By Steve Roark
Volunteer Cumberland Gap National Historical Park
Being “green” is becoming a lifestyle these days, so as the holidays approach you may be pondering over which is better for the environment, a real tree or an artificial one. It's a personal choice, but here are some facts to consider.

Trees are impressive life forms, producing tall, majestic columns that reach to the sky. Besides support, tree trunks perform a number of functions, so here’s a lesson in tree physiology. Growth of the trunk occurs at a thin layer of cells called the cambium. Here and only here does active cell division occur. The cambium is located near the outer portion of the trunk and can be damaged by fire or wounds made by tools or equipment. It grows two kinds of wood cells; one type grows towards the tree center, the other outward.

Thanksgiving is one of the high holidays of the US, involving traditions of being with family, eating a bountiful meal of traditional foods, and hopefully taking time to give thanks for what we have been given. You know the traditional story of the first Thanksgiving involving Pilgrims, Native Americans, feasting and all that, but history is always good to review occasionally, as you often learn something new.

Now that the beauty of Autumn is past and the trees are mostly laid bare, some folks bemoan the starkness of the winter forest. But now that you can see them, the limbs, branches, and twigs of trees offer a silhouette of graceful beauty all their own, especially with the sun shining behind them. Another overlooked aspect is the beauty of their design and function.

By Steve Roark
Volunteer Interpreter, Cumberland Gap National Historical Park
Tree leaves are most appreciated when they go through their fall color blitz that we enjoy every year. But they should also be appreciated for all they do throughout the year, including creating food and fiber through the miracle of photosynthesis, and through their death their provision of a raw materials needed for next year’s growth of new leaves. Going from dead leaves to nutrients that can be taken up by a tree requires an amazing recycling system.

By Steve Roark
Volunteer, Cumberland Gap National Historical Park

Socially, male and female white-tailed deer live separate lives except for a brief mating period in the fall. Bucks tend to hang in small groups amongst themselves, and does hang out with other females, along with their yearlings and fawns.

I look forward to the skies of September and October and their intense blue every year. Autumn skies typically have a lot of big puffy cumulus clouds as well, highlighting the blue even more. Scanning the sky from overhead to the horizon will show that the brilliant blue overhead fades to a lighter blue near the horizon. Let us delve into some sky science and see what’s going on.

Animals killed by automobiles are a common in rural areas. Skunk, ‘possum, turtles, and more recently, armadillos, who have managed to work their way east to our area. I recently saw a squashed aardvark in front of the McDonalds in Tazewell. Skunks are so brazen due to their very effective odoriferous defense mechanism, that they meet their end thinking ...

The autumn coloration of trees is always looked forward to with anticipation, and is beginning to show in the higher elevations. The presence of a large number of tree species having brilliant fall foliage is more unusual than you think, as the only other places in the world with a similar abundance of foliage colorations are northern China, Korea, and Japan.

When appreciating the natural world, getting out and seeing it is mostly how it’s done. We go on vacations or road trips to see beautiful things like forests, mountains, rivers, oceans and canyons.
This makes sense, since we are wired to perceive the world mostly through the sense of sight. Thirty percent of the neurons in our brain’s cortex is devoted to vision. For comparison, eight percent is used for smell, and only two percent is used for hearing.