The Natural Bloomington Blog

Unpredictable weather forced a change in plans announced last week to hike on Nebo Ridge in southeast Brown County. After 12 hours of fallacious forecasts of cloud breaks, I opted instead to continue my closer-to-home photo exploration of the Deam Wilderness. And after days of nonstop rain, I chose to stay on the high ground, specifically the Terrill Ridge Trail that leads north from the Hickory Ridge Lookout Tower.

The trail follows a ridge top road to the 19th-century Terrill Cemetery and features two wildlife ponds where I knew, at a minimum, I'd find reflections of the sort I wrote about last week. The road is maintained for family access to the cemetery and, while soggy, was still easily traversed. Along the way I encountered a backpacker who told me of another water hole east of the trail on "county line road," a now overgrown roadway that delineates the boundary between Monroe and Brown Counties. I counted off the 400 paces he advised and found a campsite but no water.

The past month has been anything but enjoyable (or creative). I've fought a viral bug that I thought had disappeared eight days ago, before last week's five-mile trek along the Grubb Ridge Trail wore me out physically. By the time Sunday night music rolled around, I was coughing, running a fever and otherwise unable to participate in the weekly activities at Dave's place.

Fortunately, my Honda trunk lid was the only witness to my disagreeable disposition while running unavoidable errands on a cold, gray, blowy Wednesday morning last week. The sun never did show. But an email from IU Press that afternoon saying a copy of A Guide to Natural Areas of Southern Indiana awaited me at their front desk served as a mood-altering bolt.

I am pleased to announce that Natural Bloomington is moving into the video age. I've newly revived the Natural Bloomington YouTube Channel and posted an admittedly rookie EcoVid effort from my Jan. 29 hike in the Deam Wilderness. Indeed, it looks like video will be an increasingly prominent tool of creative expression around here, at least for awhile.

This 3-minute video from the Deam’s Cope Hollow Trail isn't truly a rookie effort. I've shot, edited and produced digital movie projects before, and my students create slide shows and short videos. Hell, I've even been paid for it. But shooting and producing moving pictures has never really captured my imagination – until now.

The Cope Hollow EcoVid is an experiment in every way. It's the first I've shot in motion on the trail, the first captured with my new Nikon D600 body and the first ever edited with Premier Pro. I deleted four worthy minutes of scenery that didn’t pass the experimental tests – blurred images, lens noise, etc.

During the protracted debate over a federal wilderness in Indiana in the late 1970s and early 1980s, one argument against the less-than-13,000-acre Charles C. Deam Wilderness Area was that it wouldn’t be big enough. Situated within a couple hours of Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Louisville and Evansville, Indiana’s green jewel, the argument went, was vulnerable to being loved to death.

In the decade before the Deam was dedicated in 1982, environmentalists had proposed wilderness plots ranging between 32,000 acres (Nebo Ridge Wilderness Area, 1973) and 17,000 acres (Salt Creek Compromise, 1979). The last, which would have included sections of the Hoosier on Monroe Lake’s north side in Brown County, was vetoed by the Indiana Department of Natural Resources because it included the Crooked Creek Marshes that the agency manages for duck hunters.

Since Congress established the Deam as a federally protected wilderness on Monroe’s south shore, east of State Road 446, their predictions have withstood the test of time.