The Natural Bloomington Blog

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.

I spent most of my time adjusting to a new teaching environment this past week, and a short photo trip to Martin County wasn't too productive. It is late August, after all. Southern Indiana natural areas, like the Bluffs of Beaver Bend Nature Preserve we explored on Friday, are hot, muggy, buggy and overgrown. The upshot -- I didn't spend much time processing new photos this week.

Instead, I used what photog time I could steal from the transition to complete a seemingly endless process of reducing more than 3,200 nature images to a couple dozen of the best for my Gallery on our new site -- Indiana Nature Photography - Workshops and Tours. The gallery and site will be works in progress for a while, but go ahead take a look. Here's our mission statement:

"Indiana Nature Photography is an Indiana-based project dedicated to exposing and sharing the region’s extraordinary and unexpected natural beauty through digital photography. A collaborative effort between two of Indiana’s most committed and creative outdoor photographers – GaryMorrison and Steven Higgs – INP offers workshops, blogs and other educational opportunities with nature photographers and other kindred spirits."

Friday’s exploration of Indiana’s largest wildlife refuge illustrated once again the magnificent yet understated diversity of Southern Indiana’s landscape, culture and history – not to mention wilderness experience. Landscape photographer Gary Morrison and I spent a few steamy August hours watching a precautionary video, talking with property managers and naturalists, and photographing the Old Timbers Lake inside the Big Oaks National Wildlife Refuge just north of Madison.
 
The 50,000-acre Big Oaks is understated in that its roughly 78 square miles is till plain flatwoods, not the most majestic of landforms. Spanning portions of Jefferson, Ripley and Jennings Counties, the refuge lies in the state’s low-lying Muscatatuck Flats & Canyons Section and features little topography from one corner to the other. It’s the largest wildlife refuge and block of contiguous wild lands in the state and one of the 15 largest national wildlife refuges east of the Mississippi and north of Florida.
 
The Big Oaks history and experience, however, are anything but subtle.

Sunday Morning Nature Missive - July 24, 2016

Unless you are a Lincoln or hardcore Hoosier nature buff, odds are you've never heard of the Anderson River. It's only 50 miles long, and about a hundred feet wide and 15 feet deep when it empties into the Ohio River at Troy in Perry County. That the Anderson forms the county line between Perry and Spencer and is only navigable for a little more than half its length is about all you will learn from an Internet search.

No, we didn't leave in the inky, 6 a.m. darkness on Friday to shoot the Anderson's headwaters because of its grandiose natural characteristics. Landscape photographer Gary Morrison and I stepped onto a bridge over the river at 7:40 a.m. for purely pragmatic reasons. I mention it in a slide show I'm creating for a presentation at IU's  Wylie House Museum on Oct. 20. The narrative names four rivers that, in their entirety, drain the Ohio. But I only have images of one -- the Blue.

Adding to the Anderson's appeal as a photo destination was the fact that the river rises deep in an area of the Hoosier National Forest that I've never photographed or explored -- but have long wanted to. And the return route up State Road 145 passes over and through Patoka Lake, for which I need better images in my archive. (SR 145 also passes by the West Baden Springs Hotel, literally the Eighth Wonder of the World, in which I never miss an opportunity to stand.)