BONUS- A Deep Green "rambler" for your pleasure.

Good. Full-growth trees are an inspiration to younger generations. None of us, or at least very few, have ever seen a native American forest, completely untouched by man.

I don't know when they began to set aside land for the Hoosier National Forest.
Probably in the 1930s.

When Sharron and I were dating, we spent a week in April in Versailles State Park. Interesting little town, Versailles. At the courthouse there's a historical sign telling about the time Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest got across the Ohio River somehow with a small raiding party and sent them into the hamlet of Versailles to...well, actually, to rob the place. He called it "seizing enemy goods" but it was robbery just the same. The Rebs hit the bank, took all the money, and raided the general store, taking all the food they could carry and all the cash in the place. While riding through the town and holding all the stunned civilians at gunpoint, they came to a Masonic Lodge. Well! Let's stop here, too! They looted the place and took everything back to where Forrest had made his camp.

When they showed him all the loot, General Forrest blew his top. (He was famous for his short temper.) Turned out that Forrest was a Mason himself and he made the men who looted the Masonic Lodge ride back into town the next day, re-hold everyone at gunpoint again, and return the items stolen from the Lodge. And acting under his direct orders, while holding the townspeople at the business ends of their rifles and black powder pistols, they apologized to the people of Versailles for raiding the Lodge. Then they whirled around and galloped away. Forrest got back across the Ohio before anyone could mobilize enough forces to confront him. He was good at that sort of thing. Crazy as a bat, but a great general.

Dunno why that came up, but thinking about the southern end of the state jogged
my memory.

Anyway, before we were married the ex and I camped out for a week in the State Park just outside of town. Very beautiful place only a few miles north of the Ohio River. We arrived on a Saturday and lots of people were there. But by Sunday afternoon, everyone was gone. It was too early for most folk's annual vacation days and the whole park, although open, was empty on all the weekdays. We had an entire state park to ourselves for a week. This was when we were young and dumb and full of... well, you get the idea. Sharron was completely unafraid, far back there all alone, save for me, in that large and remote state park. This was in the days when she thought I was ten feet tall, bulletproof, and the toughest and smartest guy on earth. And I wasn't a-skeered of anything, because I was half-drunk most of the time. Around 9:00 or 10:00 PM every night, a ranger would drive back and check on us. We'd chat for a while and he'd drive away.

One night, around midnight or so, we got bored and took a ride through the park
in my car. We found ourselves at the entrance/exit of the place and we noticed a
light on in the little ranger station. We got out, looked in the window, and there sat an old retired fellow, wearing a ranger suit, watching a TV. When we pecked on the window he jumped ten feet. We told him we really didn't want anything, were just bored and took a ride. We were surprised there was anyone at the entrance station. He said it was manned all the time when they were open. He seemed as bored as we were and we talked for probably a couple of hours. Being an old-timer, he explained that the park was built by the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Depression. All the campgrounds were cleared, the roads dynamited out of hillsides, trails hacked out and stones set in them for steps. He said it was a good place for a young
man to work during those days. You didn't make much money, and the work was hard
(they used more mules than trucks), but you got three square meals a day, a clean bed to sleep in, and you could send a few bucks home every week. It was enough to make a difference.

I told him my Mom and Dad were married on the day Roosevelt closed the banks,
and the old fellow just shook his head. "I remember that day..." His voice
trailed off.

We changed the subject. He was a fountain of information about all the different
kinds of trees, flowers, flora and fauna of the area. Had all kinds of wonderful
stories. Seeming the friendly sort, we told him about a cave we had discovered off the beaten path. He said that during the Civil War a deserter lived there, and then after the war he continued to occupy the place until he grew old and moved into town. He wistfully said that he wished he could come back in a couple of hundred years and see what the park looked like then. It would be a full growth hardwood forest, the likes of which had never been seen since the days of the pioneers. The chestnuts would still be gone, but the oaks and poplars and some of the maples should be giants by then. He grinned at me--I was about twenty at the time--and said I'd see some big trees in my day, but still nothing like what would come back if we protected them.

Sharron and I often talked about that old man, even years later. I'm sure he's
gone now. But he was a fine gentleman and that night spent talking with him remains a happy memory for us both.

Jump forward ten years...

I was far, far in the outback of the Hoosier National Forest, about five miles
from the nearest dirt road. It was rough country and it was chilly, the fall deer hunting season. I had a vague idea of where my friends were, somewhere within a mile or so of me. According to my watch, it was time to head for our rendezvous point and make our way back out to the road, then hike down that road in the dark to our campsite. I'd had lousy luck, had only seen one deer and that was a doe (during these years Indiana only allowed buck hunting). I'd pretty much given up and was just wandering along, looking around, when I came upon a tree. It was a strange tree. It had to be for me to notice it out of the thousands and thousands that surrounded me.

At first I thought it was a beech tree. They get pretty big. Damn big in some
cases. But this one was...different. It was by far the largest tree I'd seen in
the whole forest, perhaps larger than any tree I'd ever seen, save for the redwoods and sequoias out west. I wished I had a camera. The bark was tight and smooth, like on a beech, but the shape was all wrong. And the few dry leaves on it definitely weren't beech leaves. And no beechnuts on the ground around it.

I propped my gun up next to the tree--I was tired of carrying the damn thing anyway--and walked around it. It had huge buttress roots, the same odd blue-gray color as the bark. I took my hunting knife out of its sheath and used the butt end to pound on the tree. The thing was like rock. Even a healthy tree has a little give to the wood. This had none. It was like hitting stone.

Well, now... What kind of tree was this?

I left my gun where it was and walked back away from it about twenty yards. I got a feeling that...naw, it couldn't be. They don't grow that big. None of them do...

But after taking a long hard look at it, I knew it could only be one thing. It was an ironwood tree. A monster ironwood tree, ten times bigger than any I had ever seen. I just sort of stood there and gawked at it. I never had any idea an ironwood could reach such size. I didn't have time to dawdle, and grabbed up my gun and headed on up the trail. But I looked back a couple of times to make sure I wasn't dreaming.

When we all got together, I told my buddies about the giant ironwood tree. When
one asked how big it was, I told him. Three of them laughed out loud. But two of
them didn't. They'd seen it too, on previous years. They confirmed my story. We agreed to go back that way again in the morning, but that night the camp was full of tales of herds of deer a few miles from where we'd been hunting. We went elsewhere the next day and I never made it back to that tree. Not ever again.

I'm awful at estimating distances, but I'd say that tree was as wide across as I
was tall. And I have no idea how high it was. The thing looked like it had been
there since the Creation.

We hunted different parts of the Hoosier National while I lived in Indy, then one guy and I switched to Yellowood State Forest when too many "city folks" began to invade our old stomping grounds in the Hoosier. They tended to shoot at sounds, shadows, each other, and on one scary morning, me. To hell with that.

We did Yellowood for a couple of years, then I skipped a few seasons. The next time I went deer hunting, it was on my own property. (Yellowood is bloody haunted as far as I'm concerned, but that's another post.)

I've never had reason to be back in the vicinity of that portion of the Hoosier National. But I'd wager that if I drove down there and went back and forth on the dirt road a few times, I could pick up our main trail. It ran right alongside a creek for the first mile or so. And if I could find that, I could find that tree again. I'd say my chances would be pretty good, even though I haven't been there for 25 years or so now.

That might be a good day trip for me and my grandsons someday. If they come up
to visit, and I'm not tied up with fifteen other things, we could try to find it
again. I'd like my son to see it too. Mighty impressive tree. And you could bet
I'd take a camera and a big tape measure with me.