry along the trail:

I spotted just this one cedar seedling. Unless some catastrophic event (fire, wind, ice, or harvest) brings widespread sunlight to the forest floor, cedar will not succeed itself.

The forest has many stories to tell. This cedar sported a strand of barbed wire, long since grown over by the tree. Its story? Someone used the living tree as a fence post many years ago, perhaps marking a boundary or unimproved pasture. The abundance of cedar suggests that much of this evolving forest succeeded from abandoned pasture. Not all forest stories are easy to read. Were it my land, I would devote more time to reading its forested landscape.

This old cedar and its neighboring hickory grew for decades side by side. A cedar fork reached across the hickory trunk, agitating the hickory, which did what any vibrant and rapidly growing tree would do…grow around the cedar invading its space!

Like a snake attempting to swallow a hapless frog, the hickory, in decades-long slow motion, appears to be consuming the now dead cedar branch. Now this certainly qualifies as a tree form oddity and curiosity!

Gravity is in fact a persistent, powerful, and abiding force. Two natural and oppositional forces help guide the direction of tree growth. Some species, like our common sourwood are predominately positively phototropic. They often adopt a corkscrew posture as they seek sunlight. Most of our forest main canopy species are negatively geotropic, strict adherents to growing opposite the pull of gravity. Regardless of what guides their vertical growth, gravity eventually pulls them down. Like time, gravity is undefeated. In this case, a large adjacent tree halted the oak’s fall at about 30-degrees from vertical.

I consider this a different class of tree form oddity. Its days as a leaner are numbered. As in all elements of Nature, nothing is static. Gravity has never lost a contest.

I remain a big fan of forest bridges…for two reasons. First, my bum right knee prefers that I not scramble down and back up this steep and stony gully. Second, I admire the aesthetic of a wooden crossing.

I recorded this 40-second video at the bridge, beginning with the boys crossing it.

At age 73, I find reward in where my forest wanderings take me. Decades ago, I demanded thrill, rugged terrain, spectacular vistas, and special features. I recall trails I will never again venture. Among them, ascending Mount Verstovia above Sitka, Alaska; circuiting Jenny Lake at the east base of Grand Teton; and attempting Mount Washington mid-winter. Approaching midway into my eighth decade, I find beauty, magic, wonder, awe, inspiration, and reward in a 1.75-mile loop close to home.

Thoughts and Reflections

I offer these observations:

My criteria for hiking adventure, daring, and reward relax with my age.
Our death is not an end if we can live on in our children and the younger generation. For they are us; our bodies are only wilted leaves on the tree of life. (Albert Einstein)
Every tree and forest has a story to tell; my goal is to read every forested landscape.

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

Note: Unless otherwise noted, all blog post images are created & photographed by Stephen B. Jones. Please circulate images with photo credit: “©2024 Steve Jones, Great Blue Heron LLC. All Rights Reserved.”

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

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

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

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

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

Vision:

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

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

Steve’s Four Books

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

I began writing books and Posts for several reasons:

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

Near-Solstice Sunset Over Huntsville, from Blevins Gap Nature Preserve

July 31, 2024/in Updates /by Steve Jones

I assist fellow retired forester Chris Stuhlinger who leads the OLLI (Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Alabama in Huntsville) Outdoor Member Interest Group (OMIG). Friday evening June 21, 2024, approximately 15 of the 100 OMIG members participated in a two-mile hike along the Blevins Gap Nature Preserve’s Varnedoe Trail, returning us to the trailhead parking lot to view sunset over Huntsville, Alabama, and the Tennessee Valley.

I offer observations, reflections, photos, and two short videos on what caught my eye along the trail and the special sights and inspirations of a Solstice sunset.

Gathering

Chris (blue shirt and arm gesture) welcomed us at the trailhead.

Chris and I lead two types of walks for OLLI: hikes and Nature walks. This one is dubbed a hike. Knowing that, I am sure to fall behind because I stop frequently to explore, examine, and photograph. And so it developed, yet I made it to the sunset viewing with time to spare!

Two-Mile Evening Hike

We spent most of our hike along the Varnedoe Trail.

Because most OLLI members are retirees we represent an age cohort that I would have considered ancient when I was 30! Today from my viewpoint of 73 (nearly three-quarters of a century), the photo below shows a couple of hardy “young” men coursing along the trail! See the smiles; ignore the grunts and heavy breathing!

I recorded this 55-second video to capture the mood and character of the forest and the seasoned saunterers trekking toward the sunset:

No, I mean the literal sunset…not some oblique symbolic intimation that we are approaching our life’s sunset from a long-ago and distant dawn. However, I must admit to pondering that coming final sunset that we all must face. I see irony in writing these words above a photo of my four hiking companions rounding a fallen hickory tree. Every day wandering forests I am reminded that father time and gravity are undefeated.

Nothing in our forests is static. People unfamiliar with the ways of forests believe that our forests are unchanging. Yet recently fallen trees (left) relate a different tale. Below right, Bob paused to photograph the large tree’s moss skirt while standing in a hollow…a depression…created by a large tree that tumbled many decades ago, lifting its root ball forming the pit. That fallen tree has long since decomposed, leaving only the pit and mound from its wind-driven demise.

I’ve observed often that every tree in every forest has a story to tell. This oak retains the scar of a lightning strike that traveled down (or up) the tree’s spiral grain years ago, long enough to permit the tree to callous over the open wound created by the searing blast.

Earlier this spring trail maintenance crews removed a section from this black locust tree that fell across the trail. The fresh cut reveals the story of this tree’s life. The cut face is about three feet from the trunk’s base. An old sapling-aged wound (a buck rub?) served as an infection court for a decay fungus. The vigorous young locust successfully calloused over the wound. I rough-counted 70-80 annual rings. Because black locust is a pioneer species requiring full sunlight to establish and prosper, I deduce that the entire stand is 70-90 years old, established following timber harvesting mid Twentieth Century.

The trail by-passed another fallen oak, this one wrenched violently from the ground as evidenced by the roots that made a valiant effort to resist the overwhelming pull of gravity. Some of my forestry student colleagues wondered all those many years ago why we were required to take Physics. One only ponder the forces at work in this photograph to yield a partial answer.

Taking those few photographs and pondering the meaning is the reason I (and John Muir among others) insist upon sauntering within the forest…eschewing hell-bent hiking through the forest.

Noteworthy Plants Encountered

Although my forester’s eye is drawn to trees, I do not limit my gaze and interest to the overstory denizens. Indian plantain welcomed us along the trail. There is a time to every season and apparently summer solstice is the time for this species to flower.

Head high in places, we walked through an understory garden. I don’t recall previously seeing such a robust colony.

Black cohosh, also is full flower, intermixed where the plantain flourished, suggesting that both species share a soil-site preference. I focused my doctoral research on the soil-site relationships of Allegheny Hardwoods in NW Pennsylvania and SW New York. An ancient ember from that three-year intensive field and literature investigation still smolders within, imploring me to learn more about why the plantain and cohosh thrive along this limited mountainside stretch.

My curiosity spurs from the same entreaty that stirred Albert Einstein when he observed, “Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.” He also said, “I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.”

Just a few weeks ago I encountered a rusty blackhaw in full flower at Joe Wheeler State Park. Now, the season has raced forward to this rusty blackhaw with fully developed (not yet ripe) fruit. I appreciate its glossy, somewhat waxy leaves.

I am certain that I missed many other features worthy of examination, but sunset would not be delayed by further exploration!

Milk-white Toothed Polypore

Well, I could not resist a brief sauntering interruption. How could even the most ardent through-hiker not delay to photograph the trailside milk-white toothed polypore? Like the locust, this red oak had fallen across the trail. Wikipedia described this species: “Irpex lacteus is a white rot fungus that inhabits mainly angiosperm (hardwoods) branches and trunks. It is one of the most common wood-rotting fungi for instance in urban North America. It is inedible.”

At first, iNaturalist identified this specimen as the very delightfully-named dog vomit slime mold, which I questioned at home with reference books. The slime mold (not a fungus) is more amorphous, appearing as an unconsolidated mass. The polypore has distinctive fungal characteristics.

The pending sunset, not at all amorphous, awaited us.

Sunset

I asked several people watching the sunset to point west. Without fail, everyone confidently directed me toward the setting sun. However, only the equinox sunsets would drop the sun due west. At our latitude, the summer solstice sun sets 30 north of due west. During our four years residing in Fairbanks, Alaska, the summer solstice sun set at 80 degrees north of west!

As I’ve mentioned many times previously, a still photograph is worth a thousand words; a brief video offers another order of magnitude increase in the strength of story told. I captured the essence in this 54-second video:

The image tells a tale that my words cannot enrich.

My two Alabama grandsons (Jack, the taller 16 years, and Sam 10 years) accompanied me.

Albert Einstein encapsulated my delight in sharing Nature’s magic with Sam and Jack:

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.

The sunset progressed rhythmically: 7:55 and 8:00 PM.

At 8:02 the sun kissed the horizon. My tree of life will live on through many future sunsets…long after my wilted leaves drop.

Thoughts and Reflections

I offer these observations:

Every sunset brings the promise of a new dawn. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better. I have no special talents; I am only passionately curious. (Albert Einstein)
The world is big and I want to have a good look at it before it gets dark. (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. Please circulate images with photo credit: “©2024 Steve Jones, Great Blue Heron LLC. All Rights Reserved.”

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

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

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

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

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

Vision:

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

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

Steve’s Three Books

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

I began writing books and Posts for several reasons:

I love hiking and exploring 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

All three of my books (Nature Based Leadership; Nature-Inspired Learning and Leading; Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits) present compilations of personal experiences expressing my (and co-author Dr. Wilhoit for Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits) deep passion for Nature. All three books offer observations and reflections on my relationship 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 now have a fourth book, published by Dutton Land and Cattle Company, Dutton Land & Cattle: A Land Legacy Story. Available for purchase directly from me. Watch for details in a future Post.