Did I hear the weather forecaster say it is the second driest September since records have been kept?
This is not a great weather pattern for water levels, for field crops, for family gardens and for other water-related situations. We pray for the land and for rain. Still, on this morning Becky and I accept with thanks the low humidity and the pleasantly comfortable air; the cool temperatures and the cloudless sky as we leave on this first day of autumn to celebrate the anniversary of our wedding.
One minor goal of our married life has been to drive to as many of Indiana’s Historical Sites as we can. Over our years together — 20 years if you start by counting our first (blind) date — we have visited many of them. But the list of Indiana historical sites is long. So too, sometimes, are the drives.
Jay County is on our state’s eastern border, and we figure it will take probably three hours to drive to Geneva to visit Limberlost, one of the homes of author Gene Stratton-Porter. Last year we drove 162 miles to Noble County at the top of the state to check out Wildflower Woods, Stratton-Porter’s other home here in the state.
We are big fans of the best-selling Indiana author. We like her for her storytelling. Her two most successful novels, A Girl of the Limberlost and Freckles, were Harry Potter-successful at the turn of the 20th century. But her many other accomplishments were impressive, as well.
She was a self-taught still photographer whose works attracted the attention of Kodak who sent someone to learn how she handled the paper in her darkroom — the darkroom space she had repurposed from the family bathroom and kitchen. As the movie industry began showing interest in her books, Gene started her own movie production company becoming one of the first film production companies owned by an American woman. In her spare time, she managed to design and oversee the building of both of her homes down to their fine architectural detail. And in her daily life, her biographer Eugene Francis Saxton writes, she “took pride in maintaining a house of fourteen rooms without a maid, making her daughter’s clothes … cooking three times a day, and washing up.”
Of all the reasons to admire such a multi-talented person, for us I think it is her passion for the natural world, especially focusing on the swamplands of the Limberlost. That is a primary reason we hold Gene Stratton-Porter in such high regard: she was a true friend of the natural world.
Even as a little girl, she was given a “free-range childhood” where she was allowed to roam the forests and swamps to her heart’s content. Limberlost is where she first learned to identify the native flora and fauna which she later incorporated into her writing. Limberlost is where she first observed the removal of the hardwoods: the oaks, hickories and cherries. She witnessed the draining of the swamps for farmland and the discovery of oil, all of which would nearly erase her beloved Limberlost wetlands. This is where she developed her lifelong concerns about the many environmental changes wrought by human “progress.”
What fascinates Becky and me most about Gene Stratton-Porter is that she dared to live life on her terms at a time when society mostly considered such effort by a woman at the very least inappropriate and undignified, if not indecent and possibly illegal. Remember, this was at a time when it was considered inappropriate and undignified, and illegal, for women in the United States to vote in the democratic republic in which they lived. To the two of us, she was and is an exemplary historical role model.
Fortunately, real effort has been made by local and national groups to restore at least parts of the Limberlost Swamp, originally covering 13,000 acres in Adams and Jay Counties. One such restoration effort is the Loblolly Marsh Nature Preserve. After the house tour, Becky and I went there to hike.
It was a quiet sea of swaying grasses and yellow flowers. The wetlands were mostly dried up. At one point, we sat on a rough bench and watched a dozen turtles basking on a half-sunken log. We enjoyed the sun, as well.
Norman Knight, a retired Clark-Pleasant Middle School teacher, writes this weekly column for the Daily Journal. Send comments to [email protected].
