The Natural Bloomington Blog

Digitally capturing fall color was way down the mission list for last Sunday’s hike on the Hoosier National Forest’s Oriole Trail East. After all, Southern Indiana’s world-famous fall palette migrates from north to south, and the 6.5-mile spur-and-loop trail in northern Perry County is 70 miles south of Bloomington, where the annual autumn display had barely begun.

The primary goal was to explore a series of clearcuts, which the U.S. Forest Service refers to as “Restoring Balance” on an information signs, along the “trail.” I knew from YouTube research that the route followed a logging road, much of which was blanketed with discomforting rocks. Distance hiking therefore was not a priority, as well.

But I was maybe a hundred yards east of the State Road 66 parking lot when a brilliant blue sky conspired with a fiercely clear sun to illuminate a series of iridescent, trailside red hues. Together with deciduous greens transitioning to yellow and the few pines left retaining their evergreen hue, the Oriole East autumn exhibition surprisingly paled before none.

With the Eternal Summer of 2018 seemingly past, the Natural Bloomington focus has shifted, launching the final phase of the Rewilding the Hoosier National Forest coffee table book project—photographing the national forest’s far southern end. Perry County destinations, a few miles upstream from the Ohio River, include Oriole Trail West and East, Mogan Ridge Trail West and East, German Ridge Trail, Tipsaw Trail and others, not to mention as much bushwhacking as time will allow.

Due to this year’s extended heat-and-bug season, this final sprint has felt a long time coming, at least compared with the frenetic travel pace of the past four guidebook years. As newsletter subscribers will attest, Natural Bloomington was largely MIA during the months of August and September: just three Photo Albums, one of them on Sept. 30, and two blog posts, neither of them in September.

The 3.5-mile Fork Ridge Trail in Jackson County was too overgrown on Sept. 16 to be photographically productive, though it was a memorable grandpa experience with Vale. But the purpose of that day trip focused as much on bearing as it did on production. The Forest Service is planning some aggressive logging in the area east of the Hickory Ridge Horse Camp, and getting a feel for the area was also on the day’s agenda.

Check inside view of Brooks Cabin off the Rewilding Southern Indiana must-get photo list, thanks to the good folks down at the U.S. Forest Service; ditto soft light on Blackwell Pond. Last week they unlocked the 1870s-era log home, situated in the Charles C. Deam Wilderness on the edge of the pond, for a rainy Tuesday morning photo shoot.

Forest Service officials relocated the two-room-with-a-loft log cabin from the Little Blue River in Crawford County and rebuilt it at the Deam’s welcome center on its far western edge in Monroe County. Along with the Rickenbaugh House on Celina Lake in Perry County, Brooks represents the best examples of nineteenth-century architecture remaining on the 204,000-acre Hoosier National Forest.

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), a brigade of local laborers hired by the Depression-era Works Progress Administration, built the pond in the 1930s after quarrying rock there to rebuild local roads, including Dutch Ridge Road (now State Road 446) and Tower Road (now Tower Ridge). In addition to constructing wildlife ponds and openings, replanting trees and building trails, the CCC also built the Hickory Ridge Lookout Tower, which is on the National Historic Lookout Register.

I’ve been writing Hoosier National history the past month – pioneer through today – and didn’t shoot a single nature image in June, save for the backyard fawn. Not that there weren’t subjects to shoot – like Carnes Mill and the Rickenbaugh House. A perfect nonstorm developed on Saturday, and granddaughter Raina and I headed to the mill on a bend in the Little Blue River in Crawford County. The 1874 sandstone house was Plan B.

I’m sure we reached the right parking lot for Carnes Mill, but there was no hint of a path through the undergrowth downhill to the river barely visible below. Conflicting GPS readings may have contributed, but I just think it’s a spring or fall hike. So we headed 15 minutes south to the Rickenbaugh House on the Indian-Celina Recreation Area in Perry County.

Here’s an excerpt from the first draft of the Rickenbaugh section of Rewilding Southern Indiana: the Hoosier National Forest. Next up: Brooks Cabin, which was built by Carnes Mill and now graces the visitor center at the Charles C. Deam Wilderness.