LIMBERLOST AND THE DUNES

An entire shelf of one of my bookcases is novels by Gene Stratton-Porter (1863 - 1924).  Aside from her personality, which was vivid and Edwardian, she was an early environmentalist, concentrating on birds, esp. those of the majestic high timber in the Limberlost.  She was a particularly vivid version of a kind of woman I admire.  https://www.indianamuseum.org/limberlost-state-historic-site

Just north of the Limberlost is an ecology called "The Dunes" which is a sand ecology and in fact, where some of the thinking about the theory of ecology was developed.  I didn't know about it until I was in seminary and the assistant of J. Ronald Engel, a now-retired professor who still lives in a close-by village.  He was writing a book about the Dunes, or at least that was the theory.  He had a bad case of writer's block.  My job was to find all the books about the Dunes on a list he gave me, and condense them into a precis.  There were a lot of them and they had a major influence on me.  This linked website would have been a big help:  https://enviroliteracy.org/special-features/geoquiz/indiana-dunes/  Somehow, I missed reading Henry Cowles (1869 - 1939)  I'm not sure he was on the list Engel gave me, since Cowles is important enough to read direct.

These two places are examples of terrain that are different from what is around them, ecologies created by lack of water or too much water, desert or marsh.  Humans are wired to recognize and award significance to such places.  They may become taboo, like the area at the end of my street after it becomes a road and then a two-track until it reaches a stretch of Birch Creek that is shaped by erosion into "hoodoos" which look like buildings or bent-over people.  Some find it scary -- maybe a cougar lives there.  Maybe ghosts.  On the Blackfeet rez are two geological mountains that carry significance: Heart Butte and Chief Mountain.  Though they appear to be square as tables, like the other buttes erosion has left, when seen from the air they are blades.  No matter: they are landmarks.

Neither the Limberlost nor the Dunes are the kind of landmarks one can see from afar.  The Limberlost was full of climax hardwood trees of enormous majestic size.  Stratton-Porter -- with her Christian bias -- spoke of trees that had by accident grown as though on a boulevard, forming a cathedral-sized arched sanctuary.  The Dunes attracted a more frivolous crowd who picnicked, designed festival performances, and enjoyed bonfires.  The University of Chicago faculty (of which Henry Cowles was part) had a small ship with staterooms that left South Chicago after classes on Friday and chugged to the Dunes in the dark with the professors snoring in their beds, ready for recreation over the weekend.

The value of the hardwood trees for the furniture industry near the Limberlost prompted fortunes and piracy.  It seemed at first that there was little value in sand, but then a corporation wanted to dredge out ports for tankers, so the very location had value.  The sand and dirt that was removed went to Northwestern University's location on Lake Michigan -- a cheap place to move it by ship -- so that the campus is now twice the size it was in 1961 when I graduated there.

The books based on these two places are little read now, except that "A Girl of the Limberlost" continues to be popular among girls trying to separate from their mothers while finding a place in the world.  Cowles idea of ecology -- how everything on the land is interwoven and removing or adding something small can change everything -- has become foundational.

Along the 49th parallel -- roughly, since it takes water from the Canadian side and guides it along the American side to feed towns and ranches -- is a siphon and canal combination, a diverted river, with a lot of water that travels a long way.  It's pretty old and maintenance had been neglected.  A leak had sprung in one place that soon created a little oasis garden of plants, which attracted small animals and then their predators.  Birds came a long way to sip and splash.  It wasn't big but it was unique and beautiful.  Then came a drive to conserve water.  The hole was patched and the oasis went back to being prairie.  Something similar happened when homesteaders punched wells and planted trees, then got bought out by corporations with massive machines, and moved away, leaving their woodlots and shelter belts to dry up and die.

Both the Limberlost and the Dunes are national parks now, guarded by organizations who fund, patrol and explain them.  Someday the current weather patterns will shift to drought enough that the Limberlost marsh might burn.  Dune buggies wreak havoc on the pristine sands of the Dunes.  Nothing stays the same, though we use our human powers to change the world according to our preferences.  Inhuman corporations have only one preference: profit.

If we see this planet Earth from space, it is clear that the blue bubble that contains everything we love is no different from these two beautiful small spots on the Michigan/Indiana border.  The planet remains endangered.  When we can no longer exist here, the stars will still shine.  They will have no place for us.