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Micro’d‍ A $7 impulse buy, and the micro world opens wide. Sparkling spider webs, fat fern spores, and even my own fingernails are fascinating discoveries. Mushrooms! Insect wings! I’m eight years old again, exploring tiny worlds through a plastic jeweler’s loupe. Challenged to describe what I see, to think in terms of “what else…

Although it’s only mid-August and there’s weeks of swimming and paddling time still to come, subtle changes are apparent when you cruise the shoreline. Tulip poplars, sourwoods and the occasional stressed red maple are expressing hints of color. Goldenrods and Joe Pye weed are blooming, muscadine vines and hickories are hanging heavy with fruit. Aralia…

Fallen Friend‍ Early morning. Rain-slicked asphalt. Loose gravel. A brief moment of confusion and chaos, and in that blink of an eye, life changes. Searing pain. And blood… so much blood. It was a regular Wednesday until our friend Brandon crashed his motorcycle coming into work, shattering his ankle. Now he faces months of…

  NOT Skibidi Toilet Ohio! I have been busy this summer doing what I love the most…hanging out with kids in nature. Lately, I have been leading them on boat adventures with Jocassee Lake Tours. Twice this week I have been hugged by 11-year-old kids who had no clue who I was before they got…

Siblings‍ Sure, it might look like some googley-eyed creature from a sci-fi cartoon, but this glob dangling from the tip of a sourwood branch is a wad of caterpillars. Huh? I snap a photo and do a quick search of the artificial intelligence app on my trusty computer/phone. Ok, the larval stage of a…

INSTANT FRIENDS It?s truly a beautiful thing when everyone on a public tour fits together like a puzzle, each person unique and joyful. Imagine this: 1 boat with 5 parties (4 ?couples? and 1 group of 3) on a 4-hour adventure deep into the Jocassee Gorges. Imagine everyone listening intently to one another, compliments rolling…

‘Shrooms!? August. The sun arcs high and hot, rain moves through in unpredictable cycles, and the underground network has exploded. Mushrooms. Everywhere. Not flower, not fruit, but masses of intertwined hyphae rising simultaneously as colorful stalks holding colorful caps, breaking through ground like an egg and opening wide like a parasol. It?s a smorgasbord of…

As usual, most days this week were divine. No intense heat or major weather and the water temperature was perfectly refreshing. We watched double crested cormorants, (which have less preen oil than other waterfowl), air drying their wings on the floating barrier by the hydro intakes, a healthy water snake in Laurel Fork, yawning and…

Jocassee Wild Naturalists‍ ‍For some people, Jocassee makes a deep, profound impression that goes beyond descriptive words. Some people can’t get enough of Jocassee, returning again and again to experience the wonder of this one wild place. You could call it – and many do – a spiritual experience. Maybe it’s the raw beauty of…

I turned the motor off, sat back in the captain’s chair, and closed my eyes so that I could listen.  I heard individuals getting to know each other, I heard the excitement in their voices,  I heard words of encouragement and support, I heard big belly laughs, I heard big sighs of relaxation, and then…

The Devil’s Walking Stick‍ ‍It’s possible that the North American native tree which sports the largest of leaves might also boast having the largest clusters of flowers. Like inch-and-a-half leaflets which make up a six-foot leaf, flowers of Aralia spinosa are small, but many. Quietly drift up to one hanging over the water of Lake…

We went from last week’s holiday busyness with its afternoon thunderstorms, to this week’s slower pace with slightly cooler temps and no significant weather.  One exciting thing we encountered was when a small, non-venomous water snake dropped from a low hanging branch into our boat.  I grabbed a small towel from my guide bag and…