Experiencing Nature in Warren County, Indiana 3

On a sunny April Saturday when I was in high school, I had been disking for my father. My International 560 tractor needed gasoline, so I drove from the fields back to the house. I pulled alongside the elevated gas barrel, switched off the engine, spun off the gas cap, and began filling. The day was hot and still. Even the birds were taking a break from their hectic springtime schedule. With the tank full, I hung the hose on its iron saddle and thought about returning to my disking.

Rough Weather Ahead

Drawing by W. Hamilton Gibson (1850–1896)

Engraved by F. S. King (1848–1936)

In The Closing Scene

Philadelphia, J. B. Lippincott Co., 1887

My father and my brother were working with tractors in adjacent fields about as far from the house as they could be. Would they miss me for fifteen additional minutes? I decided they would not, so I strode to the house and stretched out on the sofa for a quick nap.

Naturally, I lost track of the time. Imagine my surprise when my brother and my father noisily entered the living room! They were talking loudly with considerable animation. In my half-asleep state, I felt they were angry with me for shirking my responsibility. My sense of guilt helped me awaken fully. Then I realized they were not speaking about my indolence; rather, they were discussing the funnel cloud that had just crossed near the north end of our farm.

I sat up and listened to their description of the funnel, which began to touch down but lifted immediately. I glanced at the clock. I had slept for less than an hour. In just that length of time, the skies to the west had darkened, and a storm had approached. On its path from southwest to northeast, the blue-black cloud mass had passed on an angle a little over a mile north of our house. Acknowledging the dangers of lightning, my father had signaled my brother to bring his tractor and plow up to the house while my father drove his tractor and corn planter up to the barn. When they entered the barnyard, they witnessed the funnel’s descent.

I had slept through the excitement. And I was disappointed! In my late teens, I had wanted to spot a tornado. (I do not want to see one now.) Had I not tried to sneak in a nap, I could have watched the formation of a funnel, however briefly. A few years later, deadly tornadoes struck. I was in college. I drove home on the weekend after the massive tornadoes, and my father and I toured the damage. I remember two-story farmhouses missing walls so that they looked like oversize dollhouses. Most impressive was a mile-wide swath cut through a woods. Stripped of their bark, trunks of large trees lay where they were mowed down. My cousin’s house was destroyed. My father and I collected large balls of metal from the north end of our farm. Metal roofing and siding had been loosely rolled and tossed aside. Our buildings sustained no damage, but I had to walk down the country road to our neighbor’s house to collect the chairs that had been sitting on our front porch.

In my experience, the most severe storms always traveled on a diagonal line to the north of our farm. I wondered what factors determined their course. To me, the annual threat of tornadoes made life on the prairie seem exciting but precarious. I have not felt quite so vulnerable when living in other places. Oddly, that vulnerability was also part of feeling closely connected to nature: a connection I have not felt as powerfully since.    

Experiencing Nature in Warren County, Indiana 2

When I was in high school, my family lived a couple of miles southeast of Pine Village, Indiana. Across the gravel road were open fields, but a small group of trees broke the level line of the horizon. I yearned to investigate them, yet I felt constrained by the sense that I might be trespassing on neighbor Agnes Moore’s farm. If I were to ask her permission to walk among the trees, she would wonder why I asked. I kept denying myself the opportunity to visit the copse, until a day arrived when I indulged my curiosity.

At the Entrance to the Copse

Drawing by H. Bolton Jones (1848–1927)

Engraved by Robert Hoskin (1842–?)

In The Closing Scene

Philadelphia, J. B. Lippincott Co., 1887

Sneaking across the road, down through the shallow ditch, and over the freshly plowed surface of the field, I nervously glanced from side to side. Neighbors could be seeing me, it seemed—when, in all likelihood, no one saw me. The nearest of our neighbors occupied farmhouses spread far apart along the road. Out of breath from the exertion of scurrying through plowed ground, I dashed through the verge of last year’s weedy growth and plunged into the darkness of the wooded area.

It was as circular as if measured by a surveyor. It sloped ever so gently toward the middle and may have been a ten-acre sinkhole or, at least, a damp saucer-shaped depression formed by an underground spring. The trees were a mixture of willows and cottonwoods. A few of the latter variety boasted enormous trunks. The limbs formed only a partial shade, as they were just leafing out. The tiny wildflowers called “spring beauties” carpeted the ground among the roots.

Then I came upon a circle of cardinal feathers. They may have been left by a farm cat, but they formed such an exact circle with every feather perfectly placed! I felt a sense of awe. It was as if I were seeing a symbol left where nobody would see it, yet I had stumbled upon it. What was its meaning? The experience was spiritual, although I cannot define what I mean by “spiritual,” no matter how “spiritual” it indeed was. The red tufts fairly glowed among the willows.

I quietly withdrew. Long after my moment in the woods, I regarded the spot from afar and considered it an example of the Creator’s attention to detail.  

Experiencing Nature in Warren County, Indiana 1

Heading west on State Route 26 from West Lafayette toward Pine Village, Indiana, we cross from one world to another. Behind us is a land of green, rolling hills interspersed with level farms stretching across the south-central portions of Indiana all the way to Chillicothe, Ohio. Ahead are farms flat as tables, fewer trees, and soil comprised of black loam so black that, on an overcast day, the clouds reflect the darkness. The startling transition occurs between Goose Creek and Little Pine Creek. I never fail to be moved by the change in terrain.

On the Edge of the Prairie

Drawing by Edmund H. Garrett (1853–1929)

Engraved by Samuel Smith Kilburn (1831–1903)

In The Closing Scene

Philadelphia, J. B. Lippincott Co., 1887

I am a writer, not a geographer, so I am only guessing. I suppose that the black soils are drained marshes that formerly laced the stands of prairie grass. Across the nearby border of Illinois, the prairie once lay like a fantastic ocean, its waves a reflection of the winds waving the tops of the tawny coral and reddened stems. Islands of the grass extended eastward into the Hoosier fens (and, farther to the north, as eastward as Ohio). My Quaker ancestors established a farm in Warren County, Indiana, in 1826 and 1827. They saw the prairie and the bog, as well as the wooded inlets just to the south of Warren County’s northern boundary. I can hardly imagine what they witnessed, but the ebony soil and the level fields of my childhood near Pine Village are no less obvious today. They signify a distinctive landscape with its own qualities.

Growing up, I felt that life on the former prairie had been tougher, demanding more than was required in the gentler landscape to the east. The winter wind howled with greater menace, and the blizzard threatened to snuff out life. The lightning of the spring storms flashed with the constant and blinding flicker of battles. Tornadoes called for vigilance and quick action. Our inner springs were wound tightly so that we might respond mechanically to danger.

Simultaneously, the beauty of the place enriched our lives. Many a hectic traveler rushing northward along Interstate 65 considers the landscape a monotonous and boring horizon of treeless fields. Inhabitants know how to discern details the commuter overlooks. Subtle variations in elevation and color of the soils delight the eye. Out-of-the-way streams afford magnificent views worthy of painters and photographers. And the sky changes by the hour with deepest blues at the summer zenith, through great billows of clouds like sails on clipper ships, to breathtaking sunsets and sunrises! Add wildlife and wildflowers to these pictures, and we have plenty of beauty to balance the gloom of the loam.