The site for the Expo is being constructed with minimal impact on the environment, including site planning, operation, and transportation. The Expo will also focus on technologies necessary for building an eco-community, such as recycling technologies, new energy sources, and natural energy development. For example, exhibition pavilions are modular and easy to assemble, dismantle and reuse.
Reduction, reuse, and recycling will be considered throughout all activities and events. The use the Tobu Kyuryo public railway, which has little environmental impact, is being strongly promoted, and improvements are being made to the local loop line. Additionally, low-pollution transportation will be used on the site grounds. And of course, participatory and experimental environmental education programs, events, and consortiums are planned.
The expo will be held MArch September 25, World Expo [by MO ]. Can't get enough TreeHugger? Sign up now and have it sent straight to your inbox. Daily and Weekly newsletters available. Email Address Email is required. The old family residence still stands intact, and is occupied by tenants who likewise love the land. The current generation owner has built this exquisite cabin:. We had all agreed via email discussion that this property may be a good candidate for a Land Legacy Story. Here are some of its fitting attributes:. This landowner epitomizes the ethic that Louis Bromfield so beautifully captured in his non-fiction book about his efforts to return his Ohio farm to soil health and vitality:.
The best we can hope to do is to leave the mark of our fleeting existence upon it, to die knowing that we have changed a small corner of this Earth for the better by wisdom, knowledge, and hard work. Because I have much yet to do to develop this Forestland Legacy Story, I am not identifying the owner nor the location. I will simply offer the following photographs with some brief annotation.
I want to demonstrate the power of informed and responsible stewardship, and to evidence the tremendous strength in telling the Story both to guide current practice and to leave an indelible testimony to those who follow. A lower pond occupies an old gravel borrow pit along the creek. Excellent habitat for fish, herons, waterfowl, turtles, and multiple other critters. Eagles are a common sight. I saw a red-tail hawk cruising and calling above the water.
I found two projectile points in an adjacent food plot, witnessing that others inhabited this land long before European settlers discovered its beauty and bounty. Near the first pond, the owner has planted and protected from deer and rabbit browsing — see the tubular tree shelters several species of oak seedlings. The trees are on a foot grid.
Note the blind for hunting along the woods edge. Here is an eight year old loblolly pine planting recently commercially thinned by removing every third row. Adjacent to that planted stand the owner maintains another food plot. Note the mowed grass lane, which serves as a firebreak and ATV access route. This is one of the fields that the landowner will plant with containerized longleaf pine seedlings.
Longleaf, representing yet another species important to wildlife and timber production, does well in this locale, and these soils are well-suited. Note the old field-edge oak, a majestic symbol and survivor from long ago, still standing watch over the field… and providing food and shelter for birds, squirrels, and who knows what else. Just another standard bearer for the story of the land.
To my knowledge, I may be the only person offering these services… in Alabama, across the US, or even internationally. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I am the only former four-time university president who is engaged in writing these Legacy tales! I view this endeavor and this service as a full complement to my current mission, as well as to the spirit and intent of my books and my weekly posts. I stand to learn a great deal in this story-telling endeavor.
I am breaking new ground. I hope to generate demand, get a few of these under my belt, and ensure that others carry the torch beyond what my own limits might be for satisfying what I envision as a latent demand. I want to sow the seeds of informed Earth stewardship. What better way than by recruiting leaders and enablers like this landowner the early adopters , and then diffusing the concept, the practice, and the ethic among others.
Rogers, PhD, an education specialist whose research on early adopters of agricultural practices Diffusion of Innovations , 5th Edition , prompts me to seek such innovators for the Legacy Story idea. See also my March 26 post for the wonderful examples of life Finding a Place on some seemingly precarious and marginal positions across the 1.
Seldom no, never in this part of the south does snow carpet the forest floor beyond a coating to a few inches occasionally during the depths of our abbreviated winter. By the end of April, most forest canopy species are already deeply shading the forest floor. The weeks and months between a waning winter and forest leaf-out translates to an opportunity window for spring ephemerals to grow, flower, produce seed, and fall into senescence — i.
We timed our Cane Creek Canyon pilgrimage to hit the peak ephemerals window. Our timing rewarded us with 23 species in flower. I have been a spring wildflower enthusiast since taking a Systematic Botany course in spring We covered diverse habitats, raced up, down, and across hill, valley, and dale, traversing field, forest, meadow, and stream-side.
We kept detailed journals and sketched our findings. I still have my weather-beaten field guides and plant keys. Its first-page entry is dated May 17, Judy and I tallied 27 species that long-ago day. Hard to believe that nearly 30 years have raced past since then. The joy of discovery and counting is still strong. So, 29 years later, allow me to take you along for a quick March 15, inventory of flowers tallied, from first to last in order of seeing them at Cane Creek:.
One of my all-time favorites greeted us at number Rue anemone, abundant from southern Ontario south to Georgia and Alabama. Its pure-white petals shout from the dormant winter forest floor, sounding a clarion call for the coming season of renewal, life, and warmth.
A rich floral arrangement presents atop the same boulder. Yellow trout lily and twisted trillium dominate. Nature has a way of dolling out luxuriant beauty. That morning our Madison, Alabama temperature bottomed at 25 degrees. These spring ephemerals can handle it.
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They know the drill. A wonderful oak leaf hydrangea anchors at lower left on yet another boulder. Early saxifrage bedecks a thin ledge about five feet above the ground, conveniently at eye- and camera-level. Several trout lily flowers peek over the edge above the saxifrage. What florist could do better? Nature exploits every advantage… not for us, but for sustaining the species, capitalizing the niche… of time and place.
We enjoy her offerings, and relish her boundless beauty and vitality.
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A closer look at the hanging early saxifrage. Nature abhors each and every vacuum. A precarious foothold becomes a ledge of luxury. The photo at left below yeah, the one with my thumb! The Maryland photo depicts the flower and foliage more clearly than the photo I snapped at Cane Creek. This red buckeye is tantalizingly close to opening its flowers. Close enough that I counted it! Will you grant me the latitude to claim 23? Note that its flower is looking up at the sun.
The yellow trout lily yeah, they are both yellow , in the second photo above, hangs its head as though shy and embarrassed. Both have the same dappled foliage, earning another common name, yellow fawn lily. I have seen elsewhere rich forested floodplains carpeted with blue woodland phlox. Our final tally of the day took the prize for its aesthetic elegance.
Fire pink seemed quite red. This is the only one in full flower we encountered. Interestingly, and disturbingly, the Lacefields told us of coming across trail-side patches of other showy species where visitors had picked bouquets and then tossed them aside. And when enough have seen and fondled, there is no wildness left to cherish. To inform and educate visitors to the sanctity of Nature. To the imperative to see, appreciate, understand, and cherish.
To the imperative to leave behind only footprints; to take with us only what we brought. To respect and enjoy. Although we timed our visit to hit the early spring peak wildflower window, I long to visit more frequently over this extended spring season. Once a week sees change at a scale suitable for awe and inspiration. So much happens so quickly to the knowledgeable, discerning visitor.
There is magic at our fingertips, and lessons aplenty. All are stewards extraordinaire — land steward exemplars. Among other sights of the day, I reflected on a prairie crab apple anchored happily my view on a limestone ledge:. Our March 15 hike and tour at Cane Creek Canyon Preserve demonstrated the same lesson in multiple variations.
Our northern Alabama climate is a bit more forgiving than the drier Kansas Flint Hills. See my March 20, post for a more general narrative about the Preserve and my impressions. For flourishing wherever the ingredients for life are available, whether or not the place appears at my first estimation worthy. Our first example is a now deceased Eastern red cedar, perched at the canyon rim on a sandstone ledge. This individual survived, and appears to have thrived, on its precarious anchorage for decades.
All is not negative. The seedling cedar faced little competition for light. Its ledge position afforded a foot vertical advantage over trees starting at ground level beneath the ledge. Ample moisture, enriched with nutrients percolating from the soil upslope nourished our pioneer cedar. The cedar actually enjoyed a set of favorable circumstances. It likely produced seed for other cedar trees growing in the neighborhood of the now-dead sentinel. A good life for our subject cedar? What is a good life to a cedar? Adding a little new wood each year and producing seed sufficient to pass genes into the future will suffice, I believe.
My sense is that this one met those criteria before entering the great cedar afterlife! How fitting and perfectly placed! This beech below left holds tightly to sandstone detritus beneath a similar rim ledge. The cavity visible under its base suggests that the original seedling found anchorage on a decaying tree stump, sinking roots that reached around the stump into the soil among the rocks. The old stump fully decayed, leaving our beech elevated above where the stump once stood. Perhaps a chipmunk shelter alternative to scurrying among the ledge-rock fissures.
Like the prairie crab apple, this beech seems to perch on stone, yet I am sure that its roots reach deeply into the debris of the long-crumbling sandstone ledge. Again, our moist temperate climate furnishes ample moisture during all seasons of most years. Note the abundant moss on exposed rock. Life is good in the canyon! Like the now deceased cedar, the thriving white oak below right has a commanding rim-rock view, similarly perched at the edge.
Once again, its roots reach into fissures and tap soil uphill, even as the shallow bedrock uphill channels moisture to the oak. See the thick moss on exposed rock. Life is good on the canyon rim! So, we found forest trees finding a place throughout the canyon. For every tree oddly positioned, we found scores of woody shrubs similarly challenging our perception of a favorable place to grow and prosper.
How nice to see it among the principal understory tenants at Cane Creek Canyon. Clearly a site opportunist, the species clings tenaciously to the sandstone faces and boulders, thriving wherever it finds purchase. As Jim Lacefield reminded me several times, this sandstone is porous, holding water like a sponge and making it available to plants.
Note also the lichens and mosses that coat even the vertical exposed rock faces. Nature truly does abhor a vacuum. Oak leaf hydrangea examples of finding a place met us at every turn. We did not limit our pondering and amazement to trees and shrubs. After all, we timed our visit with the Lacefields to hit the early peak of spring wildflowers. Although we did not anticipate finding vernal richness on exposed rock tops, faces, and fissures, we found such glories in abundance.
I will say much more about the the 23 species of wildflowers we identified in a subsequent Great Blue Heron blog post. For now I offer one of my all time favorites, rue anemone, which grows ubiquitously from Alabama to southern Ontario. Here it is in its pure white splendor in two terrarium-like settings. First, peeking from a horizontal fissure on the lichen-covered face of a sandstone boulder.
Below right it is flourishing on a moss draped rock lip of another boulder. Like so many of our spring ephemerals, rue anemone completes it annual life cycle in the forest understory before tree leaf-out and its associated deep shading. Nature exploits purchase where we observers may not expect it. Her lesson is quite simple. Life flourishes where it can; where the ingredients present opportunity. The barren sandstone boulder offered little initially beyond porous rock, oriented horizontally, in a humid temperate climate.
Lichen and moss, the photos evidence, can grow on vertical surfaces. What horizontal assures is that organic litter from trees collects on the table-top. Dead and decaying moss and lichens accumulate, along with tree-origin litter and any other plant taking root atop the rock. Add mineral debris from the biological, chemical, and physical weathering of the rock surface. Horizontal keeps the products of all this action in-place. In aggregate, soil-forming processes eventually provide a medium for the rocky-top Boulder Gardens. How long did it take?
Nature works magic… wonder and awe there for those who choose to discern it. The ingredients for a life well-lived are not in short supply. The exposed ledge in the photo below, directly above the feeder stream, has little opportunity to build soil and support plant life beyond the moss carpeting it in green. Spring freshets and summer deluges even in this head-water drainage scour the rock of any organic or mineral material that accumulates between those run-off episodes.
I may not rise to the level of forensic naturalist my term , yet I strive to understand the evidence she presents. My absolute favorite graduate course during my doctoral journey involved a kind of forensic sleuthing: Geomorphology, the study of the form of the Earth. Ernie Muller, a noted Syracuse University scientist now deceased who taught the course, viewed the form of the Earth more as poet and philosopher than cold, objective scientist. He employed passion to explain and inspire. He led us on field trips near Syracuse. We examined local relief and landform, and he asked us a simple question: He liked my essay on Green Lakes State Park enough to share it with the Park for use in interpretive literature.
Ernie lives on in what he inspired in me. I can only hope and pray that I have similarly touched others along my pathways since. I do not intend for these to be scholarly mini-treatises, complete with citations and references. And to plant seeds for informed and responsible Earth stewardship. I see this particular essay as a catalyst for each of us to Find Our Place… in the web of our own life. Nature has infinite Places. The number of Places available for life, living, and thriving on just the 1. What about in your life and enterprise.
What can you learn from Nature? Are you advantaging the essential elements of Place where you have rooted or might yet root? Are you exploiting the opportunity afforded you… gifted to you? Beware the Ides of March — good advice perhaps for Caesar, but the warning did not apply to Judy and me. Our day had dawned at 25 degrees, and already under brilliantly blue skies had climbed into the upper 40s. Two months earlier we had scheduled what proved to be a perfect weather day.
Jim had hoped to catch the spring wildflower season at early peak. The day did not disappoint; we recorded 23 different species in flower! Most of the road trip found us south of and parallel to the Tennessee River, the first plus miles west of I mostly industrial and agricultural flood plain and terrace. Relatively flat the full distance, we turned south about ten miles from the Preserve, immediately ascending feet onto the plateau through which Cane Creek has carved its canyon at the Preserve. Here we stand at nearly feet elevation, some feet above the creek behind us to the north.
The Preserve encompasses some acres, including most of what lies within view. Jim and Faye have acquired the acreage in several parcels over three decades. The Nature Conservancy now holds the property in permanent conservation easement. Eighteen miles of marked and maintained hiking trails. The whole package made all the more impressive by Jim and Faye. We had not met them except by email, yet we left late afternoon feeling as though we had know them for years. Jim stayed with us some six hours. The two Lacefield ATVs were shop-bound for spring reconditioning.
Jim and Faye are retired school teachers. Enthusiastically fit, unabashedly passionate about Nature and the Preserve, and knowledgeable beyond compare. He authored Lost Worlds in Alabama Rocks: Jim knows more than geology and geomorphology. His knowledge extends deeply across spring ephemerals, woody shrubs, and trees — common and Latin names all! He referred with similar familiarity to every butterfly we saw. Even with a PhD in forestry, I view Jim with absolute inspiration and humility. He and Faye are one with the land they know and love. I cannot do justice to the extent of my awe for Jim, Faye, and the Preserve in this single blog post.
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I will note that they epitomize Nature-Inspired Learning and Leading. I left that afternoon feeling great admiration for their selfless stewardship of 1. Rather than attempt to capture the full Cane Creek Canyon tale in this single post, I will give you a broad overview, first impressions, and initial reflections today, based upon this inaugural tour. I may go to a third sequel, exploring whether there are elements of the Cane Creek Canyon Legacy Story not yet told. Not at all ironically, we found lots of cane along Cane Creek.
Judy is holding onto one. In several places the cane grew in thickets, some exceeding ten feet vertical. Seeing the photographs accents the memories, yet does not do justice to actually being there. These tough sandstone outcrops send small streams and rivulets down-slope in steps and spills, adding excitement and beauty. I wanted to lean more into the photo below left ; uneasiness with heights dissuaded me. This is the first of many spring falls we encountered. Judy, Faye, and Jim are standing in the second photo about where I snapped the first.
The applicable lesson from Nature? Perspective matters — where you stand on any topic or issue depends upon where you sit. There is no inherent danger in looking up at the ledge. I felt real and palpable risk in leaning forward to take the photo where the stream passed over the edge. Once Faye had left us, I rode in the back of the ATV, snapping an occasional photo between jostles and bounces. This photo revealed what I did not see. I simply intended to capture the nice bench placed at a ledge overhang along the trail.
The entire Preserve expressed an ethereal character. I felt the spiritual in multiple places that day. Too, I sensed in Jim and Faye a connection to the land of a sacred nature. They do obviously love the land and draw as much from it as they give to it. Life and beauty are where you seek it in early spring. Our humid temperate climate encourages moss, in this case along the upland brook not far below the falls in the earlier photo. As spring advances and multiple shades of green overwhelm the landscape, the moss will not draw our attention so well.
Nature's Wisdom
In mid March, it speaks loudly and convincingly, commanding its audience. We will watch for its more subtle expressions as summer approaches. The Boulder Garden, a tumbled collection of sandstone blocks broken from ledge-rock outcrops above, warranted close-up inspection. Each block is a table-top garden, lush with herbaceous and woody plants. Had even the Master Gardeners among us been assigned a bare 8 by 12 by 12 foot block of sandstone and instructed to create a rock-top garden, we would most assuredly have failed.
Yet Nature has succeeded on her own. Jim describes this sandstone as a sponge, porous enough to hold moisture available to the individual plants perched there. No, this is not beauty on the Grand Canyon scale, yet it is, just the same, marvel-quality and worthy of appreciation, contemplation, and embrace.
University of the South biologist David George Haskell visited a square meter his mandala of old growth Tennessee upland forest floor nearly every day over the course of a calendar year, monitoring the ebb and flow of daily and seasonal life. From his journal, he authored The Forest Unseen. I have tried to find an answer to this question, or the start of an answer.
The oak and rock union below is another chapter. Imagine the acorn cached by a squirrel just below the outcrop. The tree has already found great anchorage, a moist and fertile soil medium, and a place of dominance in the sunlight-rich canopy above. Okay, oak trees have accommodated such interference in prior successful generations; its DNA is prepared. It is equipped genetically to form callous tissue to grow around the ledge or any such interference , strengthen what would otherwise become a point of weakness, and continue to optimize its unfortunate position where tree meets immovable obstacle.
Evolution instructs the tree to thrive at least long enough to produce progeny that can pass life along to a next generation. Adapt to the circumstances. Recognize that not all of the life and enterprise cards dealt are kings and aces. Employ the tools given us by Nature and nurture. Make the most of it! As I have observed in other Great Blue Heron website posts, I firmly believe that every lesson for living, learning, serving, and leading is either written indelibly in or is compellingly inspired by Nature. Because I believe and I am willing to look , I can see the lessons.
I assume they are there, and I find them. How many visitors note this unusual union without understanding what lessons it evidences? Not far from there, also near the plateau top, this contorted chestnut oak likewise invites the camera shutter. What is its story?
I offer one scenario. Picture the pole-sized younger version standing mostly alone perhaps at the edge of a coarse pasture, where the slope steepens abruptly toward the camera. An ice storm heavily drapes it, permanently bending but not breaking the top and upper branches. Those branches continue to function, leafing out, and advantaging the sunlight still within reach.
The now more or less horizontal crown branches thicken, support multiple vertical shoots, and perpetuate the now T-topped forest denizen. Meantime, the then-abandoned rough pasture converts to the mixed pine and hardwood forest that extends uphill from the contorted one, clearly a younger age class. A major ice storm can leave an indelible signature. So can a sapsucker foraging for insects on a white oak trunk.
The small woodpeckers continue to work these horizontal lines year after year. I include this photo as just another chapter in the life of the forest, a living community rich with inter-dependencies and intricate beauty. I now offer a confession. I am referring to this tree as a white oak I also lean toward sweetgum. However, I did not confirm identification in my notes, nor in my memory. I admit that I could be wrong! Throughout the Preserve, I noted inch diameter stumps within a foot of the forest floor. Faye had told me that Jim has been dutifully sculpting the forest by shaping the understory, removing individuals he thought should go.
This wonderfully descriptive sign informs visitors of the purpose. Again, my compliments to Jim and Faye for so effectively telling the story and educating the visitors. It is our daily bread. Nature, in its many variants, is my daily bread. I am certain the same is true for Jim and Faye. I am grateful that Nature enthusiasts like the Lacefields have taken giant steps to make this small corner of the world better through wisdom, knowledge, and hard work.
They are Earth Stewardship warriors. Again, I am both humbled and inspired by the Preserve and its intrepid magicians who have dedicated their lives to its care and conservation. May they and the Preserve continue to delight and inform visitors in perpetuity! Watch for at least two more posts from our Cane Creek Canyon Preserve visit.
Again, we selected each location; we chose to bloom where we were planted. We considered ourselves place-committed. Who lament the rain; the snow; the heat; the cold; the wind; the remoteness; the crowding; the shopping; you name it. I suppose that we are half-full people; our glass is never half-empty.
I could look out over Big Blue Lake and see only the houses. Instead, I prefer focusing on the water, its diverse fish, amphibians, reptiles, and birds:. I know that my own career-nomadic life in early 21st Century America is fortunate… blessed with choices. Few global citizens can choose. At least not so easily as we.
February 10 and 11, we toured the Flint Hills in Kansas. A cut-metal hilltop sculpture welcomed us to Council Grove, depicting 19th Century settlers making a far more arduous relocation along the Santa Fe Trail:. And perhaps many of these same families had already crossed the Atlantic from their European homes. Prior nomads had likewise seasonally crossed these tallgrass prairies in search of sustenance, temporary quarters, and life energy:.
Now, imagine that some small ground-burrowing mammal had enjoyed the bitter fruit of a prairie crab apple, and scarified the hard seed coat through its digestive system. Then standing alert on a limestone outcrop, the ground squirrel deposited the seed and its fecal accompaniment serendipitously at a fissure atop the ledge. The seed might have managed much better in a more fertile setting, yet the small crack provided protection from crows that may have pounced had it been exposed.
The seed germinated, having been dealt what I gauged upon my initial assessment to be a pretty lousy hand. Yet, Nature has been dealing poor hands to many generations of prairie crab apples. A seed lucky enough to secure purchase on deep and fertile soil in the open would simply not have survived the first fire a prairie certainty to sweep across the prairie. Far better to root on the rock:. It sent out a scouting party — roots that dipped into the crevasse, and reached deeper soil. Root exploitation and now brute force widening the fissure serve the tree beautifully!
The fibrous, moisture- and nutrient-gathering fine roots reach into moist and reasonably fertile soil beneath and below the rock. The best of all worlds, I suppose. A quick geology side-trip. Limestone strata are the most resistant. Hence limestone ledges run their contour where they intersect the side slopes see the cross section upper right. Other crab apples make a living along the outcrop ledge, but none thrive like this individual.
No lousy hand for this crab. This perspective just struck me with yet another trump card dealt this fateful seed. Add a new one — out of easy reach of whitetail deer. This view west along the ledge shows both the density of woody vegetation and the superior, deer-resistant position of our hero. Had the small mammal deposited our crab apple seed here the open prairie photo below , multiple natural forces would have doomed it.
Such is one reason why crab apples produce far more than the one seed it takes to grow one new offspring. Counter to my lousy-hand original assessment, our heroine may continue bearing fruit for decades to come. She crab apples bear perfect flowers — male and female on every tree has all that a prairie crab apple might wish to have.
Although her height is suppressed by the rather harsh exposure, the tree does not need to reach far for full sunlight. Nothing nearby is competing for the solar gift. And another favorable attribute — this stretch of ledge faces south, well below the concordant prairie hill summit elevation, a lee position sheltered from howling northerly and westerly winds. What more than a long life, a great view, firm anchorage, ample nutrition and moisture, and protection from adversity could any of us hope to secure?! Even as a student of applied ecology, I leaped to seeing this rock-bound crab apple as having been given a raw deal.
I began this blog post in my head even as we stood by this rock-top sentry, thinking it a lesson for persevering under adversity. Yet here in the comfort of my office, examining the photos, and reflecting on this individual, I have switched gears. I see two levels of beauty, magic, wonder, and awe in this resolute prairie crab apple.
The second level is hidden within the secret of its success. Think about the remarkable alignment of favorable site factors that enable this tree to stand as a symbol for the exquisite opportunism hard-wired in Nature. Do you know what remarkable potential lies hidden within you and your enterprise? Do you focus on what at first glance seems a lousy hand? Or do you consider what might be… and strive to secure firm footing, satisfaction, and a long, productive, and vibrant life?
Nature is an opportunist — are you? I even choose my attitude — life is too fleeting, fragile, and short not to choose upbeat! Although I certainly have always taken what I do seriously, I refuse to take myself with other than a sense of joy and lightness. We chose to be framed on the Konza Prairie Trail! Workman Doc mentored and inspired me through ACC. Doc introduced me to the attendees that evening. At nearly years, Doc continues to inspire and lift me. I dedicated my second book to Doc, as well as to three other mentors who indelibly shaped my early career.
Doc taught systematic botany my first spring semester. I loved the field trips we took after winter began lessening its Central Appalachian grip. We would rush from habitat to habitat, striking across elevation transects, from wet to dry, and aspect to aspect, always seeking to increase our count of flowering spring ephemerals. We covered lots of road miles and rough terrain. I look back on those early spring days of my life as well as the season of year and discover with reflection that Doc alerted me to two of the critical verbs that shape so much of what I do, write, and instruct today.
I learned on those excursions how to Look. Not just look on the ground for the early bloomers, but to read the landscape, and anticipate what I might discover blooming in accord with site conditions. Seeing is much easier with informed Looking. I knew to seek skunk cabbage in vernal pools and near spring seeps. Columbine on sheltered road cuts. Astute and informed Looking leads to and enables Seeing. And on those action-packed field excursions, I learned to Feel excitement and passion for counting natural coup.
For learning more and more and more about Nature… its patterns and processes. I encountered wonder and awe for these magical, wonderful early bloomers that run nearly their entire life cycle during the few weeks when sunlight reaches the forest floor before the trees leaf-out, and shade the understory, like this oxalis on a spring hillside above Paw Paw Tunnel. The joy of Looking, Seeing, and Feeling the thrill of Nature discovery has actually spurred us to Act, the fourth of my verbs.
Acting in this case is simply being spurred to do it again each year. Nature has a way of doing that. Inspiring me to again and again venture forth, if only to catch a sunrise, enjoy a sunset, or catch a first-bloomer. My Dad first introduced me to the joys of Nature immersion, yet he did so without the doctoral level, scholarly depth that Doc brought to light. Dad inspired my fundamental love, joy, and marvel of Nature. Doc began to inject a more intellectual, knowledge-based appreciation and understanding.
Both are necessary ingredients for the four-and-half-decades since that I have cultivated, honed, and tended the Nature passion that envelops me now. One of my Great Blue Heron services involves contracting with forestland owners to develop their Forestland Legacy Story, the tale of Nature and Human Nature that captures the essence of the property for their heirs.
Every single parcel of land has its own story — past, present, and future. I realize now that it was Doc who showed me how to Look, See, and Feel the land simply by walking, observing, and deducing. The language of the land is there to discover, interpret, and relate.