I am pleased to add the 37th 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 October 30, 2024, 69 days since my total right knee replacement surgery, I ventured solo to the Wells Memorial Trail at Alabama’s Monte Sano State Park. The difficulty is only moderate, yet following five surgeries (including triple bypass) in 16 months, my strength, endurace, and confidence are not up to par. The magnificence of the Well Memorial cove hardwood forest beckoned. I accepted…and subsequently celebrated…the test. I offer these observations, reflections, photos, and brief videos from my afternoon sauntering.
The trailhead is located at Three Benches, a confluence of several trails.
Parked at the bicycle pavillion, I descended toward Wells via the Sinks Trail. The upper slope forest carries thick ropes of grape vine; their leafy vegetation rides the tree canopy, enjoying full sunlight. People assume the grape vines climb the trees. No, the vines originate from seed or vegetative sprouts when the forest begins anew following natural disturbance, agricultural abandonment, or timber harvesting. The young vines reach skyward as the trees grow. The vine on the yellow poplar tree at right did not need to grow a stout trunk to support its wieght; the poplar did the grunt work…the heavy lifting.
My heart soared as I entered the cathedral forest. The trees tower. The changing autumn foliage presented a stained glass backdrop.
My meager words add little…and maybe even detract from…the somber grandeur of this special place.
I recorded this 59-second video along the trail through some hefty, heaven-reaching oaks and hickories:
Conservationist Aldo Leopold once said that he loves trees, then added that he is in love with pine tree. I am in love with northern red oak, the headliner in the Appalachian forests that shaped my life-passion and vocation.
The images of forest and wandering trail need no narrative.
The bird-pecked yellow poplar and its ascent to the heavens asks nothing from me, and in return gives far more than I ask.
One of the three benches and the Wells sign are the surgery-recovery benchmark I sought. I recalled my recreational competetive distance running days (competed against my prior best times) when I crossed the finish line for a marathon. In its special way, reaching the benches was a crossing of equal weight and significance.
I recorded this brief video lying on my back near the trailhead, gazing into the high canopy above me:
Ah, who could ask for more! A large yellow poplar, stunning oaks and hickories, leafy path, and autumn-yellow forest glow.
Here is my 58-second video showing the beckoning trail:
A fallen hollow oak branch served as a hickory nut snackbar.
I ascended back through the upper slope natural grape arbor, completing a notably rewarding hike, a Nature-Buoyed Aging and Healing venture.
I’m grateful that such pleasures are within reach and that I am able to once again thoroughly and delightfully experience them.
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. William Wordsworth captured Nature’s magic in simple beautiful verse:
Come forth into the light of things, let Nature be your teacher.
Feeling the Glow of an overdue return to Nature!
https://stevejonesgbh.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/IMG_5136.jpg-10.30.24-Down-to-Wells-Into-the-Hollow.jpg20161512Steve Joneshttp://stevejonesgbh.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/gbhweblogo.pngSteve Jones2024-11-13 08:54:202024-11-13 08:54:20Brief-Form Post #37: Autumn Mid-Day Descent to Monte Sano's Wells Memorial Trail!
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.”
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
https://stevejonesgbh.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/IMG_4781.jpg-09.29.24-SJ-Wet-Sycamore-scaled.webp25601920Steve Joneshttp://stevejonesgbh.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/gbhweblogo.pngSteve Jones2024-10-22 06:35:452024-10-22 06:35:45Exploring the Forest along Lake Wheeler at Point Mallard Park!
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 wanted to inhale Nature’s summer essence before my total right knee replacement on August 20. I had my left knee replaced on January 23, 2024. I know what to expect. I will be out of my woodland sauntering mode until mid-October when I hope to be on track for the kind of mobility I’ve missed for years! [Note: I’m putting the final touches on this photo essay just a couple of hours after hiking (slowly and cautiously) the one-half-mile Rainbolt Trail on the Rainbow Mountain Nature Preserve in Madison, Alabama on October 13, 2024!]
I entered the greenway at 2:30 PM and enjoyed a drier airmass and lower temperatures. There was no need to deal with the more typical hot, hazy, and humid days of mid-August!
Like so many of our greenways, this one occupies a sewer line right-of-way running through an active flood plain, the overflow triggered several times a year by drenching thunderstorms and prolonged winter and spring rains. The stream ran at a routine summertime flow as I walked along the trail and occasionally penetrated to creekside. I’ll report on my creek-proximate wanderings in a complementary photo essay.
I recorded this 59-second video a few hundred yards from the southern end of the greenway. I began the video with a magnificent green ash tree rising from the forest edge. I remind readers that these urban flood plains are naturally fertile with deep soils routinely refreshed with sediment- and nutrient-laden flood waters. The ash and other riparian forest neighbors express site quality with their height, this ash reaching at least 100 feet above the forest floor.
Here is a still photograph of the subject green ash tree. Well, I must admit that this a screen shot from the video. At the top edge of the photo, leaning in from the opposite greenway edge, a black walnut crown is attempting to close the aerial tunnel over the pedestrian and biking path.
When an old forester (BS in Forestry, 1973) seeks a woodland saunter as he returns home from an OLLI UAH Board meeting, can anyone deny him the joy of focusing a video or two on special trees! I found the mostly sunny skies mesmerizing above the greenway and its trailside forests. This time, I centered the 57-second video around a large shagbark hickory.
There are things I cannot resist, of which one is the complex bark of shagbark hickory, which like the song of a Carolina chickadee says its name.
I am a relentless fan of the writings of Aldo Leopold, America’s consummate conservationist and father of North American wildlife biology. He observed:
Our ability to perceive quality in nature begins, as in art, with the pretty. It expands through successive stages of the beautiful to values as yet uncaptured by language.
Shagbark hickory is a work of art, a consequence of timeless evolution. It’s the only tree of our southern hardwood forests with overlapping plated bark. To what advantage evolutionarily, I ponder? I’ve heard that various woodland bats find shelter under the plates. Do the bats deter foliar-consuming insects, or gobble stem-boring weevils or nut pests? I don’t know the answer, nor did a quick internet query yield an explanation. Leonardo da Vinci may be one of the top five scientific minds of the past 1,000 years. I base my observation that the tree’s bark owes its peculiar nature to evolution on a simple da Vinci quote:
There is no result in nature without a cause; understand the cause and you will have no need of the experiment.
Those in local, state, regional, and national circles of Nature enthusiasts often lament of a species that it is an alien, an invasive, a pest, and other derogatory monikers. Chinese yam is one such interloper growing in profusion at this section of the greenway edge.
An NC State Cooperative Extension online source stated:
Chinese Yam was introduced here as early as the 19th century for culinary and cultural uses and is now considered an invasive plant species in several states. It has spread from Louisiana to Vermont and can form dense masses of vines that cover and kill native vegetation, including trees, within a variety of moist, disturbed habitats. It spreads by seed, tubers and by the small tubers in leaf axils.
I marveled at the small branch tubers, recalling that they are edible. While I do abhor widespread, truly invasive ecosystem-threatening alien plants like Chinese privet and kudzu, I do not get exorcised by Chinese yam. Instead I shall view it as Earth-native and not particularly worthy of calling out the National Guard.
I recorded this 57-second Chinese yam video:
Here is a screenshot of two leaf axil tubers.
Giant ragweed is an impressive plant native. The cluster below has already reached eight feet. An online source spoke of it in ways seeming unkind:
This is an annual herb usually growing up to 2 m (6 ft 7 in) tall, but known to reach over 6 m (20 ft) in rich, moist soils. The tough stems have woody bases and are branching or unbranched. Most leaves are oppositely arranged. The blades are variable in shape, sometimes palmate with five lobes, and often with toothed edges. The largest can be over 25 cm (9.8 in) long by 20 cm (7.9 in) wide. They are borne on petioles several centimeters long. They are glandular and rough in texture.
Ragweed pollen is a common offensive allergen. The plant is a serious agricultural nuisance and a tough weed to control. That it is a native doesn’t make the farmer dealing with it more accepting nor less aggravated.
I’ve been a lifetime proponent of spring ephemeral wildflowers, the woodland beauties that populate the forest floor between the onset of warming days and full leaf-out within the forest canopy. Retirement has enabled me to spend more time appreciating the summer wildflowers that seem happiest along forest edge habitat. Wingstem greeted me along the greenway.
A silvery checkerspot butterfly appreciated the wingstem for reasons other than aesthetic.
Ironweed is a summer perennial member of the aster family. I see it commonly on forest edges. I never tire of its rich color.
I recorded this 34-second video of another common forest edge woody species, osage orange. Maclura pomifera bears many common names, among them: mock orange, hedge apple, bow wood, horse apple, monkey ball, monkey brains, and yellow-wood.
European settlers found that a perimeter of osage orange stakes would self-sprout quickly into a dense fence-tangle of growth effective at protecting vegetable gardens and crops from marauding domestic grazers and foraging wildlife. Native Americans prized the wood for bow-making. I urge readers to dig more deeply into web sources to learn more about this curious and valuable small tree or shrub.
Osage orange is a member of the mulberry family. I recorded this 45-second video of our native red mulberry not far from the osage orange:
European settlers arriving along the Virginia coast in 1607 enthusiastically mentioned the abundance of mulberry, common from Florida to Ontario and west to the plains. Birds consume the sweet fruit and distribute the scarified seeds, which establish readily along edges and across meadows.
Here is my brief red mulberry video:
Black walnut prefers rich well-drained sites along streams like Indian Creek. This cluster of three hefty nuts portends a good walnut crop. Unlike the largely inedible osage orange fruits, many wildlife species lust for big meaty walnuts.
River birch’s moniker does more than hint at its preferred creek and riverside growing sites. I like its pendulant branching and exfoliating bark enough that we planted a three-stemmed specimen in our backyard. Our irrigation system meets its requirement for ample soil moisture even in periodic dry stretches.
I could not resist recording another short video of the greenway, its meadow corridor, the stunning sky, and the narrow forest edge, and a rough path heading to creekside.
Here is the 59-second video that transitions from the greenway through a narrow border forest to creekside:
Note the “candy cane” sewer line ventilation pipe along the greenway.
Were I not scheduled for knee surgery 11 days hence, I may have suppressed my videographic eagerness. However, each is brief and every one offers a unique emphasis. I recorded this 57-second video near my turn-around point at 3:02 PM, focusing on the brilliant sunshine and afternoon breeze (listen to it!), and including a short transit across the forest border to the shore of Indian Creek.
I’ll use this same video to begin my subsequent photo essay highlighting Indian Creek!
Thoughts and Reflections
I offer these observations:
There is no result in nature without a cause; understand the cause and you will have no need of the experiment. (Leonardo da Vinci)
Oh, how insulting to something as beautiful as ironweed to include “weed” in its name!
An urban greenway (along a sewer right-of-way) just 4.5 miles from my home supplies an endless stock of Nature’s fine elixir!
Inhale and absorb Nature’s elixir. May Nature Inspire, Inform, and Reward you!
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
https://stevejonesgbh.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/IMG_4559-1.jpg-08.09.24-scaled.webp25601920Steve Joneshttp://stevejonesgbh.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/gbhweblogo.pngSteve Jones2024-10-16 13:52:202024-10-16 13:52:20An August Afternoon Stroll along Indian Creek Greenway!
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.
https://stevejonesgbh.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/IMG_4524.jpg-08.09.24-2.48-PM-Creek.jpg20161512Steve Joneshttp://stevejonesgbh.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/gbhweblogo.pngSteve Jones2024-10-02 16:28:472024-10-02 16:29:15Brief Form Post # 36: Late August Afternoon along Indian Creek
On Monday, June 24, 2024, I assisted Alabama State Parks Northwest District Naturalist Amber Coger in hosting a 9:00 AM to 4:30 PM Field Day at Monte Sano State Park for the Alabama Master Naturalist Program (AMNP). We hosted a second 25-enrollee Field Day on Saturday, June 29. This photo essay captures the essence of the Field Days with my observations, reflections, photos, and brief videos.
I applaud the Program’s Mission: The Alabama Master Naturalist Program strives to promote awareness, understanding, and respect of Alabama’s natural world to the state’s residents and visitors through science-based information and research.
The State Park System Mission is similar: To acquire and preserve natural areas; to develop, furnish, operate, and maintain recreational facilities, and to extend the public’s knowledge of the state’s natural environment.
My Retirement Mission resonates with both: Employ writing and speaking to educate, inspire, and enable readers and listeners to understand, appreciate, and enjoy Nature… and accept and practice Earth Stewardship.
Because of our mission overlap, I accepted an invitation six years ago to become a founding Board member of the Alabama State Parks Foundation, which has led me to publish scores of my great Blue Heron photo essays inspired by visits to our State Parks. Likewise, for reasons of mission concurrence, I enrolled in the Master Naturalist Program, successfully completing its 20 modules with a GPA of ~95, not bad for an old geezer/forester! I admit, too, to a more sentimental reason for enrolling and assisting in program delivery. From 1996 through 2001, I served as Alabama Cooperative Extension System (ACES) Director, the Mother Ship for the AMNP.
I often seek relevant quotes from great historic scientists, philosophers, artists, conservationists, and other wise forebearers. Their wisdom is timeless, as germane today as during their own era. Few would have imagined that Albert Einstein, a once-in-a-century intellect, theoretical physicist, and whimsical purveyor of human insight years ago penned what could be a tagline suited for all three entities:
Look deep into Nature and then you will understand everything better.
The mountain biker’s pavilion served as a perfect venue as our June 24, classroom.
At 1,600-feet elevation, nestled within the plateau-top forest, comforted by a breeze and ceiling fans, we enjoyed learning and sharing, and meeting new friends and fellow Nature-Nerds!
Here is my 58-second video of our group on the North Plateau Trail…not hiking, but sauntering.
John Muir abhorred the term hiking:
I don’t like either the word [hike] or the thing. People ought to saunter in the mountains – not ‘hike!’ Do you know the origin of that word saunter? It’s a beautiful word. Away back in the middle ages people used to go on pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and when people in the villages through which they passed asked where they were going they would reply, ‘A la sainte terre’, ‘To the Holy Land.’ And so they became known as sainte-terre-ers or saunterers. Now these mountains are our Holy Land, and we ought to saunter through them reverently, not ‘hike’ through them.
Sauntering the deep forest on a summer afternoon super-charges learning.
We paused frequently to identify trees and plants, answer questions, exchange stories, and enjoy scenery.
Several of us admired a dense colony of plantain-leaved pusseytoes.
Even at sauntering pace, 25 people stretched along a single-wide path doesn’t permit the entire group to see and discuss every trailside feature, like this buttonbush. One of the common threads I weave into my writing, speaking, and forest ventures is that so much in Nature is hidden in plain sight, this fascinating flower less than ten feet from the trail serves as an example.
Leaves on the mid-story black gum tree nearly brushed us as we passed. I must remind myself that, if not disciplined to time, I could easily stretch a 2.5-hour saunter into 5-6 hours. I want to tell the story of every tree, flower, shrub, and curiosity along the way.
We noticed yellow buckeye saplings in several locations on June 29, showing early senescence of unknown cause. I won’t speculate.
Occasionally, the trail widened to permit the entire entourage to gather, as was the case when we crossed a power line and later at the overlook.
Near the Park Lodge we all coalesced to explore several features, including this serene underwing moth that fluttered from a shagbark hickory trunk, where it had blended invisibly with the tree’s bark.
As we re-entered the forest from the overlook, me lagging with two stragglers, I spotted an ancient chestnut oak, deeply scarred by a decades-old lightning strike and worthy of recording this short video.
The old oak bore the scar from a searing lightning blast decades earlier. Such strikes can spell instant explosive death or leave a permanent non-fatal wound. Such a wound deadens a strip of the bark vertically, opening an infection court for wood decay organisms that begin their inexorable consumption of the mighty oak from within. The hollow oak will eventually yield to forces of wind and gravity. The rule of thumb is that the tree will topple when the persistent sound wood rind thickness falls below a third of the tree’s diameter at any given point. Can we then attribute the cause of death to lightning? The tree doesn’t care. The cause will be a matter of concern and interest to only a few old foresters and a handful of eager Master Naturalists.
Black locust is rapidly exiting the plateau forests of Monte Sano State Park. An early successional species, black locust likely dominated the younger forest of the 1970-1990s. The black-capped polypore pathogen infects most of the remaining locusts, signaling the trees’ demise with its distinctive shelf fruiting body.
Arthropods
A Master Naturalist knows about all manner of life, including the insects and diverse organisms that constitute Nature’s full ecosystem tapestry. Amber directed participants through an exercise intended to discover life forms residing in shrubs and under logs, leaves, and brush.
Here is my 37-second video of the June 29, arthropod bush-beating exercise:
Field Day participants undertook their task with relish and enthusiasm.
Forest Bathing
Amber introduced participants to the Japanese practice of shinrin-yoku, also known as forest bathing, a form of therapeutic relaxation where one spends time in a forest or natural atmosphere, focusing on sensory engagement to connect with Nature. Each person found a location near the pavilion to seek personal connection. Some chose a bench, leaned against an oak trunk, or chose a grassy spot to lie face-up.
I secured anchorage on an old stone wall (rich with diverse lichen crusting) under the combined shade of a chestnut oak and an adjacent black walnut tree.
The canopies gently swayed under the deep blue firmament. I recorded this 60-second video of the medium in which I soaked…soothing and immersing my body, mind, heart, soul, and spirit.
The view directly above me reminded me that all living creatures, whether the trees reaching high or the serene underwing moth we encountered earlier, draw life-energy from the star around which we orbit.
A different kind of forest bathing visited the Monte Sano Lodge on June 29, as Amber lectured indoors. I captured the summer shower with this 60-second video:
The brief shower quickly drifted to our south.
Closing Reflections
I thought of the deep revelation that John Muir shared as he contemplated the never-ending cycle of life on Earth:
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.
I offered a closing charge to the participants. Louis Bromfield, mid Twentieth Century novelist, playwright, and conservationist, bought what he called his old worn out Ohio farm in the 1930s and subsequently dedicated his life to rehabilitating the health of its land and soils. He tells the story of his passion-driven land-healing in his non-fiction Pleasant Valley (1945):
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 some small corner of this Earth for the better, by wisdom, knowledge, and hard work.
I implored the fledgling Master Naturalists to view their own responsibility to:
promote awareness, understanding, and respect of Alabama’s natural world to the state’s residents and visitors through science-based information and research.
I encouraged them in their own way, to leave the mark of their fleeting existence upon the land and the people they touch…to change some small corner of the Earth for the better, by wisdom, knowledge, and hard work.
As I do with all audiences, I reminded them that people don’t care how much you know…until they know how much you care. Like all worthy conservationists, whether State Park Naturalists, Master Naturalists, or old worn out foresters, we operate most convincingly, effectively, and indelibly when we bring the Power of our Passion to the Service of Reason, in the cause of informed and responsible Earth Stewardship.
Alabama State Parks Foundation
I’ll remind you that although I serve on the Alabama State Parks Foundation Board, in part because of my love of Nature and in recognition of my writing many prior Posts about visiting and experiencing the Parks, any positions or opinions expressed in these Posts are mine alone and do not in any manner represent the Foundation or its Board.
I urge you to take a look at the Foundation website and consider ways you might help steward these magical places: https://asparksfoundation.org/ Perhaps you might think about supporting the Parks System education and interpretation imperative: https://asparksfoundation.org/give-today#a444d6c6-371b-47a2-97da-dd15a5b9da76
The Foundation exists to provide incremental operating and capital support for enhancing our State parks… and your enjoyment of them.
We are blessed in Alabama to have our Park System. Watch for future Great Blue Heron Posts as I continue to explore and enjoy these treasures that belong to us. I urge you to discover the Alabama State Parks near you. Follow the advice of John Muir:
And into the forest I go, to lose my mind and find my soul.
In every walk with Nature one receives far more than he seeks.
I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.
Between every two pines is a doorway to a new world.
Thoughts and Reflections
I offer these observations:
I don’t like either the word [hike] or the thing. People ought to saunter in the mountains – not ‘hike!’ (John Muir)
Look deep into Nature and then you will understand everything better. (Albert Einstein)
We can never have enough of Nature. (Henry David Thoreau)
Inhale and absorb Nature’s elixir. May Nature Inspire, Inform, and Reward you!
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.
https://stevejonesgbh.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/IMG_3908.jpg-06.24.24-11.15-MSSP-N-Plat.jpg20951290Steve Joneshttp://stevejonesgbh.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/gbhweblogo.pngSteve Jones2024-09-04 06:38:042024-09-04 06:38:04Alabama Master Naturalist Field Days at Monte Sano State Park!
Judy and I visited the Vicksburg, Mississippi National Military Park July 15-17, 2024, with our two Alabama grandsons. I focus this photo essay on Time and Nature healing the landscape and spiritual wounds along the Mighty Mississippi. First and foremost, Nature selected the site for this epic battle. Topographic features along the river proved favorable for highways and railroads crossing the river. The river was and remains one of the nation’s most crucial commerce routes. The intersection of river and ground transportation spurred the birth and growth of the city. Vicksburg is situated on the dryland bluffs overlooking the rich flat delta country. The loess hills on the river’s east side provided a superior location for the city’s fortifications to protect the South’s ground and especially the river lifelines. Rich farmland and bottomland hardwood forests surrounded the city.
Here is my 59-second video of today’s barge, rail, and highway avenues of commerce.
Jefferson Davis and Abe Lincoln agreed that “Vicksburg was vital to victory” for both sides of the conflict. The armies converged here in the early summer of 1863. I won’t retell the battle. National Military Park literature and countless articles and books are available for historians and interested laymen. The pamphlet I picked up at the visitors center is a good start.
Federal officials established the Vicksburg NMP in 1899, when the land bore fresh battle scars. Nature was reclaiming gullies and canyons with naturally regenerating hardwood forests, a process that early park caretakers encouraged. At the time of the battle and siege, only a few individual trees and isolated groves dotted the hills.
Cannons and marksmen fired across open fields and denuded gorges. Today the ridgelines bordering the maintained meadows and the gorges separating them are forested, masking the killing fields of 1863.
The pleasant aesthetic of pastoral fields and bordering forests is Nature’s healing handiwork, belying the utter starkness and terrifying reality of thousands of enemy combatants face-to-face across open terrain pitted with craters, abandoned and burning materiel, and carcasses of soldiers and horses. Nature began her healing immediately. As John Muir observed so eloquently about Nature broadly:
Nature is always lovely, invincible, glad, whatever is done and suffered by her creatures. All scars she heals, whether in rocks or water or sky or hearts.
He hinted that Nature heals both Earth-scars and injuries of the heart and spirit, which ran deep at Vicksburg and across the perilously divided nation. Twenty thousand dead and wounded during the campaign, and their affected families, exacted a tremendous toll that extended for generations. Many survivors and loved ones attended the 1899 dedication. Tear-filled eyes and yet-aching hearts observed the ceremony.
In contrast, Nature shed no tears on that 36th year following the battle and siege. None of her wounds proved lasting. What permanent harm results from a few hundred tons of lead and explosives? In May of 1980 Mount Saint Helens blew 0.6 cubic miles from her side and reduced tens of thousands of acres of forests to wasteland…land that now supports vigorous regrowing forests. Nature knows calamity, viewing it as a trigger to renewal. Again, what lasting harm results from a few hundred tons of lead and explosives?
Over 1,400 National Military Park markers and memorials commemorate the engaged individuals and units. Cannons mark the battle lines, hinting at the fiery, deafening, and terrifying fury that prevailed during the extended engagement. I wondered whether any of the combatants gazed into the pastoral future that Park visitors now experience. Perhaps a deep prayer yielded a vision that included warm sun, blue sky, marble monuments, and perpetual peace. As I walked these fields, I felt the presence of the disembodied 20,ooo souls who lost life or limb. I heard them whispering in the treetop breeze.
Near those cannons, I recorded this 57-second wide sweep battlefield video:
The iconic Illinois memorial commands a hilltop Union position, providing a sweeping view of a section of still wide open meadow.
I recorded this 59-second video from the Illinois Memorial:
The ridgeline trees and the forest beyond now frame the memorial. Nature abhors a vacuum; the forest regenerated naturally from the raw abused battlefield.
Northwest Corner of the National Military Park
The Mighty Mississippi meanders across its wide delta. Fort Hill, a key Confederate fortress in 1863, stood directly above a broad curve of the river (see the light blue marking its 1863 course). The river now meanders into the eastside bluffs three miles to the south just above the I-20 and rail bridges. Nothing in Nature is static, not even the delta course of the Mississippi River. Were it occupying its current bed in 1863, Fort Hill would have been constructed above the bridge site.
The view at left shows the Yazoo River Diversion Canal from my observation perch near the old Confederate Fort Hill. The canal and adjoining water basin at right occupy the abandoned Mississippi channel. Features of Nature brought the city, its transportation routes, and the two armies to this location. Its ironic that since the epic siege…an encounter that altered the course of US history…the river, without comment or concern, chose an alternate channel on its endless journey to the Gulf of Mexico. Nature, I am certain, cares little for human causes or the passage of time.
A lonely Confederate cannon reminds us of events here 16 decades ago, long-forgotten by the meandering river.
The USS Cairo, a Union wooden-hulled ironclad sunk by two Confederate mines eight miles upriver in December 1862, sits on a concrete platform near its associated museum. Crews lifted the sunken vessel from its 36-feet-deep watery grave in 1964. A National Park Service online reference tells the recovery and display story:
In 1972, the United States Congress enacted legislation authorizing the National Park Service to accept title to the Cairo and reassemble the remnants for display and preservation in Vicksburg National Military Park. Delays in funding halted progress until June of 1977, when the Cairo was returned to the park and partially reconstructed on a concrete foundation near the Vicksburg National Cemetery. The recovery of artifacts from the Cairo revealed a treasure trove of weapons, munitions, naval stores, and personal property that help tell the story of the sailors that once called the ship home. Many of these artifacts are now on display in the USS Cairo Museum.
I find it ironic that the river drawing the combatants to Vicksburg preserved a massive relevant artifact nearby for a century. The river never intended to be an architect or instrument of warfare, a repository for artifacts, or a convener of armies. It’s mission is singular — provide a conduit for the basin’s excess precipitation to reach sea level.
I’ve observed often in these posts that death is a big part of life in the forests where I wander (and wonder). So, too, is death an unfortunate and intentional outcome of warfare. Honoring and memorializing the fallen is an essential component a National Military Park. The Vicksburg National Cemetery serves as a resting place for 17,000 Federal soldiers, of which 13,000 are unknown. Nothing about the Civil War was civil. Many Confederate soldiers are buried in nearby Cedar Hill Cemetery.
I reflect in my routine photo essays that every tree, every stand, and every forest has a story to tell. Sometimes the secrets are revealed upon examination, stories written in the forested landscape and translated by the astute Nature enthusiast and forensic forest scientist. This cemetery has at least 22,000 stories. I’m reminded of John McCrae’s In Flanders Fields:
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row
That mark our place and in the sky
The larks still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below
We are the dead, short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields, in Flanders fields
Take up our quarrel with the foe
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch be yours to hold it high
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields
I recorded this 58-second video at the cemetery:
The solemnity of the entire Military Park resounds in the cemetery’s quiet beauty and the poet’s voice.
Alabama grandson Sam (10), Jack (16), and Judy pose at our state’s memorial.
I’ve offered our tour of the Vicksburg National Military Park as one of my photo essays. When I captured on-site images and began writing, I had no clear end destination in mind. However the journey charted its course with just a little navigation by me. Like rain on a hillside, I followed gravity, allowing the essay to seek its sea level.
Albert Einstein, I believe would have agreed:
We still do not know one thousandth of one percent of what nature has revealed to us.
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
I don’t claim to comprehend the elements of human and political nature that led to this war, but I contend that understanding the Nature of the location and environs helped me better understand and appreciate the historical moment and the healing consequent to it, both in terms of landscape and spiritual wounds.
Thoughts and Reflections
I offer these observations:
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better. (Albert Einstein)
The river never intended to be an architect or instrument of warfare, a repository for artifacts, or a convener of armies.
Nature is always lovely, invincible, glad, whatever is done and suffered by her creatures. All scars she heals, whether in rocks or water or sky or hearts. (John Muir)
Inhale and absorb Nature’s elixir. May Nature Inspire, Inform, and Reward you!
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.
https://stevejonesgbh.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/IMG_4173.jpg-07.16.24-Vicksburg.jpg20161512Steve Joneshttp://stevejonesgbh.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/gbhweblogo.pngSteve Jones2024-08-26 12:45:102024-08-26 12:45:10Time and Nature Healing Landscape and Spiritual Wounds at Vicksburg, MS
I am pleased to add the 35th of my GBH Brief Form Posts (Less than five minutes to read!) to my website. I 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 Form Posts regularly.
I visited the old lilly pond on Alabama’s 2,140-acre Monte Sano State Park on July 10, 2024, with Amber Coger, Northwest District Park Naturalist. Our primary purpose was to record a short video intended to promote a fall semester Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (University of Alabama in Huntsville) course on Folklore and the Arts at Alabama’s State Parks, to be co-taught by Renee Raney, Chief of Education and Interpretation for the Alabama State Park System, and me. I’ll offer observations, reflections, photographs, and a brief video from our round-trip trek to the pond. I’ll begin at the James O’Shaughnessy 1890 Lilly Lake.
Mr. O’Shaughnessy and his brother opened the 233-room resort in 1887. The hotel ceased operations in 1890. The glory days associated with the hotel were short-lived. The lilly pond and its manicured environment, long since consumed by the growing forest and apparent wilderness, hints at the good times. Little more than swampy wetland, the pond once expressed the location’s grandeur. Over one and one-third century, Nature has reclaimed the lush pond and home grounds. Without tending and intentional actions to maintain the cultivated grounds and the pond, another century of neglect will allow Nature to erase all evidence of former human domestication. Already, the pond is merely a wet place among the encroaching forest. Trees are colonizing even the old pond center.
I wonder, how much longer will the pond moniker fit this mucky place in the forest? For the moment, the old lilly pond serves interpreters and educators like Amber telling the tale of the land.
Amber introduces the fall course in this 58-second video. She and I both recorded a version of the video. Amber’s enthusiasm proved far superior to my dull tired former academic tone and cadence! Here’s Amber!
Three years ago I assisted the Park Superintendent secure funds to establish 25 permanent photo points at key locations across the park. The idea is to snap photos in the four cardinal directions at five year intervals to help tell the story of change over time for visitors 10, 25, 50, and deep into the future. If only someone had started such a photo-chronology here in 1890!
Woodpeckers or squirrels are keeping this chestnut oak cavity open within sight of the pond, providing another facet of the interpretive story.
The interpretive tale will change day to day, to week, to month, across the seasons. We found this amanita mushroom brightening the forest floor. It may be gone tomorrow.
The O’Shaughnessy grounds most certainly included ornamental Chines wisteria plantings, now escaped and growing along the nearby trail.
We stopped to admire the deep-green venation of southern wood violet. So much lies hidden in plain sight.
As we neared the parking area, Amber entered a wetland area to demonstrate the height of a stand of woolgrass.
We kept our trek intentionally brief to accommodate Amber’s subsequent appointment, hence this Brief-Form essay. However, even a short trek reveals many secrets and delights.
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. Because the planned fall course on State Parks folklore prompted our short trek, I borrow these relevant words from Albert Einstein:
If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.
When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than any talent for abstract, positive thinking.
https://stevejonesgbh.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/IMG_4098.jpg-07.10.24-Lilly-Pond.jpg20161512Steve Joneshttp://stevejonesgbh.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/gbhweblogo.pngSteve Jones2024-08-19 08:41:002024-08-20 04:07:45Brief Form Post #35: Visiting the Old Lilly Pond at Monte Sano State Park
I sauntered Rickwood Caverns State Park’s new Karst Trail on May 15, 2024 with Park Manager Bridgette Bennett, Northwest District Naturalist Amber Conger, and fellow Alabama State Park Foundation Board member Tom Cosby (and his wife Gail).
Although we met to discuss Board business, I focus this photo essay to our Nature discoveries along the trail. As with most of our State Parks, Rickwood welcomes visitors with attractive signage.
Our Board business related to discussing Bridgette’s vision for a modern playground at Rickwood and other parks. Rickwood’s is aging, falling short of visitors’ expectations and demands.
Equipment is functional, but merely adequate.
I recorded this 42-second video at the playground and picnic area:
The pool remains a major crowd pleaser.
Karst Trail
As promised, I will focus this Post on the new Karst Trail, constructed to transit the Park’s recently acquired 57 acres, rich with maturing forest and distinctive karst (limestone) topography.
The trail is gentle, relatively flat, and generally free of toe-stubbing roots and ankle-twisting rocks, important features for a guy still recovering from left knee replacement and anticipating replacement for his ailing right knee.
I recorded this 60-second video along the trail:
We dealt with the other worldly thrum of the 13-year cicadas for the entire trek.
Wildflowers and Special Understory Plants
Because I tallied and photographed an impressive array of natural delights, I won’t burden readers with excessive text. In most cases, I will simply offer an identification.
Striped wintergreen presents speckled, white-striped, deep green leaves and the promise of its pearly white flowers, still enclosed by its tight buds.
Small’s sanicle presented its fully open greenish-yellow flowers.
The much more showy and brilliantly white redring milkcap merits my day’s award for floral excellence!
Even the mournful thyris moth expressed hearty approval and appreciation for the flower’s beauty and nectar!
I award rusty blackhaw my shrub with the glossiest leaves recognition.
I am a tireless fan of resurrection fern, an aerial clinging plant that is deep green and turgid when rains moisten trunks where it grows, and desiccates deathlike when dry weather prevails.
This catalog of interesting plants was not exhaustive.
Mushrooms (and friend), Moss, and Lichens
Likewise, I will present just a few of the fungi we encountered. appropriately named, we spotted several clusters of jellied false coral
I find trooping crumble cap mushrooms fascinating. Appearing as helmeted soldiers in formation, the trooping moniker is apropos.
Poised for assault of the trunk, the mushrooms seem enforced by the white oak tree’s mossy skirt.
One of my favorite edible mushrooms, jelly tree ear mushrooms colonized this downed log.
Closer examinations of the wood ears revealed this button snail (our special friend) enjoying either the mushroom or something growing on it.
We identified another mushroom bearing the term troop in its name: cross-veined troop mushroom, similarly massing in formation on a dead standing hardwood snag.
Nature creates unlimited artwork with lichens and mosses on this sugar maple sapling.
Rock moss in spring-dappled sunshine lighted our way, allowing me to introduce and spotlight the Alabama Park System’s first ever Northwest District Naturalist Amber Coger…responsible for education and interpretation staff and programs at Rickwood Caverns, Cathedral Caverns, Lake Lurleen, Joe Wheeler, and Monte Sano State Parks.
A Very Special Treat
I’ve been traversing our Alabama State Parks for seven years without spotting a timber rattlesnake…until this saunter at Rickwood Caverns!
We stopped when we completed our Karst Trail circuit, reflecting on our saunter. I looked down at just one more cicada corpse and noticed at trailside a magnificent timber rattlesnake, lying still with nary a rattle. We admired its beauty, snapped a few photos, and recorded a video, then hurried along without disturbing it.
Here is that 36-second video:
I have too often heard ignorant and poorly educated outdoor recreationists say, “The only good snake is a dead snake.” I won’t attempt to disabuse those incurable malcontents in this Post. Instead I defer to John Muir’s wisdom:
Nevertheless, again and again, in season and out of season, the question comes up, “What are rattlesnakes good for?” As if nothing that does not obviously make for the benefit of man had any right to exist; as if our ways were Gods’ ways…. Anyhow, they are all, head and tail, good for themselves, and we need not begrudge them their share of life.
I turn also to Aldo Leopold:
The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant, “What good is it?” If the land mechanism as a whole is good, then every part is good, whether we understand it or not. If the biota, in the course of aeons, has built something we like but do not understand, then who but a fool would discard seemingly useless parts?
The snake is a permanent resident; we are but visitors and interlopers. We must understand, respect, and revere life that resides within the ecosystems we visit.
Rickwood Cavern
I conclude with two photographs from the cavern…and offer them only with encouragement to visit the Park and experience its underground beauty, magic, wonder, awe, and inspiration!
Alabama State Parks Foundation
I’ll remind you that although I serve on the Alabama State Parks Foundation Board, in part because of my love of Nature and in recognition of my writing many prior Posts about visiting and experiencing the Parks, any positions or opinions expressed in these Posts are mine alone and do not in any manner represent the Foundation or its Board.
I urge you to take a look at the Foundation website and consider ways you might help steward these magical places: https://asparksfoundation.org/ Perhaps you might think about supporting the Parks System education and interpretation imperative: https://asparksfoundation.org/give-today#a444d6c6-371b-47a2-97da-dd15a5b9da76
The Foundation exists to provide incremental operating and capital support for enhancing our State parks… and your enjoyment of them.
We are blessed in Alabama to have our Park System. Watch for future Great Blue Heron Posts as I continue to explore and enjoy these treasures that belong to us. I urge you to discover the Alabama State Parks near you. Follow the advice of John Muir:
And into the forest I go, to lose my mind and find my soul.
In every walk with Nature one receives far more than he seeks.
I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.
Between every two pines is a doorway to a new world.
Thoughts and Reflections
I offer these observations:
We sauntered if for no purpose other than to discover what we did not anticipate.
Sauntering through the forest we discovered treasures sufficient to extend the day and multiply our delight.
I pity those trail travelers busied with their digital device and content only to count their steps.
The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant, “What good is it?” (Aldo Leopold)
Inhale and absorb Nature’s elixir. May Nature Inspire, Inform, and Reward you!
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.
https://stevejonesgbh.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/IMG_3342.jpg-05.15.24-RCSP-Karst-Trail.jpg20161512Steve Joneshttp://stevejonesgbh.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/gbhweblogo.pngSteve Jones2024-07-18 08:43:002024-07-18 08:43:00Nature's Delights Along the New Karst Trail at Alabama's Rickwood Caverns State Park
I am pleased to add the 34th 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.
I am a wanna-be birder, a lifelong Nature enthusiast with a Forestry BS and a PhD in Applied Ecology, and a woodland wanderer wherever my life and travels have taken me. I’ve lived in Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Georgia, Ohio, New Hampshire, North Carolina, West Virginia, and Alaska. I’ve journeyed to and through every state except Hawaii. International travels included Canada, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Kazakhstan, China, Japan, Germany, the Czech Republic, and Yugoslavia. I’ve heard and seen birds everywhere and wished to know their identity and story.
Finally, five years into retirement, I stepped toward learning more about the avian world. I enrolled in a University of Alabama in Huntsville OLLI (Osher Lifelong Learning Institute) North Alabama Birding course taught by Alabama A&M Professor Emeritus of Ornithology, Dr. Ken Ward. Our capstone field lab on April 25, 2024, took us to Madison Alabama’s Creekwood Park and adjacent Indian Creek Greenway, an area Ken described as a spring migration hotspot.
And so right he was! We (he) tallied 68 bird species seen, both seen and heard, or heard. You can review his comprehensive list at the end of this Post. I admit to deferring to his lifetime-trained ears for identifying species by call. He also spotted and identified fleeting images of treetop and brush inhabitants. I have a long way to go to become even an amateur birder. My knowledge and skills can go only in one direction. Ken and my classmates opened me to better ways of looking, hearing, and seeing.
I knew coming into the course that diverse habitats enrich species diversity, whether plants or all manner of living creatures. The Park and Greenway offered such diversity. Open meadows, mowed grass, woods edge, forest, stream, bog, and swamp comprised the areas we observed.
Our spirits soared on a perfect weather morning. Smiles and enthusiasm prevailed, along with a sense of wonder and awe for the avian variety we encountered.
Indian Creek had overflowed its banks more than once over the winter and spring. The forest below retained flood water not yet absorbed or drained, just one of the diverse habitats.
Indian Creek provided fresh flowing water. A mallard drake paddled contentedly at right.
I recorded this 60-second video of the stream at Creekwood Park
A willow thicket at the Park attracted throngs of cedar waxwings foraging willow seeds.
A small feeder freshet surged past butterweed blooms before emptying into Indian Creek.
I recorded this 30-second video of Indian Creek along the Greenway.
Beavers keep the wetland and swamp habitat intact south of the park along the Greenway.
The forester and tree enthusiast within me could not resist this park eastern red cedar, its roots tracing a comprehensive highway map.
I accept the challenge of distilling these Brief-Form Posts into a single distinct reflection, a task far more elusive than assembling a dozen pithy statements. Today, I borrow the words of John James Audubon:
If only the bird with the loveliest song sang, the forest would be a lonely place. Never give up listening to the sounds of birds.
NOTE: I place 3-5 short videos (15 seconds to three minutes) on my Steve Jones Great Blue Heron YouTube channel weekly. All relate to Nature-Inspired Life and Living. I encourage you to SUBSCRIBE! It’s FREE. Having more subscribers helps me spread my message of Informed and Responsible Earth Stewardship…locally and globally!
Appendix
Ken Ward’s tally for our excursion to Creekwood Park and Indian Creek Greenway, Madison, Alabama, US Apr 25, 2024 7:07 AM – 11:37 AM
Protocol: Traveling
4.5 mile(s)
68 species
Canada Goose 10 (species followed by number of individuals observed)
Mallard 6
Mourning Dove 8
Chimney Swift 4
Solitary Sandpiper 2
Great Egret 1
Great Blue Heron 5
Turkey Vulture 1
Bald Eagle 1
Red-shouldered Hawk 2
Belted Kingfisher 3
Red-bellied Woodpecker 14
Downy Woodpecker 10
Pileated Woodpecker 2
Northern Flicker 3
Eastern Wood-Pewee 4
Eastern Phoebe 5
Great Crested Flycatcher 1
Eastern Kingbird 2
White-eyed Vireo 8
Yellow-throated Vireo 1
Red-eyed Vireo 2
Blue Jay 10
American Crow 5
Carolina Chickadee 2
Tufted Titmouse 14
Northern Rough-winged Swallow 4
Barn Swallow 8
White-breasted Nuthatch 2
Blue-gray Gnatcatcher 5
House Wren 1
Carolina Wren 20
European Starling 10
Gray Catbird 4
Brown Thrasher 1
Northern Mockingbird 6
Eastern Bluebird 6
Wood Thrush 2
American Robin 30
Cedar Waxwing 35
House Finch 6
American Goldfinch 14
Chipping Sparrow 2
Field Sparrow 6
Song Sparrow 4
Eastern Towhee 1
Yellow-breasted Chat 1
Eastern Meadowlark 1
Orchard Oriole 1
Baltimore Oriole 1
Red-winged Blackbird 15
Brown-headed Cowbird 14
Common Grackle 27
Northern Waterthrush 2
Prothonotary Warbler 2
Tennessee Warbler 12
Nashville Warbler 1
Common Yellowthroat 2
Northern Parula 4
Yellow Warbler 2
Palm Warbler 1
Yellow-rumped Warbler 16
Yellow-throated Warbler 1
Summer Tanager 8
Scarlet Tanager 1
Northern Cardinal 25
Rose-breasted Grosbeak 1
Indigo Bunting 14
https://stevejonesgbh.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/IMG_3101.jpg-4.25.24-Mid-Morning-at-Creekwood-Park-OLLI-Birding.jpg20161512Steve Joneshttp://stevejonesgbh.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/gbhweblogo.pngSteve Jones2024-07-11 06:58:162024-07-11 06:58:16Brief-Form Post #34: Late April Birding Exploration at Madison, Alabama's Creekwood Park and Indian Creek Greenway!
I am pleased to add the 33rd 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 April 17 and 18, 2024, I visited Joe Wheeler State Park for the quarterly meeting of the Alabama State Parks Foundation. Rather than present a single long Post from my wanderings during my free time, please look for four separate photo essays:
Reading evidence of past land use in the current 80-90-year-old forests
Tree form oddities and related curiosities — this Post
Lakeside forest panoply
Dawn from the Lodge docks
Tree Form Curiosities and Oddities
I arrived early enough on April 17, to saunter three miles on the Awesome Trail, departing from and returning to the boat landing parking lot. I employ the term saunter to emphasize the deliberate, observant pace I choose, electing to walk in Nature rather than dashing through her wildness. My intent is to look, see, and feel her beauty, magic, awe, and inspiration.
The coarse, tortured crown of the white oak near a bird blind caught my eye, drawing me closer.
A long-ago snapped branch on the right fork left a gaping mouth, where the tree is attempting and failing to callous over the old wound. Pursed lips seem to speak to those who saunter with eyes wide open, finding the visual gifts in plain sight. A hiker hellbent on covering the distance from the boat landing to the marina will certainly miss the tree shouting to be seen and heard.
A trailside hickory likewise sported an old branch scar, its “O” mouth callousing in feeble effort to close the wound, which beckons squirrels, birds, and other critters seeking shelter and dens.
This much smaller hickory peephole appears to be closing, and likely will unless a squirrel or woodpecker can hold the callousing at bay.
The sugar maple sapling, which is the same age as the oak and hickory overstory, supported a spiraled vine for decades, leaving the permanent imprint of its grasp. The vine is long since deceased and decayed. Sugar maple is shade tolerant and can persist in the under- and mid-story for decades, awaiting a major disturbance to blow down and lay flat the main canopy, exposing the maple to full sunlight and opening a portal to its evolutionarily response and emergence into the upper canopy of the next forest..
I encountered this mossy mid-canopy hickory, a headless silhouette ready to wrap its branch-arms around some hapless and careless woods-wanderer. I had stayed alert during my saunter and was not startled by its sudden trailside appearance. Pity the poor through-hiker who may have fared less well…but then that person would not have been startled by the unseen mossy forest denizen!
As a former practicing forester in south central Alabama (early to mid 1980s), I used prescribed fire as a forest management tool across thousands of acres. Ever on the alert for signs, I spotted charred bark on the loblolly pine (left) and the hickory. I know our State Park personnel occasionally employ fire, explaining why the Awesome Trail stands are free of extensive ground cover and jungle-like understory.
The graffiti-riddled American beech is not a tree form curiosity. Instead, it is an eyesore, a not-so-subtle reminder that human vanity is a powerful and disturbing force, one that brings some visitors to deface a feature of natural beauty that attracts the vast majority of us to Nature. The same can be said of those who discard candy wrappers, drink bottles, and cigarette butts!
Respectable saunterers and Nature enthusiasts Leave No Trace Behind beyond a footprint or two!
I accept the challenge of distilling these Brief-Form Posts into a single distinct reflection, a task far more elusive than assembling a dozen pithy statements. Today, I borrow a relevant reflection from Henry David Thoreau:
It is a great art to saunter!
https://stevejonesgbh.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/IMG_2924.jpg-04.17.24-WO-Mouth-Near-Blind-Awesome-Trail-JWSP-scaled.webp25601920Steve Joneshttp://stevejonesgbh.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/gbhweblogo.pngSteve Jones2024-06-26 11:00:332024-06-26 11:00:33Brief-Form Post # 33: Mid-April Tree Form Oddities and Curiosities at Alabama's Joe Wheeler State Park!
