Category: Indiana Dunes Trails

What Do You See – pt 2.

Posted on by MC2 · Leave a comment

When I am out on the trails this time of year, people I meet often assume I am a birder due to the fact that I am always carrying a camera with a big lens on a tripod. Which is not an unreasonable assumption btw. But when I tell them that in fact I am out taking close up photographs of the flora and fauna, the reaction is pretty much always the same. They get a puzzled look on their faces while looking around at the winter landscape, then they say something along the lines of but there’s nothing to take pictures of. My response is usually well, I always find some things to photograph. Sometimes that is the end of the conversation, sometimes I talk about the sort of things I find interesting this time of year. Depends on how curious they seem to be.

Recently I gave a workshop for the Indiana Dunes National Park on the topic of doing closeup nature photography in extreme cold weather. When I do these workshops I spend some time talking about how I see nature. Not what do I see, but how. I spend quite a bit of time thinking about this, including at work in regards to doing physics.

A couple hours before the workshop started, I went out on the trail and spent some time taking photographs to get warmed up (so to speak) and to plan out the outdoor part of the workshop. Here is a spot where I stopped to take some photos.

So many people look out at this type of landscape and see nothing much of interest. Having spent a lot of time walking and photographing these trails, I have come to see things very differently than I did just a few years ago. Now I stop at a spot like this and my eyes start noticing all sorts of beautiful things, just waiting to be photographed. The following are just a few of the photographs I took in this area. I chose them to illustrate the different types of scenes that drew my attention.

There is beauty everywhere in nature, just waiting to be noticed.

Exploration & Discovery

Posted on by MC2 · Leave a comment

Back in December the Indiana Dunes National Park conducted a controlled burn in the Derby Ditch region of the Great Marsh that I was able to observe in progress. A couple of months later I decided it was time to go exploring this part of the marsh which has been reclaimed from former residential use, but has not seen any restoration efforts yet. It is fun and interesting for me to explore areas like this just to see what I can find. The image above shows my track through this area as recorded by my GPS, which is a fun little gadget which will probably be the subject of a post of its own.

This is what the area looks like. Lots of standing water, soft mud and heavily overgrown with buckthorn and other assorted briar plants. Pushing through in the summer is difficult, and you would likely pick up about a pound of ticks in doing so.

But late fall through early spring it is more navigable. After the controlled burn, I wanted to see if I could make my way to some locations I had been trying to get to, where I suspected there should be some remains from the Century of Progress Colonial Village homes that were relocated here in the 1930’s.

When I arrived, the first thing I noticed was that the park had opened up Jones Rd. so that the fire fighters could access it for the controlled burn. Before the burn this abandoned road was heavily overgrown, but even so it was the best access point from which to enter the area. But with the road cleared it was so much easier going and off I went into the unrestored marsh.
Not too far down Jones Rd. from Broadway, is this area which I believe was once a botanical garden associated with the Beverly Shores Inn that was destroyed by fire in the 1970’s. The recent controlled burn here swept the area pretty good. I am very interested to see how it looks come spring.
As I pushed further into the marsh I eventually made it to the spot I had been trying to find. The combination of the controlled burn and the clearing of Jones Rd. made it relatively easy. Here I found the remains of a structure (a low wall in the center of the photograph) that I think may have been the Governor’s Mansion from the Colonial Village.

Why do I think I found the remnant of this particular building? Old maps of the area. I love maps in general and old historical ones in particular.

This promotional map indicates that the Governor’s Mansion was located in the general area I was exploring, south of Beverly Dr. and east of Broadway. However this map only shows the relative positions of things. To get a better idea where actual structures were located at that time I found an aerial photograph from the 1930’s.
The green X on this aerial photograph corresponds to the same location as the yellow X on my GPS track at the top of this post. So if the wall I found was not from the Governor’s Mansion itself, it was likely associated with it.

Ultimately I want to locate and ID the remains of all of these buildings in the Great Marsh. I consider this one such discovery. Was this a “discovery” of any significance? Was it even a discovery at all? I’d say no to both questions. The locations of these buildings is no secret, and many of them were still around when the park acquired them in the 1970’s. I enjoy exploring and learning new (to me) things about the history of the Indiana Dunes National Park. It is simple curiosity that draws me into these places and inspires me to research what was there before I started wandering around. It turns out that this beautiful nature area was very different not so long ago. Knowing more about this history gives me greater appreciation of the work done to restore it. So the “discovery” of these remains was a very cool moment for me personally.