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Winter Dormant Season Wonders in a Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge Bottomland Forest

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

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

 

On the morning of February 8, 2025, as I frequently do, I wandered through the bottomland hardwood forest along HGH Road in the Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge near the border between Limestone and Madison Counties. I desired only to see what of deep dormant season interest might lie hidden in plain sight. Mission accomplished!

Spiraling Oddities

 

HGH Road is gated during the winter at the gravel parking area along Jolly Bee Road. I walked the one-half mile west to where an old farm lane drops south toward the Tennessee River. Yes, an old farm lane. I believe the bottomland forest was in agricultural production when TVA purchased the land scheduled for Lake Wheeler inundation and the adjoining upland property 90 years ago. I restricted the morning’s sauntering mostly to hardwood-dominated forests. I found this spiraled mid-canopy elm, back-dropped by a stand of loblolly pine, at roadside before I reached the now heavily forested farm lane.

HGH Road

HGH Road

 

I have never seen a tree that spirals of its own accord absent a directing force, which in this instance is no longer present. Imagine the elm when younger and smaller, wrapped in full spiral embrace with a supplejack vine. The supplejack species spirals upward clockwise as evidenced by the permanently spiraled elm. In effect, the growing tree prevailed, literally crushing life from the vine…a death spiral.

Leonardo da Vinci offered insight to seeing, questioning, and understanding such phenomena:

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

The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.

Leonardo would have appreciated my seeming aimless traipsing. Albert Einstein, too, would have approved:

Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.

Nearby a supplejack co-spiraling with a 3-4″ sweetgum tree offered more direct evidence, the vine still visible at left. The photo at right below shows the same supplejack vine closer to the ground, where it emerged victorious in its embrace of a sapling long since dead and decayed. The clockwise-spiraled vine remains intact. However, I don’t think it will survive its mutual grasp with the sweetgum.

HGH Road

 

I recorded this 58-second video of entanglement:

 

Infrequent sylvan visitors believe our forests are stagnant, timeless, never-changing. I recall asking workshop participants their perceived age of the mature hardwood forest we were visiting. Answers ranged from hundreds of years back to the time of Christ. Most of our northern Alabama hardwood forest are 80-100 years old. Nothing in Nature is static, absolutely nothing.

Death and Decay in the Forest

 

Life and death define the forest. The carbon cycle is the symphony, an elaborate ecological composition. Movements surge and flow across days, months, years, decades, centuries, and millennia. This ancient oak, with its decayed see-through base, rises to a snag. Gravity will soon prevail; decomposers will return its organic matter to the soil, which in turn will cycle its energy to new life, perhaps to an oak tree or a millipede, a rattlesnake, or a woodland spider lilly!

HGH Road

 

Here is my 58-video tour of the snag:

 

I prefer short quotes from sage conservationists like da Vinci, Muir, and Leopold. However, the lyrics and music of some timeless poets and musicians shaped my life, Johny Cash among them. Lyrics to his classic The Highwayman stand as a metaphor for the forests I know, whether Alabama, Alaska, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, or any other of the places I’ve lived or roamed:

I was a highway man along the coach roads I did ride
With sword and pistol by my side
Many a young maid lost her baubles to my trade
Many a soldier shed his lifeblood on my blade
The bastards hung me in the spring of twenty-five
But I am still alive

I was a sailor, I was born upon the tide
And with the sea I did abide
I sailed a schooner round the horn to Mexico
I went aloft and furled the mainsail in a blow
And when the yards broke off they said that I got killed
But I am living still

I was a dam builder
Across the river deep and wide
Where steel and water did collide
A place called Boulder on the wild Colorado
I slipped and fell into the wet concrete below
They buried me in that great tomb that knows no sound
But I am still around, I’ll always be around
And around and around and around and around

I fly a starship across the Universe divide
And when I reach the other side
I’ll find a place to rest my spirit if I can
Perhaps I may become a highwayman again
Or I may simply be a single drop of rain
But I will remain
And I’ll be back again, and again
And again and again and again and again

 

I understand the co-spiraling signature of tree and vine. No mystery there. Explaining the spiral wood grain of individual trees eludes me still. Search “spiral grain” on the blog page of my Great Blue Heron website. You’ll see prior posts where I have probed the subject, all to no avail or conclusion, yet I frequently see dead hardwood trees with sloughed bark, clearly spiral-grained, taunting me to discover their secret!

HGH Road

 

I recorded this 48-second video of a nearby snag adorned with multiple scars of death and decay, as well as evident spiral grain.

 

A still photo of the same tree highlights advanced decay that suggests that undefeated gravity will soon triumph.

HGH Road

 

Commercial television these days offers all manner of cosmetic and pharmaceutical treatments for dry, crepey, warty, sagging, and blotchy skin and flesh.  Thank God trees possess no such vainglorious tendencies! I recorded this video of a snag carrying its blemishes beyond death and decay.

 

Stills from of the same tree memorialize its countenance.

HGH RoadHGH Road

 

Every tree has a story to tell. These weathered individuals express volumes!

 

Beauty is Far Moore than Skin-Deep

 

Fungi infect all the prior dead individual trees I’ve included so far in this photo essay. Let’s now delve into the fruiting bodies (mushrooms) of the organisms whose hyphae are the actual within-wood decomposing fungi. Puffball mushrooms signal hyphae hard at work.

HGH Road

 

 

I recorded this 60-second video of a wind-toppled oak heavily infected with Stereum:

 

Our north Alabama forest breezes, I am sure, are super charged with clouds of fungal spores. I imagine competing species of fungi rushing to the scene of a recent windthrow, armies of spores laying claim to square millimeters of surface on a multi-ton sylvan carcass. Down for less than a full year, this tree already bears thousands of saprophytic fungi mushrooms.

HGH RoadHGH Road

 

Life, death, decay, and renewal dance in symphonic splendor.

HGH Road

 

A hefty lumpy bracket mushroom clings to a downed oak trunk.

HGH Road

 

Its underside is salting the air with countless spores catching the breeze to another multi-ton oak.

HGH Road

 

Bracket fungi are common throughout our north Alabama forests, especially in these fertile, productive hardwood bottomlands. I pledge to devote more time on future treks to identifying groups and species. So far only the edibles have merited my deeper attention.

HGH RoadHGH Road

 

I believe this is a latte bracket.

HGH Road

 

Fungi are biological wonders worthy of their own kingdom.

Thoughts and Reflections

 

I offer these observations:

  • The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding. (da Vinci)

  • Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better. (Einstein)

  • Life, death, decay, and renewal dance in symphonic splendor. (Steve Jones)

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

 

The Nature of the Singing River Trail

 

The Singing River Trail will pass through significant portions of the 35,000-acre Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge…perhaps not HGH Road per se, yet I know that Rockhouse Bottom Road along the Tennessee River, just two miles from HGH Road, will be a primary SRT route.

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

 

 

The SRT will prominently feature the Refuge. As a lifelong devotee of hiking/sauntering, running, biking, and Nature exploration, I envision another Great Blue Heron weekly photo essay series focused on The Nature of the Singing River Trail. I will incorporate individual essays into my routine Posts that total approximately 450 to-date (archived and accessible at: https://stevejonesgbh.com/blog/). I offer these photo essays related to my WNWR wanderings as the beginning of the new component series. Watch for more!

 

 

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

Please circulate images with photo credit: “©2025 Steve Jones, Great Blue Heron. All Rights Reserved.”

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

 

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

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

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

Vision:

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

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

 

Steve’s Four Books

 

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

I began writing books and Posts for several reasons:

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

 

HGH Road

 

 

 

 

 

Mooresville, Alabama Cemetary: A New Dimension to Life and Death in the Forest! [Volume One]

On March 8, 2025, at the request of local history buff Gilbert White, I visited the Mooresville, Alabama Cemetery as a group of a dozen friends of the 200-year-old graveyard (Madison History Association) cleared brush and storm debris. I snapped photographs and recorded brief videos to develop a photo essay with observations and reflections. I developed a tale of the multi-tiered web of life and death (Nature and Human) intersecting across this hallowed land, a permanent resting place for more than 100 deceased former residents. Volume One introduces the historic cemetery and sets the stage for the two succeeding volumes.

The story of Mooresville Cemetery encompasses several components:

  • The overlapping natural environment and human community over time and generations.
  • A deeper view into the elements of interaction and overlap.
  • The macabre (and lighter) dimension of an old forested cemetery.
  • Another story along the fledgling 200+ mile Singing River Trail.

I’d like you to please watch for subsequent Great Blue Heron photo essays (The Nature of the Singing River Trail) I will feature as whistle stops along the fledgling 200+-mile trail.

I viewed the burial ground as a provocative subject. The town is historic:

 

Historic Mooresville, Alabama is the first town incorporated by the Alabama Territorial Legislature, on November 16, 1818. The entire town is on the National Register of Historic Places, and is one of Alabama’s most important and intact villages. Historic homes and buildings, gracious gardens, and tree-shaded streets make a visit to Mooresville seem like a step back in time.

I beamed myself back to 1822, when the first documented burial  took place on the grassy knoll three hundred yards southeast of the town. Young trees grace the heights, still too young to cast shade over memorial services. Albert Einstein granted me the means to travel back two centuries:

Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.

I often speculate in these posts about the past from reading today’s forests. Borrowered from an online file, this image depicts the Mooresville Cemetery site as I picture its grassy knoll 200 years ago.

 

This monument welcomes visitors today. The background trees are not leaning to the south (left); I tilted the photograph to righten the leaning stone.

 

The crew labored for two hours. Their work made a dent in restoring order to a sunny hilltop long ago captured by time and a relentlessly advancing forest.

 

 

 

I often observe in these photo essays that life and death are constant, cyclical companions in our forests. Humans have added an overlapping dimension of life and death to the cemetery hilltop. The forest tells its own story. Each tombstone, every unmarked rectangular depression, and every echo of human memorial service, graveside visit, and fading memory, jubilation, and grief combine to reach across the two centuries. I felt the presence of others as I criss-crossed the knoll.

 

I wondered whether this fallen shagbark hickory bore witness to teary-eyed ceremonies, grieving loved ones, and soothing spring mornings.

 

I recorded this 57-second video of the uprooted tree:

 

I’ve studied our northern Alabama forests enough to know that neither the red oak (left) nor the shagbark hickory (right) witnessed the first 70-90 years of burials. They most likely were no more than seedlings or saplings when Wheeler Dam engineers closed the gates that flooded the adjacent Limestone Bay in the 1930s.

 

How many interred former Mooresville bones did this crashing oak rattle when it succumbed to undeafeated gravity?

 

What manner of disturbance did this decades-old hickory tree lightning blast create among the lingering spirits? Resident squirrels and other critters relying upon tree cavities celebrated as fungi infected and enlarged the wound and the tree survived the electrical insult. Life and death hand in hand — the cycle of renewal and demise persisting!

 

The cavity the critters appreciated served for how long…before the hollow they valued yielded to forces beyond the woody rind’s ability to hold the tree aloft?

 

Maria Rakoczy, The Madison Record news writer, worked feverishly with loppers across an area dominated by flat monuments.

 

Imagine the cleared summit view northwest into Mooresville (left) and southwest into Limestone Bay (fed by Limestone Creek, Mooresville Spring, Piney Creek, and Beaverdam Creek) two centuries ago. Mooresville’s checkerboard streets, homes, the brick church belltower, and the 200-acre Bay would have been visible, unobstructed by the invading forest. Today only the deep dormant season allows a glimpse without imagination.

 

I observe often that every tree and each forest grove has a story to tell. The tales told at the Mooresville Cemetery are overlain by layers of deep memories and generations past.

I recorded this 59-second video of a poignant, heart-rending tombstone message:

 

Margaret Alice Morris’ engraved tombstone (An angel visited the green earth and took the flower away) occupied a grassy hill (now a closed-canopy forest) above Limestone Bay.

 

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

  • The overlapping natural environment and human community over time and generations.
  • A deeper view into the elements of interaction and overlap.
  • The macabre dimension of an old forested cemetery.
  • Another story along the fledgling 200+ mile Singing River Trail.

I’ve taken us through chapters one and part of two. I’ll begin Volume Two where this one ends.

 

 

The Nature of the Singing River Trail

 

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

 

 

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

Thoughts and Reflections

 

I offer these observations:

  • Life and death sustain a natural forest over time; a human cemetery within adds deeper complexity and layers of sentiment, emotion, and memories.
  • Natural processes overtake all traces of human habitation in the absence of intervention and maintenance. Even a north Alabama graveyard yields to forest.  
  • It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see. I saw an aging forest and felt my own mortality, yet embraced the comprehension of both.

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

 

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

Please circulate images with photo credit: “©2025 Steve Jones, Great Blue Heron. All Rights Reserved.”

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

 

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

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

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

Vision:

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

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

 

Steve’s Four Books

 

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

I began writing books and Posts for several reasons:

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Brief Form Post #43 — January Afternoon Saunter along the Beaverdam Creek Boardwalk

Brief-Form Post #43

 

I am pleased to add the 43rd of my GBH Brief-Form Posts (Less than five minutes to read!) to my website. I get wordy with my routine Posts. I don’t want my enthusiasm for thoroughness and detail to discourage readers. So, I will publish these brief Posts regularly.

 

On January 17, 2025, fellow retired forester Chris Stuhlinger and I visited Beaverdam Creek Boardwalk, a National Natural Landmark at Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge near Huntsville, Alabama. Accept this Post as a visual photo essay, rich with dormant season imagery and light on science-based interpretation. Take a relaxing saunter through the forest with us. Flow with our boardwalk pace; view our stroll as a forest bathing. I offer this brief-form post with 16 photos and five less-than-one-minute videos, keeping my narrative intentionally abbreviated.

The tupelo stand pulls us in…and up!

Beaverdam

Beaverdam CBW

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I recorded this 58-second video tour among crowded stems, slanted sunrays, and mesmerizing crowns.

 

The boardwalk ends at Beaverdam Creek flowing toward Limestone Bay and Lake Wheeler.

Beaverdam

 

I never tire of the endless reflections afforded the patient viewer and the soulful thinker. The placid water surficial images reward me visually and fill me with spiritual and emotional fuel.

BeaverdamBeaverdam

 

I recorded this 58-second video of sunshine filling the tupelo forest.

 

Some tree seeds (like maple) are wind-blown. Oak trees rely upon squirrels for seed dispersal. Birds scatter cherry seeds. Tupelo seeds lie thick on the forest floor, awaiting winter rains filling the swamp to lift them into floating mats, transporting them downstream.

Beaverdam

 

I recorded this 58-second video of Beaverdam Creek at the boardwalk’s terminus.

 

Leonardo da Vinci recognized the true Nature of water 500 years ago:

Water is the driving force of all nature.

 

Tree Oddities and Curioisities

 

Persimmon trees occupy a wide range of site types, from well-drained uplands to the bottomland forests adjacent to the tupelo swamp. Their dark blocky bark, complemented by the regimented horizontal yellow-bellied sapsucker drill holes, fascinates me, pleasing my eyes and warming my heart. Visual delicacy made all the more sweet by fall persimmon fruit suitable for all manner of wildlife as well as human wanderers.

Beaverdam

 

Shouting a subtle do-not-touch alert, this thick mane of poison ivy air roots suffices even absent the “shiny leaves of three” growing season warning.

Beaverdam

 

The ancient tupelo trees populating the swamp are declining, decay advancing at pace (perhaps faster) than the annual rate of stem diameter increment. Life and death spar, advance, and retreat in our north Alabama forests. This magnificent tupelo forest will one day yield to the inevitable undefeated forces of Nature.

BeaverdamBeaverdam

 

However, there will be no end…only a new beginning…a cycle without completion.

 

Fungal Friends

 

Decay and decomposition carry the burden of cleanup, recycling organic matter from carbon residue to the stuff of new life. Stinking orange oyster fungus is just one species of fungus performing the forest floor heavy lifting!

Beaverdam

 

This 47-second video captures its magic.

 

I can’t resist more photos of stinking oyster mushrooms, its moniker worthy of repeated exposure.

Beaverdam

 

These standard white/pearl oyster mushrooms are one of my culinary favorites. Collection of any sort within the protected National Natural Landmark is prohibited. Taking photos is permissible!

Beaverdam

 

Here is my 23-second video of the edible oyster mushrooms.

 

The towering tupelo trees throughout our forests, the hollowing aging trunks, the seed mats, and the vibrant decomposing fungi remind us that life and death are at play

 

Closing

 

I accept the challenge of distilling these Brief-Form Posts into a single distinct reflection, a task far more elusive than assembling a dozen pithy statements. A single trek along a forested trail discloses only a brief moment in time, obscuring the decades prior and the future ahead, isolating us from the scope and scale of the grand forest cycle of life. Henry David Thoreau captured the sentiment I felt as we explored the Wonder of decay and renewal:

Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.

 

Beaverdam

 

 

 

 

 

Blackwell Swamp and Rockhouse Bottom in Early October on the Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge (Part Two)

On October 6, 2024, a little longer than six weeks since my total right knee replacement surgery, I ventured to Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge to gently explore Buckeye Impoundment, Blackwell Swamp, and Rockhouse Bottom by automobile and dirt road strolling. Not yet ready for woodland trail wandering, I welcomed the fresh air, seasonal transition signs, and diverse habitats of meadow, swamp, and Tennessee River.

Because the three ecological units are too much to stuff into a single photo essay, Blackwell Swamp and Rockhouse Bottom will serve as Part Two of my October 6 exploration.

 

Blackwell Swamp

 

A friend toured me in August 20, 2023 in his Cessna over the Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge. Here’s Blackwell Swamp from its south end looking into the hazy north. Until drafting this narrative I had not noticed that the swamp looks a lot like Florida’s penninsula.

Blackwell

 

A rough canoe launch on the southwest corner offers a viewpoint for the swamp’s southern extent. I can’t recall what manner of life I saw on this visit, but seldom have my viewings come up empty. Prior observations have included: bald eagle, osprey, barred owl, water snakes, turtles, lots of ducks, Canada geese, great blue herons, great egrets, green herons, and many songbirds.

Buckeye

 

Although early October, the swamp ecosystem was transitioning from summer to autumn. The entire period from September through April gradually shifts from early fall to spring. Winter is hardly a confirmed season of its own! After many years living in Upstate New York, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Alaska, my winter frame of reference includes persistent cold periods, occasional snow, and deep dormancy. Early October in Fairbanks, AK begins its earnest winter; by mid-October the daily high seldom, then rarely, reaches freezing until after mid-March. Our winters in southeastern Virginia, Savannah, Georgia, and Auburn and Prattville, Alabama likewise delivered only a few days of real winter.

I recorded this 52-second video mid-morning on October 6, on a day that merely hinted at autumn temperatures, yet the summer sharpness is gone.

 

The Corps of Engineers, as it does across much of the refuge, maintains waterfowl habitat in Blackwell across all seasons. Otherwise, the swamp would be dry during this current period of drought. I have no expertise in wetland and pond ecology. I am a keen enough observer to notice that the swamp is increasingly vegetation bound. Is the condition terminal, eventually clogging, reducing open water, and shifting toward a marshland ecotype? Will the COE implement selective dredging to maintain open water? I see mystery and intrigue. I want to learn more.

Blackwell Swamp

 

Winter memories visiting bogs, fens, muskeg, beaver ponds, and wetland forests remain deeply embedded in my psyche. I loved the crunch, bitter cold, deep snows, and far away promise of spring. Harsh winters in those higher latitudes deterred travel, kept me near the fireplace, and disuaded me from venturing into wildness. Here in northern Alabama, our wildland winters beckon me, embrace me, and council me to offer reflections, make observations, snap photographs, and record videos, sharing the experience with other Nature enthusiasts.

 

Rockhouse Bottom

 

This view from Auguct 20, 2023 looks downstream on the Tennessee River toward Wheeler Dam. The gravel road meeting the river is the one dropping from Blackwell Swamp.

 

I stood at the river’s edge just 10 days after Helene’s ravaging floods devastated the Asheville, NC area. On October 1, 2024, I co-taught a section of a course on the Tennessee Valley, observing that the Tennessee River Basin encompassed the vast bulk of the area receiving 15-30-inches from Helene and its associated frontal deluge. One person “corrected” me, wrongly observing that Asheville was on the other side of the divide. Allow me a moment to state a truth that has stayed with me across my career in science…and beyond: A wise man knows the limit of his knowledge; a fool knows not his bounds. I know what I know. I employ these special zones of knowledge-certainty as my BS filters. If someone speaks in absolute terms (and is absolutely wrong) in an arena of my particular expertise, I judge all that they say with skepticism. Skepticism with evident repetition by the individual can develop to earn a designation as fool. Excuse my personal-irritant sidebar.

The river carried a heavy sediment load, the tremendous floodwaters already working their way to Huntsville, the peak modulated by the series of dams above us. I wonder what affect an equivalent storm would have had here 250 years ago.

I recorded this 60-second video of the Helene-laden Tennessee River:

 

This gentle stretch (upstream left) suggests none of the fury that altered landscapes, took lives, wrecked tomorrow just a few hundred miles upstream. However, even a fool can comprehend Nature’s supreme power. Yet, such events are not new. Judy and I celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary two summer’s ago in Asheville, NC. I recall gawking at the high water marks of an epic July 1916 flood resulting from remnants of a tropical storm. Perhaps we will someday learn that Nature seldom (if ever) loses, just as time and gravity are undefeated.

Rockhouse Bottom

 

The same flooding that has rushed down this valley since the first raindrops fell on the rising Appalachians has blessed and replenished fields and floodplains like this one at Rockhouse Bottom bordering the river.

Rockhouse Bottom

 

I enjoyed the dose of Nature’s Elixir delivered by my early October trip to Buckeye Impoundment, Blackwell Swamp, and Rockhouse Bottom!

Thoughts and Reflections

 

I offer these observations:

  • A wise man knows the limit of his knowledge; a fool knows not his bounds. (Steve Jones)
  • When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe. (John Muir)

  • Oh, the magic, inspiration, awe, beauty, and wonder in having a 35,000-acre National Wildlife Refuge so close to home! (SJ, again)

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

 

Note: Unless otherwise noted, all blog post images are created & photographed by Stephen B. Jones. Please circulate images with photo credit: “©2025 Steve Jones, Great Blue Heron 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

 

 

Blackwell Swamp

 

 

Mild Fall Afternoon at the Woodland Flint Creek Trail on Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge!

Fellow retired forester Chris Stuhlinger and I co-led a group of 22 OLLI (Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, University of Alabama in Huntsville) members on a Nature Walk along Flint Creek Trail (Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge) on Sunday afternoon, November 10, 2024. Two days earlier the Sunday forecast predicted an 80 percent probability of rain. Nary a drop dampened us on a grand afternoon.

A Nature walk differs from what we term a hike. I insist that our walks be saunters, where we wander in the habitat, carefully discovering and examining what mysteries and wonders lie hidden in plain sight. Our hikes hurry through the ecosystem at a pace that limits revealing the wonder beyond a superficial glance. Like John Muir, who disdained hiking, I quickly lose contact with the hardcore hikers. I stop to probe, take photos, and record a brief video, or two. A fellow inquisitive hiker may lag with me to find what we may. I am a saunterer, dedicated to the end. I find it amusing that when my time stretched endlessly ahead in my youth, I rushed to destination after destination. Today when time rushes ahead, I’m in no hurry. I don’t want to miss anything.

 

Flint Creek Bay

 

Flint Creek flows from the south into Wheeler Lake, a TVA impoundment…the dam 40 miles downstream on the Tenessee River. Entering the extended dormant season, The Corps of Engineers has already lowered the water level to allow greater flood control storage capacity for seasonal winter and spring rains. Mud flats are present where summer water stood.

Flint Creek

 

A great blue heron hunts the shallow water bordering the mud flats.

Flint Creek

Flint Creek

 

I recorded this 24-second video as the heron took flight:

 

A pond cypress at the mudflat edge shows the summer water level stains. Knees also evidence the summer level.

Flint Creek

 

I recorded this 58-second video encompassing the bay, the mud flat, and the cypress.

 

The riparian forest envelops Flint Creek Trail as our group exited the boardwalk. I’ve always enjoyed both the openess of boardwalks and closed forest trails — the best of both worlds at the Flint Creek Trail!

Flint Dreek

 

I recorded this 57-second video as we crossed the boardwalk to the wooded Flint Creek Trail:

 

Something about the boardwalk held us in place, urging us to enjoy the ironic attraction that holds people transfixed by an extensive mudflat, bird and woodland mammal tracks, and even human footprints.

 

Flint Creek Trail’s Riparian Forest

 

Allow your mind to reject the false impression that forests are forever. Picture this moist fertile field in corn and soybeans during the early 1930s, soon to be abandoned, seeding to windblown and bird-scattered germinants of annuals, perennials, shrubs, and trees. A near jungle of vegetation yielded to forest, the most aggressive and faster growing trees prevailing. The winners in this stand are 100 feet tall.

Flint Creek Trail

Flint Creek

 

Our group looks skyward. Chris redirects their attention to an understory paw paw tree below right.

 

The yellow poplar commands the dominant canopy and strikes an impressive pose below left. A Southern-region emblematic flowering magnolia seems content growing in full shade.

Flint CreekFlint Creek

 

Special Woodland Treats

 

I’m a big fan of what I call tree form curiosities. We found a yellow poplar that had fallen horizontally decades ago, yet had retained vascular connection to its roots. Remaining viable, the prostrate stem produced several vertical shoots that developed as individual trees rising from the still-growing horizontal base. Enjoy these images of nine OLLI bumps on a log!
Flint Creek Flint Creek

 

 

 

A special moment at a place of magic and wonder! Had we been hiking, strung out as the faster among us surged ahead, we might not have noticed and lingered at the natural living bench. By universal acclaim and smiling faces, this was a worthy and enjoyable stop.

Flint Creek

 

Trees are not alone in partaking of full sunshine in the upper crown. Supple jack vines hitched a ride vertically as the trees began ascending 90 years ago from the fallow fields. Our major southern forest vines are the same age as the trees, and grow upward with the trees. Wrap and hold on tightly. Let the trees do the heavy lifting.

Flint Creek

Flint Creek

 

Sasafras roots are worthy of an inquisitive inhale — oh, the fragrance of root beer!

Flint Creek

 

Again, a Nature Walk provides unlimited opportunities for learning and appreciating natural wonders.

 

Glimpses of the Fungi Kingdom

 

I’ve repeated in these Great Blue Heron photo essays that death and decomposition are a major element of life in our forests. We spotted  several individuals of Coker’s Amanita, its bright white caps announcing its presence.

Flint Creek

 

 

Steve Stewart snapped a nice shot of this pair and their beautifully gilled underside.

 

 

 

 

 

We discovered three edible species of wild mushrooms: honey mushroom, the beige individual at left; oyster mushroom held in the same hand; amber jelly mushroom at right.

Flint CreekFlint Creek

 

Don’t take my word regarding edibility. Always do your own homework. I consume only species about which my knowledge is 100 percent certain, and then only when cooked.

Flint Creek

 

We exited the trail via a return trek across the boardwalk. The clouds had broken, removing all hope that drought relief would bless our Sunday evening. We lingered, enjoying  the evening and each other’s companny. Had our walk been a hike, I would have emerged from the forest after most had departed for home. John Muir abhored the word “hike”:

I don’t like either the word [hike] or the thing. People ought to saunter in the mountains – not ‘hike’!

Flint CreekFlint Creek

 

 

 

Muir, as he so often did, nailed the sentiment we all shared:

I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.

 

This 50-second video captures our group recrossing the boardwalk to the parking lot as the sky cleared, erasing any hope that the promised drought-abating rain would bless our Sunday evening:

 

 

Thoughts and Reflections

 

I offer these observations:

  • When my time stretched endlessly ahead in my youth, I rushed to destination after destination. Today when time rushes ahead, I’m in no hurry, content to saunter.
  • I love the trees reaching heavenward and the fungi intent on decomposing them.
  • So much in Nature lies hidden in plain sight, awaiting discovery by curious minds and searching eyes.

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

 

[Me with my hand on a sapling in group photo — courtesy of Chris Stuhlinger]

Flint Creek

 

 

 

 

 

Buckeye Impoundment in Early October on the Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge (Part One)

On October 6, 2024, a little longer than six weeks since my total right knee replacement surgery, I ventured to Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge to gently explore Buckeye Impoundment, Blackwell Swamp, and Rockhouse Bottom by automobile and dirt road strolling. Not yet ready for woodland trail wandering, I welcomed the fresh air, seasonal transition signs, and diverse meadow, swamp, and Tennessee River.

Because the three ecological units are too much to stuff into a single photo essay, Buckeye Impoundment will serve as Part One of my October 6 exploration.

 

Buckeye Impoundment

 

On an August 2023 aerial tour, the impoundment appears as a mosaic of agricultural fields, meadows, and marsh vegetation. On the recent on-the-ground visit I parked within the forest where the east/west HGH dirt road emerges from the east. I walked south to about the edge of the photograph.

 

I photographed the winter-flooded impoundment on January 6, 2020, when the flooded wetlands attracts waterfowl vacationing from frozen northlands.

Buckeye

 

The impoundment is a complex and diverse ecosystem that ebbs, flows, and fluxes with the Corps of Engineers-controlled flooding. Marshland water remained in spite of an extended late summer dry period. Although beyond my roadside reach, the meadow vegetation is lush. The forest edge shows no sign of coloring.

I recorded this 60-second video before exiting into the impoundment:

 

I left the car and the forest shade behind. Bright sun greeted me; the woodland mosquitoes remained behind.

Buckeye Impoundment

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Native vegetation along the road shows the signature of seasonal senscence and dryness. Small birds, grasshoppers, and dragon flies foraged among the drying grasses and herbs.

BuckeyeBuckeye

 

Some areas seemed oddly wet after such an extended period of limited rainfall.

Buckeye

 

I soon discovered that the entire impoundment has water control devices that are already impeding natural drainage.

Buckeye

 

Late in the season, an evening primrose is still flowering at the edge of this marshy area.

Buckeye

 

I recorded this 60-second video of marsh, primrose, and background crows calling:

 

Red-centered hibiscus refused to release summer.

BuckeyeBuckeye

 

I recorded this 56-second 360-degree turn around the impoundment, magnifying one of the two spectacular hibiscus flowers:

 

I found the diverse herbs fascinating, but with knees still too unstable to allow botanizing beyond the road edge, I settled for photos, videos, and a few generalizations. Aldo Leopold, in my view the nation’s premier conservation philosopher, hinted at my surgery-hobbled wanderings. I covet digging deeply into the plants, communities, and ecosystems I explore. I lean toward perusing the things of Nature…peruse, which contrary to common view of the term, means to study deeply.

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.

The photos I captured do not express beauty so much as a diverse and rich ecosystem I am only superficially appreciating from afar.

Buckeye

 

A lonely fire ant hill stood at the road edge. I pondered the summer exposure of its location in baking sun. Imagine a powerful July thunderstorm rushing across the impoundment with rain pelting, lightning flashing, and winds howling. Or picture the absolute and isolated loneliness during the dormant months when the Corps raises the impoundment water level to leave a thin north/south strip of gravel road surface between twin lakes of waterfowl habitat.

Buckeye

 

I wonder do the raccoons that just several weeks before deposited persimmon-laden stools frequent the road surface in winter?

BuckeyeBuckeye

 

 

 

 

 

Does the coyote that also fed heartily on Diospyros virginiana fruit venture into the winter impoundment? Perhaps a better question is what creature eats the seeds that pass trough raccoon and coyote?

Buckeye

 

The dead red swamp crawfish on the gravel hints at another element of the impundment foodchain. I observed but was unable to photograph both a great blue heron and great white egrets, delighted consumers of raw crayfish morsels.

Buckeye

 

Suffice it to say that Buckeye Impoundment is worthy of ecological study far deeper than I was capable of performing in early October. I’d like to return with knees rehabilitated in the company of a wetand ecologists, herbaceous botanists, and other related specialists. My terrestrial ecology and forestry expertise does not serve me well in the impoundment setting, even when my knees are well!

Regardless, I found delight in consuming the observable ecological and aesthetic morsels on my knee-hobbled outing. Healing progress is palpable…day by day…week by week. I am a unabashed enthusiast for Nature-Buoyed Aging and Healing, and a physical therapy zealot. A former athlete, I believe that every effort warrants training equivalent to prepping for the next race, game, match, etc. Healing is reward sufficient to the effort.

Thoughts and Reflections

 

I offer these observations:

  • 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. (Aldo Leopold)
  • A novice at wetlands ecology, I’ve learned enough to inform me that I know nothing!
  • A former athlete, I believe that every effort warrants training equivalent to prepping for the next race, game, match, etc. Healing is reward sufficient to the effort.

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

 

 

Photo from my August 2023 aerial observation.

 

Bats Emerging at Sauta Cave National Wildlife Refuge

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

 

 

 

 

 

What’s Happening in the Old Riparian Hardwood Forests that I Wander (and Wonder): Part Two

I offer Part Two of my examination of What’s Happening in the Old Riparian Forests, which I frequently explore at the nearby Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge. These forests date back to the 1930s when the TVA and Corps of Engineers acquired acreage destined for Wheeler Lake inundation and adjoining buffer lands associated with those properties. I set the stage for this essay last week with Part One: https://stevejonesgbh.com/2024/08/07/whats-happening-in-the-old-riparian-hardwood-forests-that-i-wander-and-wonder-part-one/

I have mentally labored on this Next Forest topic for several years as I’ve repeatedly bushwhacked through the riparian hardwood forests of the Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge, publishing a series of more than two dozen photo essays of my observations, reflections, photographs, and short videos beginning in January 2018. I begin this photo essay with several questions:

  1. Are these 90-year-old forests actively transitioning? Last week I answered, no.
  2. What factors will trigger a transition? What are the threshold criteria?
  3. When can we expect it to occur?
  4. How will we recognize it?

 

The Next Forest: When and What

 

I won’t speculate on when Nature will pressure the forest to cross the threshold. Without excess verbiage, I will chronicle the understory tree regeneration I recorded on July 6. Consider each individual as part of the next generation forest in reserve, banked and awaiting a threshold disturbance.

 

Future Subordinate Canopy Components

 

Redbud and sassafras are present in abundance. Redbud is a pioneer species, effectively occupying roadside edges, brushy meadows transitioning to forest, and newly disturbed forestland (storm or harvest). I’ve seen redbud emerge into the intermediate canopy but never into the upper reaches. Sassafras is another pioneer species. It occasionally reaches into the upper canopy, but I have never seen it rise to a dominant position. In sum, I would characterize redbud as a forest understory species and sassafras as an intermediate. Neither will be a major constituent of the next forest.

HGH

 

Muscadine awaits a major disturbance, full sunlight, and new tree transport into the next canopy. As peculiar as it may sound, muscadine will likely occupy the eventual emergent forest. Unlike the mighty oak that relies on its own devices to ascend to a dominant position, muscadine grasps oaks and other main-canopy-destined tree species, and gets a direct vertical transport. As the tree grows, the vine tags along into the ever-available full sunlight.

HGH

 

I found only a few individuals of parsley hawthorn and Atlantic poison oak. The parsley hawthorn is a small tree or shrub; the poison oak will seldom exceed 3-4 feet. Both will be present in the understory of the next forest.

HGH

 

Red buckeye and paw paw appeared sporadically. They both are normally present in the understory, although I have seen paw pay in the mid-story.

HGH HGH

 

Ironwood (Ostrya virginiana) stands ready to assume a mid-canopy position in a new forest. I have never observed it in a main canopy.

HGH

 

I am certain that I missed many other woody species; don’t view my listing as exhaustive.

 

Future Dominant Canopy Components

 

With the exception of muscadine, the above documented species will not occupy the main canopy of the next Refuge bottomland hardwood forest. I’ll now review some species I photographed on July 6 that will dominate the overstory. Yellow poplar and sweetgum are poised to mine sunshine post-disturbance. I estimate that together sweetgum and yellow poplar account for 10-15 percent of the current main canopy stocking. I base my estimates on observations and not measurements, a luxury afforded old geezers who are not authoring refereed scientific journal articles!

HGHHGH

 

Red maple may constitute five percent of the present overstory.

HGH

 

Green ash seedlings cover the forest floor in a few areas, but the species represents perhaps five percent of the main canopy.

HGHHGH

 

I saw little advanced regeneration on the forest floor in much of the seasonally-inundated soils.

HGH

 

Willow oak and water oak seedlings less than two-feet tall dotted these wet sites; the seedlings below are willow oaks. I will not attempt to separate the existing main canopy distribution by individual oak species. Instead, I estimate that all oak species combined (principally northern and southern red; willow and water; cherry bark; chinkapin; white) constitute 50 percent.

HGH

HGH

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is chinkapin oak. I found no red, white, or cherry bark oak seedlings. Allow me to repeat a qualification to these observations and reflections. Were I still a practicing forest scientist seeking refereed journals to publish my results, I would conduct rigorous field surveys to quantify current stand composition and systematically inventory advanced regeneration. However, I am a retired, 73-year-old Nature enthusiast, who seeks to ponder questions of his own design, and proffer answers and speculations to share with others.

HGH

 

Hickory species account for 20 percent of the current stocking, predominantly shagbark. This is one of the few hickories I found.

HGH

 

Although the overstory has a few American beech, black cherry, and sugarberry trees, my July 6, trek encountered no individuals on the forest floor. A single loblolly pine seedling appeared within my sight. Together, I estimate that these four species represent no more than five percent of the bottomland forest overstory.

HGH

 

I am certain that when I next visit this forest I will see a main canopy species or two that I failed to include in this discussion. I don’t believe that such omission will discredit any of the reflections and conclusion I am about to share with you.

 

Summary and Conclusions

 

First and foremost, the forest is changing. Individual main canopy tree are succumbing to wind, lightning, and the associated effects of decay and weakening. Not a single one of these individual trees dying or toppling, even those that occupied large aerial spaces (up to one-fifth acre), is encouraging colonization of the affected forest floor by tree regeneration. Nearby trees expand their crowns rapidly into the resultant canopy void, effectively limiting sunlight reaching the forest floor to a time period insufficient to permit regeneration to establish and develop. Simply the level of disturbance and rate of attrition are not triggering an obvious transition to a new forest.

What will it take to trigger the transition to a new forest? I know from my work in northern hardwood forests that an essential transition factor is not apparent in our Refuge bottomland forests. There is no shade tolerant intermediate vertical tier of trees (in the north: American beech; yellow birch; sugar maple; and eastern hemlock) positioned to emerge into the upper canopy when large individual and clusters of main canopy trees die or fall. As I observed in Part One, these stands have an understory of subordinate woody trees, but no intermediate structure of future main canopy emergent species.

I am convinced that without a major disturbance (to include: tropical systems transporting wind north from the Gulf; derechos; microbursts; tornados; severe ice storms), the forest will continue to lose individual trees. Remaining trees will capitalize on the crown voids and add girth. We’ll observe fewer trees per acre. The average diameter of the residuals…the survivors…will increase rapidly on these extraordinarily fertile moist soils. Keep in mind that, like all living organisms, trees have finite life spans.

Eventually, a force will trigger renewal. Nature abhors a vacuum. Full sunlight on the forest floor will stimulate all of the species chronicled above. Other bird-disseminated and windblown seed species will find purchase and germinate. A new forest will emerge. Time and intense competition will sort the winners and losers. Nature won’t allocate space by some artificial construct like diversity, equity, and inclusion. Performance will determine the nature, structure, and composition of the new forest. My guess is that ninety years from that critical trigger event, the forest will look a lot like the one where I wonder and wander.

 

Thoughts and Reflections

 

I offer these observations:

  • Nature sleuthing involves seeing, understanding, and appreciating what lies hidden in plain sight.
  • First and foremost, the subject forest is changing…but not yet transitioning to a new forest.
  • It is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future. (Attributed to Yogi Berra)
  • My observations, reflections, and predictions are science-informed…and far from clairvoyant!

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

 

HGH

 

 

 

All three of my books (Nature Based LeadershipNature-Inspired Learning and LeadingWeaned 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.

 

What’s Happening in the Old Riparian Hardwood Forests that I Wander (and Wonder): Part One

I have mentally labored on this topic for several years as I’ve repeatedly bushwhacked through the riparian hardwood forests of the Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge, publishing a series of more than two dozen photo essays of my observations, reflections, photographs, and short videos beginning in January 2018. Musing on how these forests will develop 25, 50, and 100 years hence and beyond, I often include photos depicting disturbance. I focus on the changing face of these rich alluvial bottomlands and their majestic forests. I reported three epic oak blowdowns in my June 13, 2023 photo essay chronicling storm damage to big oaks during the winter of 2022-23: https://stevejonesgbh.com/2023/06/13/winter-2022-23-wind-demise-of-multiple-big-oaks-on-the-wheeler-national-wildlife-refuge/

HGH Road

 

These riparian forest soils are seasonally wet. Strong winds can break these mighty oak trunks, as above, or topple the tree by wrenching roots from their soil grip.

HGH Road

 

Do these individual tree occurrences signal a major forest renewal shift? I answer simply, “Not yet.” I will present a more complete response in this photo essay.

I published another photo essay on the January 2022, tornado that cut a swath across the northern end of Blackwell Swamp at the Refuge: https://stevejonesgbh.com/2022/05/04/aftermath-of-january-1-2022-tornado-at-wheeler-national-wildlife-refuge/

TornadoTornado

 

The storm shattered this bur oak that when I photographed it a few weeks after, I thought spelled its certain demise. However, when I returned on July 6, 2024, the tree (center right) showed  vigorous regrowth shrouding the splintered trunk.

TornadoHGH

 

These forests date back to the 1930s when the TVA and Corps of Engineers acquired acreage destined for Wheeler Lake inundation and adjoining buffer lands associated with those properties. The approximate 35,000-acre Refuge’s hardwood forests regenerated naturally; pine forests include hand-planted agricultural fields and natural mixed pine.

The forests have reached an age when forces of Nature are removing scattered large dominant trees like the windthrow at left and the standing large dead (lightning or fungal pathogen killed) tree at right.

HGH Road

HGH Road

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’m estimating that the dominant (upper crown class) oak below died 2-4 years ago, enough time elapsing that all but its three largest branches have weakened and yielded to gravity. Only a relatively small canopy opening surrounds the deceased crown. Adjoining trees are aggressively closing the gap. The tree’s demise did not bring sustained sunlight to the forest floor, a necessity for encouraging a replacement forest to respond.

Jolly B

 

A powerful September 2023 lightning bolt killed this 30-inch diameter red oak. The surrounding trees are already snuffing the temporarily opened canopy (right).

HGH HGH

 

In time, the forest will change, even with the periodic random death of individual and small groups of dominant trees. What will the new forest look like; how will it evolve? I begin this discussion with comments on these two distorted individuals.

HGH Road

 

Physical injury earlier in their lives created the disfigurement. Fifty years from now the forest where the tornado touched down will be dense with trees scarred and misshapen by the storm’s fury. I attribute these two tree form oddities to the logging that accompanied acquiring buffer lands along the 1930s soon-to-be lake bed. Loggers cut and transported only merchantable timber (meeting size and market criteria). They left trees too small and of insufficient quality. Many of the nonmerchantable trees suffered physical damage, ensuring that the new forest harbored relics of odd and curious shapes.

This December 21, 2023 photo essay from my September 2023 saunter in the same forest provides more detail: https://stevejonesgbh.com/2023/12/21/an-aging-riparian-hardwood-forest-on-the-wheeler-national-wildlife-refuge/

 

Pondering the Next Forest

 

I returned to the forest along HGH Road on Saturday July 6, 2024. A 30-inch white oak demonstrates the fertility and capability of this bottomland site to produce high quality timber.

 

It stands firmly and stoutly, while this neighboring oak yielded to disease agents within the past five years. However, its story is complex. It stood for several years after succumbing, while a brown rot decay fungus consumed its whiter cellulose “carbohydrates, leaving the brownish, oxidized lignin. There is no fibrous texture because the cellulose is broken up early. The wood shrinks on drying and cross-checking is seen in later stages. It is often called cubical brown rot for that reason” (online forest pathology reference). The standing dead tree collapsed within the past several months.

 

I recorded this 58-second video at the tree’s stump:

 

The trunk lies where it recently fell, not yet recycling into the forest floor. Five years after the tree died there is still not a surge in understory response from the assumed large canopy opening. The void quickly refilled from the adjoining tree canopy expansion. I have characterized these nearly century-old riparian forests as old growth. However, while they express some features of an old growth forest (large individuals and lots of dead and down woody debris), other criteria are absent: vertically tiered canopy; uneven age; large openings. Old age forests are constantly renewing through attrition and replacement. There is no replacement in these forests.

 

Dominant trees are leaving the stand, usually one tree at a time, creating large canopy voids that quickly refill. The forest is changing, but it is not yet renewing. More radical change (i.e. replacement) will require a higher level of disturbance. This dominant canopy tree toppled within the past three years; its trunk and much of its crown extends one hundred feet beyond.

HGH

 

Only an uprooted heavily decayed stump remains in place from this fallen giant. Its remnant pit and mound mark the spot where it stood.

HGH

 

I recorded this 58-second video at the spot.

 

Winter winds wrenched this oak from its anchorage.

HGH

 

Examples abound of a forest approaching a transition threshold, when renewal (replacement) will initiate.

 

Tornado Forest Rebirth

 

Only two miles away, a January 1, 2022, F-0 or F-1 tornado triggered an immediate transition from closed forest to overstory collapse.

HGH

 

I recorded this 48-second video on my July 2024 visit:

 

The forest is renewing. Snags are welcoming birds of all manner, including the perching redtail hawk at right.

HGHTornado

 

So, the tornado triggered forest renewal. The persistent individual main canopy attrition has not.

I’ll issue Part Two of this tale next week, when I chronicle the woody understory species I photographed July 6, 2024, and offer my tentative look ahead 25, 50, and 100 years hence.

 

Thoughts and Reflections

 

I offer these observations:

  • Nothing in Nature is static.
  • Every tree, every stand, and every forest has a story to tell; I love to read the forested landscape.
  • I practice forensic forestry, my retirement craft of interpreting the stories and retelling their tale in simple layman’s language.
  • Albert Einstein advised, “Look deep into Nature, and then you will understand everything better.

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

 

HGH

 

 

 

All three of my books (Nature Based LeadershipNature-Inspired Learning and LeadingWeaned 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.

 

September 2023 Red Oak Lightning Strike Revisited May 2024!

Discovering A Lightning-Struck Mighty Oak

 

I often discover evidence of Nature’s fury when I wander the forests of northern Alabama. I conduct forensic forestry, mentally recreating the time and nature of the circumstances and events leading to what lies before me. This photo essay reports a situation I encountered on September 16, 2023, offers my reflections and follows with my subsequent observations and photographs from my return visit on May 28, 2024.

On September 16, 2023, I visited the riparian forest along HGH Road in Madison County’s central reaches of Alabama’s Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge. Always on the alert for signs of Nature’s forces at work, I found this 30-inch diameter red oak struck by lightning in the prior week’s thunderstorms. Bark stripped from ground to canopy top, spears of trunk surface wood shattered, the tree expresses the unfathomable power of a single lightning bolt.

HGH Road

 

The oak’s foliage high above me showed no sign of wilting, suggesting that the tree could survive. Time would tell. I’ve seen trees scarred from base to crown that survived a powerful strike decades ago. How will this one fare?

This 31-second video hints at the violent underside of Nature’s incredible magic, wonder, awe, and inspiration. I am convinced that to fully appreciate Nature’s beauty, we must sense, comprehend, understand, and witness the beast. Two sides of the same coin: Beauty and the Beast! I believe the strike will prove fatal. I’ve noted its location so that I may return to confirm its fate…or survival.

 

Assessing the Oak’s Fate Eight Months Hence

 

After the intervening dormant season, I returned to the once mighty oak May 28, 2024. I approaches the tree with baited breath. The tree stands as tall as it did in September. At first glance it remains a monarch, its 30-inch diameter larger than any of its neighbors.

HGH

 

Its scarred and stripped bark reaches, as it did in September, from its base to the crown.

 

However, the crown is barren. I feel a sense of loss that the tree did not survive the fatal blast. A weak counter to my feeling of loss is the faint satisfaction that my September prediction of demise bore true. I hope I am not projecting a sense of disciplinary (forestry) smugness in the photograph at right.

HGH

HGH

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Forestry is a science. Forestry practice (forest management) involves both art and science. The art involves seeing what is objectively and quantitatively unknowable. I brought a lifetime of forestry science and practice to my September assessment, yet I visited the oak in May absolutely uncertain of what I would find. What I do know is that Nature operates according to laws established by forces existing long before man walked on Earth. Leonardo da Vinci observed that obvious truth 500 years ago:

Nature never breaks her own laws.

The oak could not counter Nature’s own laws. All of us who practice forestry and applied ecology (my disciplinary fields; BS and PhD) must remember that Nature rules. Our education and knowledge are limited; we can never know all. Although I got this one correct (i.e. the tree died), I am far from all-knowing. Regardless, I will continue to play the forestry forensics game. I will win some; I will lose many. As a consequence of engaging, I will learn and perhaps improve my batting average.

Albert Einstein echoed the advice I have self-adopted:

Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.

I focused my first book, Nature Based Leadership, on the lessons Nature offers for leading. My second book, Nature Inspired Learning and Leading, suggests applying her wisdom to both leading and learning. I believe that every lesson for living, learning, serving, and leading is written indelibly in and is inspired compellingly by Nature.

Thoughts and Reflections

 

I offer these observations:

  • Nature never breaks her own laws. (Leonardo da Vinci)
  • Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better. (Albert Einstein)
  • Our education and knowledge are limited; we can never know all. (Yours truly)

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 sauntering 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

 

HGH

 

 

My first three books (Nature Based LeadershipNature-Inspired Learning and LeadingWeaned 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. The three books offer observations and reflections on my relationship with the natural world…and the broader implications for society. Order any of the three from your local indie bookstore, or find them on IndieBound or other online sources such as Amazon and LifeRich.

My fourth book, published by Dutton Land and Cattle Company, Dutton Land & Cattle: A Land Legacy Story, is available for purchase directly from me.