For decades, ACRES has worked to protect land along the Cedar Creek corridor, creating an important ecosystem for wildlife, plants, trees, and people. “A land ethic, then, reflects the existence of an ecological conscience, and this in turn reflects a conviction of individual responsibility for the health of the land.” From the house, ACRES Executive Director Jason Kissel leads us along a bluff above Cedar Creek, and a forest stretches in every direction. They embodied Aldo Leopold’s philosophy from “The Land Ethic” in The Sand County Almanac. We are walking through the Dustin’s vision, seeing their trees and their soil, more than a half-century after they first bought the place. They were early founders and supporters, and their legacy lives on in this land and this house, the current ACRES Land Trust headquarters. This house and the property are their vision, and a central part of that vision is ACRES Land Trust. Inside, the big windows magnify the tree trunks and heighten the sense of being under the canopy. The long gravel drive leads to a parking lot and the Tom and Jane Dustin home, a mid-century modern low to the ground with large windows, dwarfed by the surrounding trees. These country roads outside of Fort Wayne fall into a curving, hilly jumble here where they break from the township grid and follow the bluffs and meanders of Cedar Creek, reinforcing Michael Martone’s ideas in his essay, “The Flatness,” that there is more than just flatlands in Indiana. The Dustins, back when the preserve was their home, probably intended this. It’s easy to miss the driveway to the Tom and Jane Dustin Nature Preserve.

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