I’ve lived long enough to recognize epic sea change in real time. And even though I’ve seen this fork in the flow coming for a year or more, its imminence didn’t strike with full force until I turned south on Washington on Monday en route to the Ohio River at Buzzard Roost. I realized this would be the last road trip of my six-year, three-book exploration of natural Indiana.
I also know such pivotal moments are fraught with danger and ripe with possibility. So I took it slow and savored every one of the 208.2 road and 2 trail miles. Signs of peril manifested themselves in a mysteriously cracked lens filter (not cracked the night before) and a sign at the Buzzard Roost Trail warning the path to the river is “steep, rocky and slippery.” Signs of creative hope revealed themselves in a rare combination [in my experience] of sky and clouds above the beautiful river, as the Iroquois Indians called the Ohio.
Monday’s Buzzard Roost-Mano Point-German Ridge trip produced the last digital images for Rewilding Southern Indiana: The Hoosier National Forest, a coffee-table book scheduled for release in Fall 2020. The manuscript is formatted for submission. The Natural Bloomington book phase has reached its coda.