Date of Visit: 12 June 2023
Little Rock, AR
73º all day, cloudy, breezy, the threat of rain as shown on radar ended my day early…and then it didn’t rain
Park 3 of 52 AR State Parks: 52 Poems was Pinnacle Mountain. Having lived in central Arkansas for 18 years, I’ve been hearing about this park from friends for quite a while. However, I had never been to the park before this visit.
This project is happening as I begin a new chapter in my life, post-divorce. Along the way, I’ve had cause to re-examine many of the stories I’ve been telling myself about myself for years. One of those stories seems to have been that I am not “outdoorsy.” It turns out, I love to hike and meander and be out in nature; I just don’t want to be a “rustic” camper. It has been a revelation to go out alone into the woods and simply be. (*Don’t worry, Mom. I follow all the guidelines and I always let folx know where I’ll be and for how long.)
As for Pinnacle Mountain, I doubt I’ll ever summit it on the eastern and most difficult trail, but I do plan to go back and hike the West Summit Trail in the future. For this visit, I chose to hike the Rocky Valley Trail in the hopes of also tackling the East Quarry Trail, based on the advice of a friend well-versed in Pinnacle’s offerings. I did cover all of the RVT, but when I was halfway up the EQT, I saw ominous clouds forming and checked radar. A blob of orange and green to the west forced me to cut my trip short. And then, it didn’t rain!!
Of course, I started the day in the Visitor Center and lost myself in the history of the place. Like Petit Jean, this park is also a Trail of Tears National Historic Site, and I learned some history new to me about the water route taken by a portion of the indigenous people we forced from their homes. This was heavy material and sat with me when I made my way to the overlook of the Maumelle River.
From there, I stopped off at the Quarry Pond. Rock from Pinnacle Mountain, jackfork sandstone to be precise, was used in the 1940s and 1950s for buildings in Little Rock, and around “75,000 tons of rock was stripped from the base of the east side” of the mountain in 1957 when Lake Maumelle was constructed. Just behind the Visitor Center is the Quarry Pond, filled with trapped, sterile rain. The only life that can exist there is a blue-green algae, which gives the pond this amazing color.
As I hiked the Rocky Valley Trail, I kept coming back to this question: who decides what a mountain is? I thought back to my time living in Colorado Springs at the base of Pike’s Peak and how upon moving to Arkansas, I scoffed at the Ozark Mountains in northwest Arkansas as being merely hills. Having lived in the state now for 20+ years and being surrounded by images of the various named mountains, I’ve come a long way in understanding. I’ve also learned a lot about how people have subsisted in rugged terrain over the years, and the stubborn grit reminds me a lot of the farmers I grew up around. During my trip, I was fascinated to learn that the Ouachita Mountains, where Pinnacle is, were formed by two plates colliding and “crumpling.” I live in “the crumple zone” and you bet that made its way into the first draft!
Along the trail, I also came across this nurse log covered in resurrection fern. I take many, many pictures along my hikes, and the vast majority of them turn out to be pictures of rocks & boulders or trees, either standing or fallen. I am drawn to these natural landscapes in the same way I’m drawn to the black dirt of my childhood home.
Another question I’ve been asking myself about these poems I’m writing is how much of my own story should be included? It’s funny, when I wrote my first two books, I didn’t necessarily sit down and say, “I’m writing place-based poetry.” I was simply writing about my experiences and incorporating information about the land and the people that fascinated me. It was natural to do research on the geological formation of Iowa and the history of Euro-American settlement (on land originally home to centuries of indigenous people we nearly erased). It was natural to blend that information with my own personal story line. Now, though, as I’ve studied eco-poetry and place-based poetry, and I’ve set out a specific “project,” I’m more hesitant to include myself in the poems. This draft, however, does so, and what better metaphor for this new chapter of my life than a nurse log and resurrection ferns!
Next stop, Lake Fort Smith State Park.
