The Natural Bloomington Blog

Given the slow pace of fall color change here in Southern Indiana, I was more than ready to wander West-Central Indiana on Oct. 22 in search of images for my Northern Indiana guidebook project and, hopefully, revel in some of the familiar reds, oranges, yellows and golds Indiana autumn is world-famous for. It was, after all, a picture-perfect Sunday autumn afternoon.

I got what I needed in terms of book images from the Jackson-Schnyder Nature Preserve near Terre Haute and the Raccoon State Recreation Area (SRA) to the east in the rolling Parke County farmland near Rockville. 

But during a heavily wooded drive from Bloomington to Terre Haute, I saw one tree with color, in Bowling Green, and it didn’t exactly shimmer. I found only one with an electric yellow hue at Jackson-Schnyder, a 15-acre preserve in Vigo County. On a rugged, two-mile hike on the 4,065-acre Raccoon, brilliant, backlit colors were at a minimum.

When The Nature Conservancy's (TNC) marketing director told me the Fern Cliff Nature Preserve is his favorite, I knew I was in for a stirring photo hike. It helped that he confirmed a trail does indeed wind through the 150-acre Putnam County site. The Indiana Division of Nature Preserve's website says there isn't one. TNC's website says only that a trail exists.

While the Dedicated State Nature Preserve would have been more inspiring were I a botanist -- TNC calls it a "floral paradise" -- this sandstone marvel proved worthy of both its National Natural Landmark (NNL) status and the focus demanded by its rugged landscape. The terrain is treacherously precipitous. A trailside sign warns of "dangerous cliffs."  

Botanically speaking, Fern Cliff's sheer sandstone cliffs and moist, upland and lowland forests are literally dripping with ferns, mosses and liverworts unique to this part of the planet. Like that of the nearby Big Walnut Preserve, its NNL status means the preserve has "outstanding biological and geological resources."

That the Big Walnut Creek Valley is a natural wonder is evidenced by the fact that the U.S. Park Service designated 502 acres of it a National Natural Landmark (NNL) nearly a half century ago. By its 1968 designation, that means Big Walnut contains "outstanding biological and geological resources."

"The site contains one of the few stands in Indiana where beech, sugar maple, and tulip poplar grow on alluvial Genesee soil and includes relict species of a postglacial forest that occupied the area 5,000 to 6,000 years ago," the Park Service says.

And the recognition doesn't end there. Last Wednesday, I hiked through two Dedicated State Nature Preserves -- Big Walnut/Tall Timbers Trail Unit and Hall Woods -- and alongside a bean field to find a third -- the Hemlock Ridge Nature Preserve -- too overgrown to negotiate. The three are located along a six-mile stretch of the Big Walnut on either side of Bainbridge, a one-light town west of Danville with a population smaller than its zip code, 736 and 765.

We heard McCormick's Creek long before we reached the Statehouse Quarry, which sits creekside a quarter mile or so upstream from the White River West Fork. And I can't say I was thrilled when I found the creek a muddy, coffee-with-cream color. The water rushed, unlike I'd ever seen it, with a deafening roar. But the idea of roiling muck as the day's visual image didn't exactly delight.

For the most part, my instinctive reaction missed the mark by more than a quarter mile. I literally turned the mud to photo gold, as evidenced by the McCormick's Creek Photo Album I posted (and one from Cataract to come). The swirling water over the creek beds' glistening rocks slaked my thirst for abstract photographic expression, even if the sudsy accumulations at the fall bases were anything but refreshing.

McCormick's Creek State Park just east of Spencer is Indiana's oldest state park and turned 100 years old on July 4. The Statehouse Quarry, which commenced operation in 1878, is so named because it produced limestone used to build the Indiana Statehouse in Indianapolis.