The Natural Bloomington Blog

I could have titled the multimedia slide show I posted on the Natural Bloomington YouTube Channel last week "Billions of Years in a Handful of Minutes," which is effectively what I attempt to do in it. In 6 minutes 31 seconds, I trace 500 billion years of Southern Indiana's natural history -- and illustrate it with five dozen contemporary digital images from my Guide to Southern Indiana Natural Areas journey.

The show is actually called "The Southern Indiana Landscape," because It's an adaptation of the guidebook's Part 2 -- of the same name -- which has three chapters: "Sculpted by Rock, Ice and Water," "Southern Indiana Physiography" and "The Natural Regions."

This first clip details the roles rock, ice and water have played in forming the wildly diverse landscape that is Southern Indiana. I have the audio narrative and about half the images placed for the physiography section. When all three are finished, the final product will be a 15-minute show that I will combine with a talk at IU's Wylie House Museum on Oct. 20.

The Blue River didn't quite earn its name on Friday afternoon. So called for the aqua color the water assumes when levels are low, the river hue, reflected from a surface lined by lush, overgrown banks under a mid-afternoon sun, was closer to crocodile green.

But as a remote, pristine waterway that was relatively deserted on a shiftless weekday afternoon, the 90-mile long Ohio tributary did measure up to its pioneer name -- the Great Blue. With a reputation as Indiana's most beautiful -- the first designated as a state Natural, Scenic and Recreational River in 1973 -- the Blue's setting is unrivaled under any conditions.

With a couple major projects under control, I spent the afternoon exploring by wheel three stretches of the Blue's outback watershed in northern Crawford County, halfway between Hardinsburg and Milltown, a little more than an hour from home.

While not much has happened naturewise since Gary and I returned from the Ohio River waterfalls nearly three weeks ago, I captured a handful of nature shots during a Fathers Day Family Hike at Spring Mill State Park last Sunday and posted a small Photo Album. And, culminating with a return to the Indianapolis Coliseum for an afternoon of Compassion with His Holiness the Dalai Lama on Saturday, life off trail has been among the more eventful in recent memory.

Spring Mill wasn't a Photo Hike per se, but I put the fam cam to good use during hikes through the Donaldson's Woods Nature Preserve and along the waterfall below Hamer Cave just upstream from the Pioneer Village. Donaldson's Woods may be only the third largest stand of virgin woods in Indiana, but I think it's the most impressive. And like the other two biggies -- Wesselman's Woods in Evansville and Pioneer Mothers a half hour south just outside Paoli -- it sports a colorful history.

The woods was known as Shawnee Cottage when the wealthy, eccentric Scotsman named George Donaldson, who was bribed out of prison by his father and put on a ship to America in the 1860s, landed in Lawrence County. That he was imprisoned and his father paid his way out is historical fact. That he was jailed for murder is a legend unproved. (I once wrote a story on Donaldson's life forTraces, the Indiana Historical Society's magazine.)

Surrounded by the lush environs of the Beanblossom Bottoms Nature Preserve, I expected any revelations or insights from Saturday's hike with a group of Indianapolis Sierrans to come from the marshy flatlands off the 2.5-mile boardwalk or the forest canopy. The Sycamore Land Trust property is, after all, bottomland forest. And it is late spring.

Given the amount of time I spend exploring nature's nuance, group hikes are opportunities for me to talk to other nature lovers, particularly if I'm not the leader and don't have to keep everyone from getting lost. And aside from shooting a blue flag iris alongside one of the trail's many bridges, that's pretty much what I did Saturday morning -- talk wth and focus on images of the hike's 21 guests for the summer Indiana Sierran newsletter I'm wrapping up this week.

If indeed a magic moment were to occur in the sky, I expected it would be a bald eagle or two soaring overhead, given that the last stop was the preserve's observation deck that overlooks an eagle's nest. Clouds are cool but not often revelatory. But I have to say a lenticular cloud sighting captured the day's magic-moment award.