I wandered into the Indiana Uplands region by chance. I became a Hoosier by choice.
I was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, and spent a great deal of my youth outdoors exploring the large metropolitan park that surrounds the city to the south and on Lake Erie to the north. My first trip to Indiana was when I went to college at Notre Dame in South Bend. Notre Dame was still an all-male school, and I managed to land a job at the all-women’s St. Mary’s College across the highway. I met my future wife, Peg, at St. Mary’s. We married shortly after graduation and headed to Tacoma, Washington, where I attended graduate school at The University of Puget Sound. In between hiking and camping around the Olympic Peninsula, I managed to acquire my MFA in ceramics.
After graduation, we headed back east via a slow and circuitous route in a pickup truck with all of our possessions, stopping to visit friends and national and state parks. We traveled through Bloomington, Indiana, to visit some college friends in graduate school at Indiana University. Intrigued by a National Geographic article about the Indiana Uplands, we made a day trip to Nashville on a cold day in 1976. We met kindred souls pursuing their craft in the quaint tourist community. We were surprised to find shops open and doing business and decided that we might open a pottery shop and replenish our traveling budget. The local folks were very friendly and helpful, and we found a small store to rent quite easily. We lived in a fixer-upper log cabin in the woods outside of Nashville, became slowly more enamored with the location and our new friends, and started a family. We were just beginning to plant some roots in the Indiana Uplands.
The Indiana Uplands: Where Geology and Culture Collide
The topography of the Norman Uplands is the legacy of active glaciation and the inexorable forces of running water through geologic time to erode and shape both soil and rock. The physiography of the Indiana Uplands has left its mark on nearly every facet of cultural development, from the trails followed by the earliest occupants of the area to the cultivation of the abundant natural resources, the location of highways, power lines, and the development of settlements and reservoirs. I was fascinated by the varied and beautiful topography, cultural history, and rugged individualism found over every hill and down any valley.
My earliest memories are of searching with my young family for crinoid fossils and geodes in the streams behind Yellowwood Lake, visiting the historic graveyards with beautifully carved limestone headstones, fishing for crappie at Crooked Creek Lake, bicycling and cross country skiing in Brown County State Park, gardening, canning, and cutting oak and hickory to heat my house in the forest around our first home. All this took expertise I did not bring with me, and I was fortunate enough to meet many friendly local characters who warmly and generously helped me understand where I had landed, sites I needed to visit and how to survive.
With the guidance of my new neighbors, I started to follow some of these valleys, rivers, and trails as I explored limestone quarries and learned about “Cutters.” I hiked and camped through the Charles C. Deam Wilderness Area on the south side of Lake Monroe, bicycled on-road and off the road — always listening for advice on where to find the next adventure. As I explored and learned more, I expanded my travels to other areas along the Knobstone Escarpment that undulates south from Brown County to the Ohio River. I realized that I had just begun to scratch the surface of interesting places to visit. I decided to be more intentional about my travels and my interactions with my fellow Hoosiers as I explored all of the Indiana Upland and to share what I might find.
A Region Where Exploration Never Ends
As our two sons grew up, we needed more room. We purchased a house in northern Monroe County with one of the county’s earliest auto garages that I converted into a wonderful pottery studio. A few years after that move, we gave up the retail store in Nashville and transitioned the business to 100% wholesale. I continued to turn mud into money for 25 years while my wife first taught Montessori and then opened and managed a retail store in Bloomington, Elements, selling American craft, household furnishings, and lighting. I transitioned one more time, making pots as a hobby, and entered the not-for-profit world. I worked at Stone Belt, Inc., helping to keep adults with disabilities gainfully employed in the workshop. I also worked for a few years at Habitat for Humanity before becoming the CEO of the Brown County Community Foundation. It was in this position that I became aware of the Regional Opportunity Initiatives, Inc. (ROI) and the good work they were doing throughout the Indiana Uplands. After I retired as CEO, I became more involved with ROI managing their Ready Communities grant program.
Both of our sons had both moved back to Indiana by this point, and we had three grandchildren living close. Two of the three grandchildren are Hoosiers by birth; our Indiana Uplands roots are getting deeper! Being retired allowed me to be more involved with my grandchildren and more time to intentionally explore the Indiana Uplands. I had the time to seek out and meet more of the characters that make this area such a wonderful place to live, work and play and share some of the beautiful sites with my wife and grandchildren. I continue to wander the Indiana Uplands and will be sharing those experiences through the ROI website. I hope you are as intrigued by the amazing variety of outdoor and cultural activities that are just over the next hill or down just about any valley and the characters that call the Uplands home.