September 2025 update from Sierra Club Hoosier Chapter
September 24, 2025
Join our Executive Committee!
Our newsletter this month is as packed as a freshly-filled bird feeder, ready for the fall!
In this issue:
🤝🏼 Join our Executive Committee! 👋 Meet volunteer leader Mary Carol Reardon 📚 Come to our virtual Book Club 💚 Remembering forest defender Andy Mahler ✍️ Blogs from local activists in your communities 🥾 Get outdoors with Sierra Club
Plus all our regular features — like photos from you, our readers — and much more!
Happy reading,
Rebecca Dien-Johns Chapter Coordinator
P.S. Did you know there's a one-stop shop for all your Sierra Club email preferences? It's called MyAccount, and it's where members will find the Executive Committee election voter portal later this year too. If you missed the info in our July newsletter about using MyAccount, you can find it here!
Could you be our next Executive Committee member?
Do you have a love of the outdoors, a strong commitment to equity and justice, and a passion to fight climate change and protect the environment in Indiana?
Sierra Club Hoosier Chapter is looking for five volunteers to serve on the Executive Committee who do!
Volunteer Spotlight - Mary Carol Reardon, Outings Leader
Can you tell us a little bit about yourself, and what made you so passionate about protecting the environment?
I have always found the woods a peaceful place to be.
As a child, I would go into the woods with my friends and dig up wild onions. We would go home and make bologna stew with the onions. We also had seen the Swedish movie Elvira Madigan about a tightrope walker. So, we got the idea to rig up a rope between two trees and walk on the tightrope. As each of us walked, we held onto another's hands so we wouldn't fall. It seemed as if the woods was a magical place.
Mary Carol Reardon
Most of the fairy tales I read took place in the woods. As we became teenagers, we would have little cook outs in the woods and make baked potatoes. We would sit down near a stream and cool our drinks in the water. At night, listening to the sounds of the insects was a cozy feeling.
How did you first become active with the Sierra Club?
I was living in New York City, as an actress. I have always loved the theatre, but I longed to be in the woods. Central Park was my haven. I sought out friends who had cars who could take me to the Catskills to go hiking. Eventually I found the Sierra Club and began going on weekend hikes with them. I would take the train from Grand Central Station and meet the Sierra Club group and join them in hikes in Bear Mountain, Cold Springs and do overnights in the Catskills.
What's your favorite thing about volunteering with the Sierra Club Hoosier Chapter, or a favorite memory from your time here?
As an outings leader it is a joy to show someone a new trail. It is a comfort to hike with kindred spirits who share my love of the environment. The magic of being outdoors elicits heartfelt conversations, laughter and learning all while hiking the outdoors. When I began to see invasive plants encroaching into my beloved hiking trails, I volunteered with other groups that were eradicating these invasives. I soon began offering weed wrangles through the Sierra Club, all the while partnering with other groups who were doing the same. Pulling invasive plants with a hearty group of people is life enhancing.
What would you say to someone who’s thinking of volunteering with the Sierra Club?
Volunteering with the Sierra Club can make a person feel less alone. I have made many good friends through volunteering with the Sierra Club. I have had to ask many questions and people were always willing to help me learn. When we plan a hiking outing, first we scout it with another Sierra Club member. Then, we will list it in Campfire [our events portal] and hike with an interested, intriguing group of people. We're making a difference in the environment by carrying the joy of being outdoors to others.
Sierra Club Hoosier Chapter's Book Club is a great way to meet other members and volunteers from across the state and learn more about the important environmental and climate issues that bring us all together.
Tue, Oct 7, 2025; 6:00 PM - 7:30 PM (Eastern) Hoosier Chapter Book Club: The Language of Climate Politics: Fossil-Fuel Propaganda and How to Fight It by Genevieve Guenther
Tue, Nov 4, 2025; 6:00 PM - 7:30 PM (Eastern) Hoosier Chapter Book Club: Is a River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane
Tue, Dec 2, 2025; 6:00 PM - 7:30 PM (Eastern) Hoosier Chapter Book Club: It's Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility by Rebecca Solnit and Thelma Young Lutunatabua OR Climate Optimism by Zahra Biabani
Protecting Our Community: Opposition Grows Against the Mid-States Corridor
I have always been an advocate for protecting our environment. It wasn’t until I retired and moved back to rural Southwest Indiana that I became an environmental and climate activist. Moving back to Jasper, Indiana, in 2020, I was looking forward to hiking in the nearby forests and parks, cycling the hilly country roads, and enjoying nature.
Then I learned about a proposed 54-mile new-terrain highway called the Mid-States Corridor, that if built would take away legacy farms, destroy acres of forest, threaten wildlife habitat, and add more harm to our fragile environment. It was at that moment that I knew I had to take an active role in fighting this destruction that could negatively impact our unique and beautiful rural landscape.
"Andy Mahler, the valiant defender of America’s backwoods, lived in and learned from the forests he spent much of his life fighting to protect from senseless destruction and corporate exploitation. When much of the mainstream environmental movement wrote off rural people, Mahler built a powerful movement among them: decentralized, democratic and rooted in place.
Andy (pictured here with Tim Grimm) spoke and sang at the Buffalo Springs fundraiser in July at the Lost River Deli in Paoli. Photo - Marilyn Bauchat
Mahler was a visionary, whose capacity for empathy, for both humans and the natural world, was matched only by his steely refusal to compromise on vital matters of ecological principle. Mahler’s life, lived to the max, is a testament for a new kind of environmental movement: local, radical and charged with the joyful spirit of the life force itself."
Andy's lifetime legacy includes being one of the founders for Indiana Forest Alliance, Protect Our Woods, and Heartwood. His love for the forest, conservation, and preservation can be heard in some of his music he wrote and performed in his later years.
Andy’s memorial will be held the weekend of October 3-5 at the Heartwood Reunion at the Lazy Black Bear, Paoli, Indiana. Current details of the Heartwood Reunion (1st Memorial) can be found here: Heartwood Reunion on Facebook.
Marilyn Bauchat and Lora Kemp Volunteer leaders
Utility bills making you sweat? You’re not alone!
While there might be some 80+ degree days still this fall, it feels as though our super hot weather has finally broken. Looking back at those utility bills though, makes me start to sweat all over again.
How is it that other communities pay less for their utility bills? Is there any way that we Hoosiers could have our monthly utility bills lowered? I have done a bit of research recently and here is what I have discovered.
Join the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign team to hear the dirty truth about major electric utilities in Indiana!
On this webinar we will share about how the 5 monopoly utilities in Indiana have scored when it comes to transitioning from polluting fossil fuels to clean, renewable energy.
Sierra Club staff and volunteer leaders are passionate about getting out there and spreading the word about issues that matter to Hoosiers!
Sierra Club staff, volunteers, and supporters visiting a solar and wind site in Randolph County. Photo: Nicole Chandler
In August, we headed to Randolph County for a solar and wind site visit.
We learned about the ways Randolph County has benefited by investing in solar and wind. We got to see what these projects look like up close, and spent time together learning and discussing how we can advocate for our communities to move beyond coal!
Interested in becoming a clean energy advocate? Join us on October 20 at 7 PM ET as we hear what it's like to host solar from Mark Simons, a longtime farmer of food crops and solar power. Sign up here!
Outings Leader Mary Reardon led a series of weed wrangles over the summer.
This photo shows a splendid day in August, pulling Japanese stiltgrass on the Hayes Trail along the wildflower corridor.
Photo: Richard Harris
Sierra Club members and supporters showed up at the solar project hearing in Tippecanoe Co last month.
Outreach Coordinator, Colleen Curtin:
"I am grateful to have spent this summer with community members and volunteers in Tippecanoe County talking with folks from 2-92 about renewables and a clean energy future. It was an honor to champion, along with many local members, the proposed solar project on behalf of our whole Chapter to the BZA.
While it is disappointing we lost that one, it was encouraging to have had so many folks turn out to advocate for solar and educate their BZA and neighbors about the benefits of renewable energy."
Colleen Curtin talking at the Tippecanoe County solar project hearing. Photo: Megan Anderson
The Winding Waters was busy tabling at Columbus Pride on September 6.
Festival goers enjoyed the Pollinator Game and we were happy to get many Sierra Club mailing sign-ups.
Winding Waters Group volunteer leaders Jennifer Ehara and Julie Lowe at Columbus Pride. Photo: Mark Lowe
Way Back Wednesday
Photo: Greg Grant
Welcome to this regular feature where we look back and share photos from our past.
This month we travel back to the Women's March of January 2017. Uplands Network leader Marilyn Bauchat (center) is pictured here with her "close friends, and hundreds of folks celebrating equality" in Indianapolis.
Thank you to Marilyn for sending this photo!
Readers' Photos
Thank you so much Neal Dake, for sending in these beautiful monarch photos.
Neal says: "I am located in Fort Wayne. I have two acres of land of native plant transformation. These were taken at my property where I have multiple types of native plants."
Do you have a photograph of Indiana nature — past or present, micro or macro — that you would like to share?
We'd love to see it and perhaps feature it in a future newsletter.
Wed, Oct 1, 2025; 9:00 AM - 11:30 AM (Eastern) Rail-Trail Series: Karst Farm Greenway Part 1 Monroe County, IN
Wed, Oct 1, 2025; 6:00 PM - 7:30 PM (Eastern) Citizen's Advisory Committee of the Bartholomew Co. Solid Waste Management District meeting Columbus, IN
Wed, Oct 1, 2025; 6:00 PM - 7:30 PM (Eastern) Outreach Team Volunteer Tabling Training (Virtual)
Sat, Oct 4, 2025; 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM (Eastern) Tangeman Woods Family Hike & Harrison Township Firehouse Tour Bartholomew County, IN
Tue, Oct 7, 2025; 6:00 PM - 7:30 PM (Eastern) Hoosier Chapter Book Club: The Language of Climate Politics: Fossil-Fuel Propaganda and How to Fight It by Genevieve Guenther (Virtual)
Sat, Oct 11, 2025; 9:00 AM - 12:00 PM (Eastern) Let's walk together in Brown County - Director Series Brown County, IN
Wed, Oct 15, 2025; 9:00 AM - 11:30 AM (Eastern) Rail-Trail Series: Karst Farm Greenway Part 2 Monroe County, IN
"If you're looking for a short-essay nonfiction type read, you might really enjoy Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals by Alexis Pauline Gumbs."
Thank you to the reader who sent in this recommendation!
