Rerooting, re-Hoosiering

By JEFF DARREN MUSE
Guest Columnist

Editor’s Note: An even bigger thrill for Scott Saalman than seeing his own Scaramouch column byline in the Reporter is seeing the bylines of far better writers who occasionally fill in for him as he searches for his moose (we didn’t have the heart to tell him it’s “muse,” not “moose,” which could explain his struggle to find inspiration). The personal essay below was written by Jeff Darren Muse, who, like Scott, lives in Fishers. You could say Scott finally found his Muse.

Greetings from Fall Creek, upstream of Geist. Since my brain cancer diagnosis 15 months ago, I no longer work as a park ranger throughout the United States, but I still think like one. I wander and wonder. I hope. Imagine serving folks from any culture, any religion, anyone identifying the self by race or gender, generation or ability, folks whose descendants were native here, nonnative there, or pretty much like me: a place-by-place immigrant who navigates for need as well as want.

Sure enough, I’ve always been a restless Hoosier, though I currently reside 20 miles from my birthplace. My high school? Eight.

In that spirit, please cheer with me for Hoosier high school teachers like Sheila McDermott-Sipe and her students in a Junior AP Language and Composition course. I recently visited them in Bloomington. To help with their study of creative nonfiction, we read and discussed my memoir-in-essays, Dear Park Ranger, which has been honored on the Debut Shortlist of the Indiana Authors Awards.

In that classroom I loved seeing one of my essays, “Waiting for Rain,” printed on paper, brightened by highlighters, scribbled on, chewed on, leaned on as a model for integrating personal narrative with natural and cultural history. Plus its sentences are intimate, drawing on all of our senses – smell, taste, touch, and plenty more. I trust that whatever I feel my readers can feel, no matter one’s identity.

As explained in the book’s original proposal, “‘Waiting for Rain’ grew from a 2010 road trip to southern Kentucky, where my long-dead father had been born into poverty, alcoholism, and deep rural roots. Embracing Joan Didion’s dictum, ‘We tell ourselves stories in order to live,’ I scrutinize elements of my own life: how I first fell in love with wild things, leading me to become an environmental educator; how I felt about my ‘redneck’ dad when I was a child, a teenager, and then a young adult, myself faltering; how I navigated his untimely death at 54 (I was 28); and how all men struggle. Indeed, this essay is ‘about truth, elusive truth, including my own flaws.’”

At 55, with those two dozen students, I wore cancer-fighting headgear while reading my words and sharing a photo from 1991. It’s Alan, my brother, Sue, my mother, and 21-year-old me beside my father – my out-of-place dad, Wendell Keith Muse, wrestling with shame, regret, and burgeoning pride when I graduated from DePauw University. That’s where I met Sheila, a fellow Tiger, a Hoosier who also grew up locally.

I passed around my family’s image, helping 16- and 17-year-old students reflect on how photos and social media and even our most vivid, sense-driven stories sometimes fall short. Or they only reveal a glimpse of our lives. Thus I write essays, personal essays – an attempt to make sense of things, including myself.

I was honored by their attentiveness, their questions, their own sharing. All filled me with hope.

Inspiration too.

I continue to write, and in addition to doctor appointments, MRIs, and nonstop treatment, I eat as well as I ever have while exercising daily, sans headgear. Where? The southeast corner of Hamilton County, before Fall Creek turns into a reservoir. I cherish what remains of our woods and creeks. I reroot. I re-Hoosier. Hiking and biking and thanking my family, especially my single mother who resides a half-mile distant, offer a kind of prayer. I say that as a tree hugger. My church is nature, always has been.

Of course, this is a much different landscape than where I grew up. When I grew up. Yet its increasing social diversity nourishes me, and the teachers I meet seem kindred. They wander. They wonder. They adapt with hope.

I thank them for their service to all of us, and I look forward to more—more classroom visits, a variety of essays. Dear Park Ranger offers humor too! Adventure, foibles, gratitude.

I’m a ranger, after all, in a new wilderness, my own. Onward.

Jeff Darren Muse is the author of Dear Park Ranger: Essays on Manhood, Restlessness, and the Geography of Hope. In July 2023, he was diagnosed as having terminal brain cancer. At that time, he and his wife lived in New Mexico, where they both worked for the National Park Service. After Muse’s craniotomy, radiation, and initial chemotherapy, which took place in Arizona, they relocated to Fishers, close to his birthplace. Family members reside nearby as he receives care from IU Health as well as nationwide experts. Ironically, Dear Park Ranger was published only two months before his diagnosis, which limited his ability to share it. In 2024, he has participated in numerous events and received honors from Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards, Nautilus Book Awards, and Indiana Authors Awards. Email Muse at jeffdarrenmuse@gmail.com.