A Guide to Natural Areas of Southern Indiana is moving through the production process. (See one of the back-cover blurbs below.) And I'm ready to start reserving copies for the patient among us who would like to support the work we do at both Natural Bloomington and the Sierra Club Hoosier Chapter. Click here for details and ordering, but here's the upshot.
I invested a lot of time and money in this project. But let's be honest. I wrote a book in the digital age. Any return on investment is way down the road and not likely to be very substantial, which I knew going in. But there's good work to do now that also takes resources. For example, next Friday I am interviewing Hoosier National Forest Supervisor Mike Chaveas at his office in Bedford. We will videotape the interview and share it with the public through Community Access Television Services and other venues.
I've been looking over the agency's management priorities -- timber sales, wildfire reduction, wildlife habitat, trails, recreation, etc. -- and noticed that between 2008 and 2011, the Forest Service harvested between 350,000 and 600,000 cubic feet of timber from the Hoosier. Since then it's been in the low 7,000s. Mike's been there a year now. I look forward to hearing about and sharing his vision.
I've spent much of this summer hanging with the Sierra Club -- in person, online, and over the phone. I've attended and participated in conference calls with Hoosier Chapter executive and communications committees. In addition to the wilderness first aid training I wrote about last Sunday, this past week I edited my first edition of the Indiana Sierran, the Hoosier Chapter's biannual (for now) newsletter. And I will be spending two days in the Hoosier National Forest this coming week with folks from Indy's Heartlands Group.
In the past 18 months, my guidebook project has assumed many forms -- idea, draft, headache, escape, excuse to travel and hike. This past week, it became real. IU Press approved my art -- 100 full color photos and hand-drawn maps -- and sent me the book cover for A Guide to Natural Areas of Southern Indiana, which I am sharing with you. I posted it on Facebook and had orders start coming in before I clarified it won't be published until June 2016.
Okay, the guidebook is now in the capable hands of IU Press, my house is clearn(er), and my mind is free again and ready for the Real Work's next phase. After three hikes in the Hoosier National Forest's Charles C. Deam Wilderness Area in the past two weeks (
This time tomorrow, the Guide to Natural Southern Indiana package will be out of my hands. I completed the last line-by-line read Friday, finished the final scroll through and printed the first half on Saturday, and will wrap it all up today so I can turn it over to IU Press on Monday. Along the way last week I got some much-needed encouragement from State Geologist John C. Steinmetz, who also is director of the Indiana Geological Survey. He read and provided feedback on the natural history section.
It'd been almost a month since I packed up the Nikon gear and laced up the hiking boots, with most of the time spent hovering over the MacBook fact checking a couple thousand or more references to almost 600 plant and animal species in the Guide to Natural Southern Indiana (new name). The manuscript is ready to go to IU Press on June 1, and I was more than eager to feel the trail beneath my feet. I also needed the exercise.
With the spring 2015 semester and the guidebook in the rear view (see below), I'm turning my attention to this season's ecotours, planning a series with Monroe County Naturalist Cathy Meyer and the working title "Ecotour with the Naturalist and the Author." The first will traverse Martin and Orange Counties, visiting some of the same territory I shared a couple weeks ago with my friends Amara and Miles. Details like dates and itineraries will be forthcoming soon, hopefully next week.
Maybe I read too much Jim Thom, but every time I photograph sandstone formations in the Shawnee Hills Natural Region I come away with an image or two that suggest ancient spirits are monitoring my movements. That I am shooting locations once roamed by the earliest Americans lends historic credence to the digital evidence I'm accumulating. These hills are also the wildest -- the most natural, in the purest sense of the term -- that Indiana has to offer.
After a 12-hour journey featuring magnificent sandstone formations from Shoals to Patoka Lake -- with stops at a wildlife marsh and nearby waterfall, West Baden/French Lick, and visits to friends and family in the Southern Indiana woods -- I returned home to an envelope in the box from Michael Homoya from the Indiana Division of Nature Preserves. It contained a copy of my guidebook manuscript that has been marked-up by the state's chief botanist and plant ecologist for the past 30 years, with catches that only someone on his level would catch.
