The Natural Bloomington Blog

Thankfully, Saturday afternoon’s short hike on the Hoosier National Forest’s Fork Ridge Trail was far less dramatic than our first trek last November, when sandhill cranes serenaded from above and a friend had to be transported via helicopter to Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis. This weekend’s exploration was part of an afternoon adventure to rural Jackson County, via Brown County, in pursuit of backwoods spring renewal.

The Fork Ridge walk constituted the second Hoosier National outing during a 10-day spring break from teaching duties. The first, a scouting drive to the national forest’s southernmost point – Tate’s Hollow just north of the Ohio River in backcountry Perry County—a week earlier was more eventful, albeit not tragic.

Both excursions produced substantial reassurance that spring has at last sidled north into Southern Indiana. A patch of crocuses alongside Perry’s aptly named High Water Road, which bisects the Hoosier south of German Ridge Recreation Area, offered reticent glimpses of their spring whites. On Fork Ridge, the greenbriar sprouts leaf.

Firearm season in the Hoosier National Forest kept brief a couple blaze-orange-required hikes along the German Ridge Trail in late November. The 24-mile backcountry path is the southernmost section of the Hoosier’s 260-mile trail system and rises and falls a couple miles north of a 90-degree bend in the Ohio River near the historic German Ridge Cemetery and riverside village of Rome, Ind., population 1,300.

Planned after precautionary deer-season discussions with Forest Service officials in Tell City, the day hikes marked a return to this remote section of Perry County backcountry last explored in March 2015. It was also the first stop in a six-month itinerary that resumes in earnest over the Christmas teaching vacation and will end with submission of the Rewilding Southern Indiana: The Hoosier National Forest coffee table book to IU Press next June.

Next stop on the Hoosier trail will be the most significant prehistoric site on the 204,000-acre national forest: a rock shelter frequented by prehistoric hunters and gatherers over thousands of years following the retreat of the last Ice Age glaciers some ten thousand years ago. This obscure, secretive site is recognized on the National Register of Historic Places, requires bushwhacking off-trail and has a limited window for access without special permission.

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.