Scott Crossley, Clearing the Way to the Great Outdoors

Scott Crossley, Brown County State Park property manager. photo by Brian Blair

~by Brian Blair

Inside Scott Crossley’s office at Brown County State Park surfaces a figurative snapshot of his often dual roles in his first 14 months as property manager: his computer screen amid his wideranging administrative duties, and some of the forlornly fallen timber in the grass, just beyond the window behind his desk.

The toppled trees, when Mother Nature hurls them across the roads, require him and his staff and others to pull out chainsaws and clear paths for a park population that easily can top 30,000 on a picturesque fall day.

One storm alone in the first week of April had strewn some 35 such scenarios by next morning. He mentioned that it helps that he and his family live on the property so he can respond immediately.

Yet, more than anything, the 53-year-old Hoosier native, a 28-year Indiana Department of Natural Resources staffer, said that he sees his broad, overview role as preemptively clearing the way for park visitors to safely and happily unwind outdoors amid streams, lakes, overlooks, wildflowers, trails, campsites and much more.

“Really, this is very much like a national park,” Crossley said.

That is fitting for the nearly centuryold,15,776-acre, hill-laden sprawl, considered one of the largest such natural attractions in the Midwest.

As much as Crossley steered a recent conversation to the work of such advocates as volunteers with the Friends of Brown County State Park or the park’s burgeoning mountain bike supporters (“We can’t sufficiently do our job without so many volunteers and groups”), he realizes that he is the most visible representative of a local treasure with history predating the Depression.

For the upcoming centennial celebration in 2029, his staff of 18 and others will work with the Friends group to restore the park’s iconic fire tower and to make its cabin at the top accessible again.

But he also finds joy in more immediate celebrations.

Come May 3, for instance, Crossley will be doing the wave. Oh, not the sports fan wave. He will engage in the gleeful, processional wave instead when he serves as grand marshal of the annual Spring Blossom Parade in Nashville.

More than anything, though, he mentioned that the parade represents just another outlet for him to better link with the community, which he considers part of, well, the roots of such a leadership role.

“This is a little like being the mayor of a small town,” he said.

In that role, he occasionally just happens to be sometimes rescuing injured hikers or even quickly smoothing over neighbors’ misunderstanding in the campground.

He did the same while serving as property manager at Mounds State Park in Anderson, his previous post, and where his family often visited during his childhood marked overall by hunting, fishing, you name it.

“I know that he’s probably had to deal with a bit of a learning curve,” said Doug

Baird, the former decades-long property manager who now serves as president of the Friends group. “But I also know that his experience already has meant an awful lot.”

Baird acknowledged that, in his own tenure, maybe among the more significant staff challenges and successes was overseeing the first public deer hunts to healthily balance the property’s wildlife and natural habitat.

“I simply tried to do the best I could do with all the resources I had available,” Baird said.

Crossley’s boss, Carl Lindell, central region manager for Indiana State Parks, views Crossley as appropriately active in the right areas.

“Mountain biking currently presents a big opportunity to us,” Lindell said, adding that Crossley is diligently working to enhance relationships among cyclists nationwide and globally while also improving the park’s nearly 40 miles of such trails. Crossley himself is a mountain biker.

Away from his desk, Crossley’s responsibilities require a physical fitness that he hones off duty on the park’s hiking trails and also on the weights, treadmills, and ellipticals at the Brown County YMCA. He is grateful for a spinal fusion 13 years ago that relieved long-term, scoliosis-born back pain that once left him overweight and woefully out of shape.

“I’m laid back,” Crossley said. “But I don’t sit still all that well.”

He aims to do as much as possible in order for others to be active. As the dad of adult son Dylan, who battles a disability, Crossley loves the fact that an electric mobility chair with rugged, oversized tires sits outside his office for visitors to use for free in the park, including on a level, half-mile trail nestled near the rear of the park office.

Just like with storm-felled trees, Crossley wants nothing in the way. The former girls high school basketball coach still sometimes thinks in sporting lingo.

“Around here,” he said, “every weekend especially, is like our big game.”