The Natural Bloomington Blog

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.

Southern Indiana's deep woods have evolved into a lush, green mass this time of year. So, as I drove along Tower Ridge Road to the Martin Hollow Trailhead under a brilliant, mid-day sun on Friday, my photographic plan was to keep an eye on the sky, watchful for the visual interplay of canopy, sky and cloud.

The woods had indeed turned a dense shamrock green along the three-mile trail in the Charles C. Deam Wilderness. For the first time this year I picked up trailside sticks to clear spider webs that span the sometimes overgrown path, which begins at the Hickory Ridge Lookout Tower and bears west to Grubb Ridge, crossing Tower Ridge en route. And after what seemed like an eternity of steady rain, the trail itself featured extended stretches of pure muck that required a wide-straddle balancing act to traverse.

My perseverance and skyward gaze paid off, as the day's Photo Album illustrates. But, as is always the case, downed trees and combinations of sun and soil offered up isolated patches where wildflowers thrive on or near the forest floor.