Backyard Deer – Bryan Park, Bloomington, Ind. – 2015-2026
My relationships with urban deer began in my Herald-Times staff writer days in the late 1980s, when I discovered a New York Times Magazine article titled Rats with Hooves.
I first encountered white tail deer on the streets of Bloomington circa 2010 by the old Sarkes Tarzian estate, now called Deer Park. Legend has it that the town father imported a deer herd, which was the custom of the fabulously wealthy in the mid-20th century.
By 2015, their progeny had migrated to my back yard and were urbanized enough to pose for photographs.
I put this photo archive together after discovering a spotted fawn standing less than 10 feet behind me while I hand sanded a wood project.
Hoosier National Forest – Waldrip Ridge – 2013-2026
I’ve titled the April Revisiting the Deam feature in Limestone Post after my original color photography muse Eliot Porter’s 1963 coffee table book The Place No One Knew: Glen Canyon on the Colorado.
Here’s the working lead to Waldrip Ridge: The Place No One Knew:
“Waldrip Ridge may indeed be the most beautiful and historic place in Southern Indiana that no one ever heard of. And after two hikes there exactly one year to the day apart – the latest with my friend and now fellow author Elaine Guinn – I can say definitively that Waldrip Ridge will in fact remain anonymous to anyone outside the fields of archaeology and Indiana history.”
Charles C. Deam Wilderness — Hayes Trail, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2026
After writing the story of Roscoe Hayes’s life in the Charles C. Deam Wilderness – he ended up living in a hollow beech tree – I decided to return to the Hayes Trail, one of my favorite Hoosier National Forest treks.
While it was a perfect day for a wilderness walk, Hayes wasn’t quite brimming with photo opps. A few tiny violets, chickweeds, and seasonal waterfalls provided the only color and action, which left plenty of time for sitting on downed trees and an afternoon of deep thought in the deep woods.
That was best, as I’d just transferred photo albums from Hayes between 2016 and 2019 to the IU Archives and decided to create this online Hayes Photo Archive of images through the years.
Charles C. Deam Wilderness — Terrill Ridge Trail, 2016, 2026
A hike with Teena Ligman through the pioneer history of the Charles C. Deam Wilderness for an upcoming Revisiting the Deam Limestone Post piece served as a gateway into my photo past, inspiring this Photo Archive of images from Terrill Ridge captured 10 years apart, in March 2016 and March 2026.
The piece Roscoe Hayes and Other Human Legends from the Indiana Wilderness tells the tale of an old man who lived in a tree. In the story, we walk and talk about life in today’s Deam from 1826 until nature proved it was untamable a century later.
Teena is a retired, 42-year veteran of the U.S. Forest Service and has written and spoken about the Deam’s human history — including the 12,000 years Native Americans hunted its rugged wooded hillsides. We hiked the four-mile round trip along Terrill Ridgte to the Terrill Cemetery, which I last photographed exactly 10 years ago.
