If someone had told me when I was sitting in my business law
classes in college that one day I’d find myself wading a stream to get good
pictures of a bridge as a normal part of my work day, I would have of course
said they were nuts. I mean, for what reason would a Fortune 500 CEO have need
to take pictures of bridges? Yet, as I found myself tracing through the country
roads in Carroll County one warm fall day, that particular stream awaited me
as part of a contract I had to aid in development of a travel guide of historic
sites. I was, indeed, fortunate and the CEO, CFO, CAD monkey, grunt on the
keyboard, chief cook and bottle washer, and janitor of a certain company. The
number is insignificant.
My wife’s family were from Carroll County and at least in the
first few years of marriage, we had Christmas at her Porter grandparent’s
“town” house in Flora, to which they moved after leaving the farm. This is
significant, evidently, because in the building years of working in the land of
my wife’s ancestors, I quickly became known as the guy who married into that
family….newspaper articles noted that I was the grandson-in-law of former
Carroll County Commissioner Mark Porter. Grandpa Porter shared that he wasn’t
disappointed to not serve longer than he did…a sentiment I share myself. County
commissioners are executives by function, with full responsibility, but one of
only three in making a decision, so with virtually no authority. Whoever
thought up that system should be hog-tied, tarred and feathered.
I was given a list of sites that needed photographed for the
travel guide. I wandered all through the countryside on gravel roads and
thinking now how nice the technology of google maps would have been. At one
point, as the gravel crackled under my tires, I found myself winding along a
narrow stretch of road following Wildcat Creek with no homes, or vehicles, in
sight. Was this even a public road? A farm boy, bare chested with a ball cap
and shorts, riding an ATV came sliding around a curve I was approaching in the
road. He had a giant grin on his face-all teeth, and hollered out with a quick
wave, returning his hand to the handlebar to maintain control. That smile was
infectious, and I didn’t even care that I heard the ping of gravel against my
truck as he raced past me. With my windows down, I enjoyed catching glimpses of
that cool bubbly stream winding itself as if it had carved the road….and,
indeed it sort of had.
Wildcat Creek, which I had the fortune of kayaking once with
a buddy, has a storied place in Indiana history. During the battles and
skirmishes with Native Americans in the region in the early 1800s, Wildcat
became the scene of a devastating massacre. In November of 1812, as a result of
an offensive against Native American villages in the area, a scouting party of
Colonel Miller’s forces had been fired upon by Native Americans along the creek
bed. One soldier was killed and the others retreated. When the party went back
to reclaim the body, they were met with the sight of the soldier’s head mounted
on a pike with an Native standing next to it, taunting the party. They gave
chase only to be found in a narrow canyon area of the creek where they were
ambushed my members of the Kickapoo, Winnebago, and Shawnee tribes. In total,
American losses were 17 dead and 3 wounded in the Battle of Wildcat Creek. A
monument commemorating the battle was erected at the little village of Pyrmont.
Moving on from Pyrmont, my last stop of the day was the historic,
restored, Adams Mill and nearby covered bridge over Wildcat Creek. My wife and
I had visited before, with our three-month old son, after a visit to her
grandparents in Flora. Adams Mill was built in 1845 by John Adams…no a
different John Adams, with a sluice that used water from Wildcat Creek to power
a mighty wooden wheel, churning and rolling those heavy millstones to grind
grain to flour to sustain the little farming community that popped up during
the 1800s. The mill churned out its last bit of flour in 1951, but with the aid
of an always-engaged and preservation-minded populace in Carroll County, the
old mill was restored and runs again, spinning and churning with great creaks
and groans. The covered bridge, in eyesight of the mill when trees have dropped
their foliage, was built of massive timbers in 1872 by order of the county
commissioners.
I parked at the vacant gravel lot near the mill and took
several shots of the grand red and white structure. As I walked the narrow
winding road from Adams Mill to the covered bridge over Wildcat Creek, the late
afternoon sun dappled through the dense tree canopy overhead. It was a warmer
than usual September day and the sun's rays were quickly absorbed by my black
t-shirt. With my camera to my side and the camera strap causing beads
of sweat to form between the shirt it was pressing against and my back, I
became acutely aware of my surroundings.
At first the silence in the vale seemed only
broken by the few birds perched high in the canopy, and then by my own
footsteps on the road surface, but then ultimately it was my own
breathing I heard until I reached a point where the ripples in Wildcat
Creek drowned out the other incidental noises I had become aware of. As I
approached the old covered bridge the smell of aged timbers wafted through the
air. I walked slowly across the bridge to absorb both the history and
scenic vistas offered through its portals. The floor boards, even under my
light steps, creaked appropriately to inform me of my surroundings.
I reached the other side and didn't delay
in snapping a few shots of what I thought would be clever perspectives, but
knowing I could never capture the essence of what I was experiencing. My
stride was quicker on the way back across and this time a motorist met me at
the other side. The driver, an older lady with both hands on the wheel,
smiled and nodded as if to say "I get it-I know why you're here".
I eased my way down the embankment to the edge
of Wildcat Creek and began to walk its semi-sandy, slightly mushy edge
guarded by massive sycamore trees whose gnarled roots held back the soil in
drifts washed over by the rise and fall of creek waters. I had
sufficiently waterproof boots on my feet, which allowed me to wade out into the
shallower edges where wispy white waters bubbled over my feet. For a second or
two I considered stripping off my shoes and socks and wading further out to get
a direct broadside picture of the white span, but I had jeans on and the
choice was to strip further, or get them wet. I chose neither. I turned toward
the covered bridge again, snapped a few shots, and then climbed back up to the
road. Heading back, again, my stride was quicker as I began to round the bend
of the road and the mill came back into view....and then almost instinctively
I slowed again as I noticed the sycamores roadside whose large branches stretched
out above me. Their ghostlike white arms and distinctive aroma halted me
in my tracks.
And I said aloud, though so perfectly alone,
"I'm never more at home in Indiana than when I can hear the gentle
churning of a creek and be shaded beneath the great outstretched arms of a
sycamore." And then like flood waters against my very soul, I
was overwhelmed by a rush of memories that flooded my mind, some taking me
back to my childhood, and I have to admit becoming a little misty-eyed to feel
so blessed.
Sycamore trees are my favorite, by far. There was a large one
that stood way off in the distance from the east window out of my parents’
kitchen. It was the direction we looked to scan for the school bus and you
could always see the morning light catching its white form, turning it pink as
if it were blushing. I always marvel at their form, never quite the same like
other species of trees. Countless kayak trips always revealed those gentlemen
of the river, like the four who stand together on a sandbar in Sugar Creek near
Turkey Run. I always stop and pay homage to these trees I dubbed “the old men
of the river” because I imagine they speak to each other until kayakers come into
view, then fall silent until the last voyageur rounds the bend downstream, then
they start again. I told my wife once that if we ever moved to the country,
we’d call our place Sycamore Hill. She asked how that would work if there was
no sycamore. I said I’d plant one. Fortunately, Sycamore Hill found us, and as
if a sign from the Creator Himself, there stood a massive old fellow on the
hillside just up from the creek. Oh, we still added to the stand of sycamores
on the property when my son and I planted more to line the long drive back up
the hill to the farmstead.
Indiana has an interesting fondness for sycamore trees. While
not our official state tree, as I contend it should be, they are given the
honor of appearing in both our state song, and in the song that many Hoosiers
believe is our state song. I mean, we don’t sing that we dream about the
gleaming candlelight, shining bright, through the tulip poplar trees, do we?
And our famous Hoosier painter, T. C. Steele, focused on those beloved sycamores
lining stream banks and the valley floors of southern Indiana. Sycamore Row,
the venerable allee of trees south of Deer Creek, have an origin shrouded in
mystery and hold such fond memories for people that traveled through their
outstretched arms along the old Michigan Road, or State Road 29 today.
The largest sycamore ever recorded in the state was located
on the Wabash River-it was a whopping 18’ in diameter, or larger than a tiny
house today. The farmer got so fed up with gazers trampling over his crops to
see the tree that he cut it down in 1897. Does that sound like a Hoosier to
you? It would have been more advantageous to charge admission. When another
giant, estimated to be over 300 years old fell in a storm outside of Kokomo,
the hollowed out trunk was carted to the city and put on display, where it
remains today, standing opposite of Big Ben, the giant steer. Now, that does
sound like the Hoosier thing to do.
Back in my truck, I regained composure from the rush of
emotion and started out toward the two-lane highway that would take me home,
being a little more aware of the sycamore trees that stood sentry along the
road, or dotted the banks of rivers I crossed. I think of our state’s roads and
rivers as the veins that course through what we know collectively as our
Indiana Home. The health of our communities depended on both to sustain life.
They still do, though I think our relationship to each has been ruined by our
own re-engineering of the same. Sometimes I think the best thing each of us
could do would be to spend a day on a river, or make a slow drive down a road
with no clear destination. We can discover a lot along the journey, and maybe a
little bit about ourselves.