Indiana's Giant Ghost Trees

If I have a "Roman Empire," something constantly and recurrently on my mind, it’s the Trail Companion produced by Indiana Humanities, Next Indiana Campfires. This spiral-bound booklet was the subject of the It’s True! Nonfiction book club at Viewpoint Books back in March. I didn’t even get to go to the meeting, but I haven’t stopped thinking about the book for a full day. 

One of the pieces in this book that captivated me was the Scott Russell Sanders essay “Becoming Native to Indiana.” I’ve lived in Indiana for over a decade now, but somehow, I think this essay helped with my becoming.

Sanders compellingly summarizes much of the geographical and settlement history of Indiana, but the part that captivated me was about the trees. “In 1800, nearly ninety percent of Indiana was covered with hardwood forest, one of the largest stands on Earth… There were tulip trees and buckeyes more than 10 feet in diameter. Along the streams, there were hollow sycamores large enough to shelter a family. In the deepest woods, the canopy soared 150 feet.” 

Trees in southern Indiana in June of 2024

It goes on to explain how extensively logged these forests were, and how the swamps were drained once clay pipes were invented. I’ve been living in the countryside for a couple of years and I could not stop thinking about it, imagining it, looking at the moss and the mushrooms around me and knowing this was a swampland, looking at the trees that stretch fifty feet maximum and knowing they used to be three times as high.

Can you imagine? Not only that, much of these forests were swamplands to rival the rainforests of South America. I read Freckles by Gene Stratton Porter soon later. It described a clearing in one of these massive forests as cathedral-like, with the sun shining between trees through illuminated leaves. 

From the first night I met him, my husband, Zach, has always told stories of magic and mystery from the woods around here. It’s an 18-acre property in a 295-person township (as of the 2020 census), there have always been lights in the sky, lights down in the trees, stories of UFOs and will-o-wisps. Knowing the old role trees used to play here - their looming ghosts around us - helped me feel an intimacy and kinship with the land I hadn’t before. I’ve been in Indiana 11 years now, but I daresay I’ve become a little more native. 

Another of the book’s essay excerpts, “The Forests of Indiana, Past, Present, and Future” by Charles C. Deam, was written in 1920. Even then, he said, “At the present value of timber, the virgin forests of Indiana would be worth five times the total wealth of Indiana.” Deforestation continued. Wetlands were drained with clay pipes, leaving rich, loamy soil called silt, which Indiana farmers can rotate weaving with large crops of beans and corn to keep it nourished. 

For a land named for its natives, the stories of them are disorientingly uncommon. In Texas I felt the Comanche presence, heard their stories, heard the history. In South Carolina, the Iroquois and Catawba stories and history were readily available. I had done some basic research on Native-Land.ca and found that these lands were once settled by Myamiaa, Shawnadasse Tyle (Shawanwaki/Shawnee), Kaskaskia, Adena, and Kikaapoi. I was delighted that Next Indiana Campfires provided more insight. 

Native Americans specifically cultivated many of these forests as agriculture. Mike Hoag has a great tiktok on the persisting abundance within “food forests” originally created by indigenous peoples here in Indiana. He particularly talks about Turkey Run State Park, where you can look around and see an abundance of prolific and edible plants surrounding you. Down in the southern part of Indiana, I’ve seen walnuts, butternuts, wild strawberries, blackberries, black raspberries, and sunchokes, along with many more that I’m not sure are as native - we see wild onion and garlic in abundance in the summer, and we have several large sassafras trees. 

Trees in southern Indiana in June of 2024

As for the old-world massive trees, very few are left. In 2018, Sanders wrote, “To glimpse what the primordial forests might have been like, you will need to visit one of the few remaining patches of old-growth, such as Donaldson Woods in Spring MIll State Park, Owen County's Hoot Woods, Gibson County’s Hemmer Woods, Meltzer Woods in Shelby County, or Pioneer Mothers Memorial in the Hoosier National Forest south of Paoli.” 

It might take me a while, but I plan to glimpse. The landscapes around here might at first glance appear to be little but corn, but Brown County’s limestone slopes aren’t far. I took a walk in the Calli Nature Preserve once and I was enchanted (although my health did not fare well at the time).

As I was writing this, I realized Scott Russell Sanders was about to be speaking at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Columbus on November 24th. I was able to attend, to listen to him tell a story of the Mills family from his book Small Marvels, and to get that and a book of his essays autographed. He has a dignified presence and he knows how to give meaningful compliments. He told me and my sister in law both that we have faces pleasant to read to. He was also very patient with my distractible nephews during his children’s time speech. 

I hope to blog more soon, about these new treasures once I finish reading them, about Freckles and the works of Gene Stratton Porter, and about the wonders of the underrated Indiana landscape.