19 February 2023

Memories from gravel roads and the creekbank

 


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.

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