W.H. Chip Gross

Located at the entrance to Old Man’s Cave — the most well-known of seven major geological features in the park — the handsome log-and-stone structure includes 8,500 square feet of indoor space and both upper and lower covered outdoor verandas that add another 5,000 square feet to the two-story building.

“The new visitor center features interactive exhibits on both levels of the building that help guests learn about the unique nature and history of the Hocking Hills,” says Pat Quackenbush, naturalist supervisor at the park.

Her father, Galen, explains. “We had gone fishing a few days previously, and SueAnn caught a very large green sunfish that we released,” he says. “That got me thinking as to what the state record might be for that species, so I looked it up and told her that we had likely released a state-record fish.”
The Newswangers were fishing again a few days later in the same area of the same pond when Galen heard his daughter squeal with delight, “Daddy, I caught it again!”  

American bitterns are not easy to spot, for two reasons. First, there aren’t very many of them — they’re state-endangered. Second, they are masters of camouflage. The bird kept its heavily streaked breast turned toward me at all times, rotating slowly as I moved back and forth for a better camera angle.

Large apex predators once lived here, too: mountain lions and wolf packs preying upon myriad white-tailed deer and elk. Ohio even had buffalo herds (I’ll write more about those later this year).

I have a recurring daydream where I try to imagine what it must have been like to see the Ohio country hundreds of years ago, long before European settlement. We know that half a dozen major Indian tribes lived on the land — it would have been interesting to visit their villages and learn their way of life.

It’s not the answer most want to hear, but the only alternative is to not feed birds. By choosing to feed, you congregate songbirds in numbers not normally found in the wild — and that, in turn, makes easy pickings for predators.

The most common hawk seen in the Buckeye State at winter feeders is the Cooper’s hawk. Sleek, fast, and deadly, this member of the accipiter grouping of hawks is one of the stealth fighter jets of Ohio’s bird world.

I had heard of Gilfillan’s stellar professional reputation, so I decided to pay him a visit. I had no knowledge of his wry sense of humor when I knocked on his door. He seemed genuinely pleased to meet me and invited me into the living room of his home in Mount Gilead saying, “Sit anywhere you’d like.”

Yet as I started to sit down in a straight-backed wooden chair, he quickly stopped me. “No, don’t sit there!” he cautioned. “That’s the preacher’s chair.”

Stories of huge catfish — channel cats, flatheads, and blues — lurking in the deep, murky, mysterious pools of the Ohio River have been whispered from angler to angler for hundreds of years. For instance, David Zeisberger, a missionary to the Delaware Indians in what would one day become Ohio, recorded in his 1780 book, History of the Northern American Indians, the following fish story:

Standing 4 feet tall with a wingspan up to 7 feet, sandhill cranes are hard to miss. To make identification even easier, adults sport the colors of a certain prominent college football team: scarlet and gray. Young cranes, known as colts, begin life as little balls of golden-brown fluff.

Scattered across the rural landscape of the Buckeye State are hundreds of small, grass airstrips, their owners housing vintage airplanes in nearby hangars and barns. A private plane, even though dated, is not inexpensive to purchase or maintain; the pilots — both men and women — do so for one simple reason: their love of flying.