“You can only be from one place, and it sticks with you, good and bad.” -Bob Cowser

What is within, is bred from out there. And there is something of the Hoosier¹ spirit that deeply yearns for the sharing of within, whilst in the midst of searching out there.

Or at least this is the story shared between me and my new friend, Jeff Darren Muse.

Upon finishing my bike ride across the US, linking rail trails and weaving ideas, I came to meet Jeff at my journey’s final destination, in Greenfield, IN. Call it serendipity, the algorithm, or just good’ ol fashioned luck, our circuitous, yet strangely similar paths were connected by a comment on Facebook.

Raised about 15 miles and 2 decades away from my own boyhood home, Jeff eventually found himself in the northwesternmost corner of the continental US. From where I write this, I could almost literally throw a stone and have it land in the footprints of his old haunts in Bellingham, Washington.

Yet, the call to roots is strong, and we each found ourselves back home again in Indiana, in this instance at the same time, luck should have it.

Jeff is a writer, an educator, and an incredibly thoughtful and compassionate human being. He cares for others and for the world around him. He holds a love for so much, and with that, carries a responsibility too.

Currently, he also carries brain cancer within him.

I was fortunate to join Jeff in one of 2024’s final days with his brother, Alan, and nephew, Henry, in Ft. Benjamin Harrison State Park for what felt to be a Hoosier convergence—with Jeff and I landing from afar, and Henry and Alan making their way from within the stories themselves. We strolled under the boughs of sycamore and oak, to where Jeff narrated along the muddy banks of Fall Creek. This ecosystem helps define central Indiana, or at least the parts yet to be sterilized by progress.

“Where industrial farmland and sprawling suburbs either numb you into complacency, at least in terms of the environment, or they inspire you to escape to higher, wilder terrain.” -Jeff Muse

Below are some excerpts and bits of wisdom I am grateful to have heard on this day. For honesty and introspection linking musings of home, out there, nature, responsibility, love, and the holy joys and heaviness that comes with existing in our world today, flip to any page of his book, Dear Park Ranger. Better yet, if you’re in the same town as Jeff, join him in what is surely to be a reverentially beautiful place to hear him share some of his story directly.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about second shots,” he said. I’m looking forward to my next shot strolling through the Hoosier woods with Jeff, down the line.

Onwards.

¹ “Hoosier” is the colloquial term for a person for whom Indiana is home.