Bushwacking the Lost River Valley; springing life on Big Creek, Sam’s Creek
The Natural Bloomington path tracked southwest last week into the Lost River Watershed, where life on the Hoosier National Forest floor displayed a kaleidoscope of annual regeneration: mayapple greens, anemone whites, spring beauty whites with violet-stripes, phlox and violet blues, wood poppy yellows, larkspur purples.
Friday's half-day excursion followed backcountry roads—i.e. Old Vincennes Road—to the light-drenched, scenic Big Creek and Sam’s Creek Valleys along the Orange and Martin County line. Big lies about a mile inside Martin. Sam’s crisscrosses the county line from north to south. Both feed the Lost on its way to the White River East Fork a few miles to the southwest.
Access to both creeks also lie at the end of twisty, asphalt-county turned national-forest-gravel roads, which pose considerable potential for driving disasters. Passing another vehicle on the two-and-a-half-mile ridge-top road above Big Creek seemed a daunting task. The Sam's Creek exit included hitting bottom on a small stream crossing. Waze navigation spent more than a little time "waiting for network.
Latest video: This is Southeast Indiana?
Many thanks to Liz Brownlee and the Oak Heritage Conservancy for affording me the honor of speaking at their annual meeting this year. The Oct. 14 event attracted 80 Southeast Indiana nature lovers – a record I’m told – at The Sherman in downtown Batesville.
Oak Heritage is one of the newest land trusts in Indiana and owns or manages more than 700 acres of the state’s southeastern-most natural heritage. As always happens when I presume to educate, the evening was likewise educational for me, in multiple ways. For example, I learned John Sunman’s Woods, which was owned by Central Indiana Land Trust when I wrote A Guide to Natural Areas of Southern Indiana, is now owned by Oak Heritage.
And then there was an embarrassing mistake in the 10-minute slideshow I presented after my talk. Falling in the shoulda-known-better column, I relied on my mental map of Indiana counties and placed the Oxbow in Switzerland County instead of Dearborn, where it belonged. Since this piece of waterfowl heaven is one of the region’s true natural gems, several audience members were of course intimately familiar with it and noted the error.
Subsequent edits have corrected that geographical miscue, as well as a misnamed pond at that same bottomland refuge in Lawrenceburg, where Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky meet, where the Great Miami River meets the Ohio.
I have posted This is Southeast Indiana? on the Natural Bloomington YouTube Channel. Read about the Oak Heritage meeting in the Batesville Herald-Tribune.
Nature Photo eBook - This is Indiana?
Natural Bloomington is pleased to announce release of our first Nature Photo eBook This is Indiana? - The Natural Bloomington Journey: 2013-2015.
This is Indiana? is a photographic retrospective of Natural Bloomington's first three years and features 105 hi res, full-color images of the Southern Indiana landscape from the Switzerland Hills to the Southwest Lowlands.You can download a copy of This is Indiana? for free. A $10 contribution is requested.
