After a week buried under a foot of snow and a meeting with friends at the Limestone Post, it seems I am still taking to heart the most profound quote I’ve elicited from anyone in my 50-year career as a journalist, photographer, and author:
“Every second is an opportunity for extraordinary depth and fulfillment of purpose.” – Andy Mahler
I will be returning to my roots in 2026, hiking through and photographing the Charles C. Deam Wilderness for a series of Limestone features, as well as an Andy-style coffee table book on Jeff Stant and the largest block of unbroken hardwood forest in the Lower Midwest.
Hence this Project.
Nearly every second that I have for purpose and fulfillment this year will be devoted to help make happen what Jeff Stant and I know is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity – more than doubling the Deam’s acreage to 28,253 and surrounding it with another 29,382-acre National Recreation Area (NRA).
The Indiana Forest Alliance’s Hoosier National Forest Program Advisor, Republican Indiana Governor Mike Braun, and forest preservationists are pressing Congress to pass the Benjamin Harrison National Recreation and Wilderness Establishment Act this session. It passed the Senate in 2023-24 but died when House Leadership killed the broader public lands bill it was attached to.
With the adjacent Brown County State Park and borders with Yellowwood and Morgan-Monroe State Forests, the Deam Wilderness and Harrison NRA complex will be the largest tract of protected public lands on the Ohio-Indiana–Illinois side of the Ohio River Valley.
As I’ve written exhaustively and spoken frequently, my career as an environmental photojournalist began in May 1975, when I photographed the forested surroundings of a flooded Saddle Creek, seven years before the Lake Monroe feeder creek officially became designated wilderness.
The journalist and author path to this project began in 1981, when college student Jeff Stant recruited me to be the Uplands Group Sierra Club newsletter editor, which led to grad school in journalism a year later. The Deam was established in 1982, when I gave my first public slideshow A Photographic Journey Through the Deam Wilderness at the Monroe County Public Library.
For a Limestone Post series tentatively called Revisiting the Deam Wilderness, I will be hiking through and writing about the wilderness and expansion areas with folks who have particular experience with and knowledge of the land.
For the inaugural walk and talk, Jeff is going to lead me to 200- and 300-year-old old and talk about old-growth forest. Retired Monroe County Naturalist Cathy Meyer and I will discuss nature’s ways; the focus will be wilderness water with Friends of Lake Monroe’s Sherry Mitchell-Bruker.
I will also be covering the bill’s progress for Limestone and CounterPunch as events unfold.
At this point, I have officially begun working on a coffee table book about Jeff Stant and the Deam Wilderness complex. Because I need four seasons for photography, it will either be a celebration of the Deam expansion or lay the groundwork for the next round in the next congressional session.
Everything I do on the Deam / Harrison projects will serve double duty as background for the book.
Along the journey, i will post Photo Albums, Blogs, and links to my outside work here on this Project page.
NEWS ARTICLES
by Steven Higgs
Midwest’s Largest Block of Undisturbed Forest Targeted for Enhanced
Protection, CounterPunch, Feb. 3
On Saving the Deam Wilderness and Hoosier National Forest
Limestone Post, Photo Essay, Oct. 18, 2023
New Legislation Would Double Size of Deam Wilderness
Limestone Post, Oct. 6, 2023
