Place-based Poetry

30
Jan
2024

Lake Dardanelle (52 Parks : 52 Poems)

Date of Visit: 19 November 2023

Russellville, AR

65º under gray skies

Mid-November tends to be one of the busiest times of the fall semester, so I made my 13th park visit of the project one to Lake Dardanelle State Park, only about an hour from home. I’m hoping I’ll be able to schedule visits to lake parks more strategically moving forward so that I can catch a park-led water tour. Still, I’m happy I went out to visit this park that sits almost directly across the water from Mount Nebo. Formed by human hands, like so many of the lakes I’m visiting, a dam on the Arkansas River created this 34,000 acre lake used now for fishing, fishing, fishing, and more fishing — along with a bit of camping, of course. Fairly quiet on the day I visited, I ran into a couple of families picnicking down by the lake and watched one couple bring their boat in. Although that couple was bundled up against the lake wind out on the water while those of us on shore sported only light jackets, they both looked happy to have been out that day.

I spent quite a bit of time in the Visitor Center reading many displays and interactive exhibits about lake fishing and the species inhabiting Lake Dardanelle. I said hello to this old fine-finned friend. I spent many an hour as a child fishing for bluegills with my family. Walking around the visitor center, watching lake fish of all kind float around me provided a relaxing beginning to my visit and flooded (punny!) me with memories. The visitor center also featured several great exhibits about the settlement of the area, especially one acknowledging how European settlements impacted Native American cultures in the area. Surprisingly, there was not an exhibit about the damming of the Arkansas River to form Lake Dardanelle.

After being cooped up inside, I hit the great outdoors. From the visitor center, I walked along the paved sidewalk of the lake shore over to the Rock Breakwater, a long protrusion made by earth and rock with a poured, accessible sidewalk on the top. This structure allows visitors to walk a decent ways out into the lake and look back at the shoreline or look out over the vast expanse of water. The wind whipped up a bit as I walked along. Sandstone boulders form the sides of the breakwater, so of course I had to stop and take pictures. On my way back in, I lucked out and met a great blue heron fishing to my left. I didn’t think about how I might look; I just slipped into “stealth mode” and moved as silently as possible to get as close as possible to one of my favorite birds in the world. (I’m definitely starting to regret that I can’t afford a phone upgrade and have to settle for my iPhone 8 for pics, as this snapshot doesn’t do the bird justice.) And I was nowhere near quick enough to then take a picture of the biggest delight of the day for me. I turned to head back to the visitor center when two small, sleek, black tumbles of fur shot out of the rocks right in front of me and spilled onto the sidewalk in a game of chase and tackle. As quickly as the two mink kits shot into sight, they realized where they were and squiggled back down into the rocks. (Back at the visitor center, I described the animals and the ranger confirmed they were mink!)

I finished out my day at the park walking the Meadowbrook Trail, an easy .75 mile trail behind the parking lots. The trees had taken on fall colors, lots of gorgeous browns with some sweetgums mixed in to bring the bright splotches of orange & red. On the trail I learned a new tree, the black cherry, and collected this leaf. I know I’m not supposed to take anything from the park, but it somehow got stuck in my journal (wink and nod). The memory it holds is turning a corner on the trail and coming upon a huge carpeted swath of these golden beauties. The gold has faded to brown with aging, but when I came across them, the leaves had clearly just fallen to the ground. In the slanted sunlight, the whole area glowed.

Finally, big ups to Lake Dardanelle State Park for fortifying their official park passport stamp with these two delights, a leaping bass and a little turtle, seen in the photo above. For a quick trip during a busy personal time, I’ve already got several lines to tug for this poem.

Next up: Lake Chicot State Park (first park of 2024!)

Posted by Sandy Longhorn
20
Jan
2024

Ozark Folk Center (52 Parks : 52 Poems)

Date of Visit: 21 October 2023

Mountain View, AR

65º and sunny

Unique among Arkansas’ state parks, The Ozark Folk Center serves as a place both educational and recreational and draws crowds of people together to experience the legacy of highland Ozark Mountain crafts and music. Having heard of the park for years, especially about the famous Ozark Highlands Theater via their radio show, I thought I understood what to expect. However, after visiting the previous 11 parks where I wandered and hiked solo (even at Prairie Grove Battlefield’s museum, I was alone as I toured both the outdoor and the indoor exhibits), it took me about a half an hour to adjust to this quite different experience. Confined to a relatively small space, the Craft Village gave my recovering knee a good break at the end of my three-day set of parks. Still, I felt awkward for much of the day as I passed in and out of shops and bumped up against other visitors.

Entering the Craft Village, I let my ears dictate my first stop: the Blacksmith Stage. As promised, the village featured live music all day and made the $15 entrance fee well worth it. Lucky for me, a local group of three women known as Sweet Jam performed on my visit. I fell hard for this music and these women, who were generous enough to talk with those in the audience about their instruments (banjo, dulcimer, and fiddle), the music, and their own journeys to becoming performers. When they revealed that they had all taken up their instruments after retirement and none of them had known how to play anything until then, I about fell onto the wooden floor. I am always telling myself that it is too late to learn an instrument because, like a foreign language, music takes a young person’s mind. Sweet Jam proved me wrong. They played instrumental-only versions of traditional folk music, like “The Girl I Left Behind Me,” which Civil War generals banned from being played at night because men would get homesick for their beloveds and go AWOL, or so the legend goes. My trip didn’t extend to any evening music in the theater, but Sweet Jam provided such a great experience that I didn’t miss it.

I visited every shop open that day and saw lots and lots of beautiful work, even getting in some early Christmas shopping and getting to talk to the people who had created what I purchased. However, after Sweet Jam, my second most favorite part of the day was taking a Picnic Swing ride courtesy of a 17-year-old donkey named Whiskey, whose sibling is named Tango. The two switch out powerhouse duties. I believe this swing is authentic to its era, and I’m kicking myself for not writing down what Whiskey’s owner Tina Marie Wilcox (also the village’s herbalist) said about that. Regardless, I enjoyed climbing into the wooden slat bucket seat and hearing Wilcox talk of how Whiskey powering the swing replicated how grist mills worked. Of course, I also jumped (down) at the chance to talk to Whiskey one-on-one at the end of the ride and reward him with a good scratch between the ears.

I’m not sure where the poem will go on this one, but I bet it features Sweet Jam and Whiskey, and maybe a sense of the community created each day between the visitors and park & village staff.

Next up: Lake Dardanelle

Posted by Sandy Longhorn
17
Jan
2024

Bull Shoals – White River (52 Parks : 52 Poems)

Date of Visit: 20 October 2023

Bull Shoals, AR

72º – the very definition of a perfect day, sunny skies and temperate air

I arrived at Bull Shoals – White River State Park knowing that I would be seeing a large dam, the construction of which on the White River in 1951 created the 45,440-acre Bull Shoals Lake. If I hadn’t just visited the much smaller 10-acre Spring Lake created by a dam on the Spring River at Mammoth Spring, I’m not sure I could have truly taken in the differences. Being the research nerd that I am, I had to investigate further. While the White River’s headwaters are southeast of Fayetteville, they flow north into Missouri before looping east and then dropping back south into Arkansas for the journey southeast toward the Mississippi River. From the headwaters, there are three other dammed lakes (Beaver Lake in Arkansas and Missouri’s Table Rock Lake & Lake Taneycomo) before Bull Shoals. All of these were created in the mid-20th century to control floodwaters and create hydroelectric power. The result of this human intervention is a haven for fishing, boating, and floating, with the White River below the Bull Shoals’ dam being famous for trout fishing. (Again on this trip, I wished I had the means and expertise to haul a boat along with me on my excursions to lake-based parks.)

This park definitely believes in the motto: go big or go home. The 15,744-square-foot visitor center perches above the dam and offers stunning views of both the lake and the river below the dam. The park interpreters and staff provide displays that tell the history of the lake’s creation as well as offering up details about the flora and fauna both in the water and on its shoreline. This map impressed me, as the details of the lake with all of its branches and coves illuminate the topography of the original river channel and its feeders that, once flooded, now offer a changed landscape. The dam is in the lower right corner of the map.

I spent quite a while absorbing all the visitor center had to offer, and then I headed outside to enjoy such a gorgeous day. I started with the easy Heritage & Habitat Trail right outside the visitor center. Partially asphalted, my recovering knee agreed with this easy walk. The first half of the trail tells the story of the building of the dam, and the second half shows how the park is rewilding the land scarred by construction. Following this, I drove down to the Gaston Wildflower Garden Area and Trail. Again, this asphalted walk made my visit with a bum knee pleasant. While I toured the wildflower area in late October and many of the flowering plants had already become dormant, I still found plenty of white and blue asters along with these stunning upright prairie coneflowers. I happen to be a fan of grasses and flowers gone to seed and I got to absorb plenty of these.

Finally, I ended my day at the Lakeside Trail, the easy hike. I would have loved hiking the Big Bluff Trail, but I knew my knee wouldn’t hold up. As its name suggests, the Lakeside Trail takes you along an area of shoreline just up from the dam. It offered me a great photo opportunity to capture the breadth and scope of the dam. The trail also provided plenty of trees to walk among, one of my favorite pastimes. In fact, the trees love me so much that one of them dropped a hickory nut right on my head. On this hike I learned that hollowed out trees are called “den trees,” which makes perfect sense, but I’m not sure I actually knew this before reading an interpretive sign (yes, park staff, I read all the signs, thank you!). The amount of knowledge at my fingertips on these park visits blows my mind every time.

Leaving Bull Shoals – White River, I confess I felt a bit elated. I’d walked for longer periods of time and traversed a rock & dirt trail without any trouble. While my tumble off Mount Nebo delayed my trips to several central Arkansas parks, making my trip to Mountain View and the surrounding parks only a month after the injuries was a huge victory. (Maybe my great day had something to do with wearing my “lucky” red shirt and sunblock trail hat…both of which survived the fall alongside me.)

Up next: Ozark Folk Center

Posted by Sandy Longhorn
11
Jan
2024

Mammoth Spring (52 Parks: 52 Poems)

Date of Visit: 19 October 2023

Mammoth Spring, AR

65º sunny, breezy perfection!

Park 10 of my project took me north to the Missouri border to visit Mammoth Spring. For this expedition, I spent a long weekend based in Mountain View (thank you, friend with a cabin there!) and covered 3 parks, with Mammoth being the first. On the heels of my fall at Mount Nebo (pun intended), I planned carefully to avoid any parks with strenuous hiking and was pleased that my knee held up for a weekend of walking and one easy hike (see next post). Named for the 10th largest natural spring in the world (yup, in the world), Mammoth Spring State Park features the spring, the lake it forms (Spring Lake), an historic Frisco train depot museum, a dam built in 1888, the hydro-electric plant built on the dam in 1925 and used until 1972, and the headwaters of the Spring River, one of Arkansas’ major trout & floating rivers. I want to give a huge shout-out to the staff at the visitor center, who on my arrival let me know that if I wanted to tour the train depot museum I needed to head over there right away because they all had to go to an eclipse meeting in 90 minutes. Mammoth Spring, like other parts of Arkansas, will be in the path of totality for the April 8th eclipse, and the park system is planning ahead to deal with an influx of visitors.

The main attraction of the park, the spring and the lake, features a self-guided walking tour around the lake’s circumference, with the train depot at station 8 (of 15). I fast-walked over to the museum so I could meet the park interpreter there, and I’m glad I did. I’ve learned that if I step up and let the park staff know what I’m doing there, and if I ask my questions, they are happy to talk with me, a willing and eager audience. In this case, Katie, a fantastic park interpreter gave me a private and extensive tour of the 1886 Frisco Depot Museum. The oldest of its kind in the state, the building preserves a time in history when railroads ruled the rural south and elsewhere, with 1900 – 1930 being the peak years for the Mammoth Spring station. While a major train line still runs alongside the museum, neither freight nor passenger stop here anymore. In the depot I saw exhibits of the segregated Black-Only and White-Only waiting rooms, separated by the working office of depot personnel featuring telegraph machines, log books for freight, and passenger tickets. I found out that at the beginning of the 20th century, peaches were the 3rd largest export out of Arkansas behind hogs and cattle. (Today, nearly all of the peach orchards of Arkansas are gone.) Of course, of all my pictures from the depot, I prize this one the most of the central agent’s typewriter with a tiny sack of flour from a mill that once stood nearby, powered by the river.

After the depot, I headed back to station 1 and wound my way counterclockwise around the 10-acre lake, with the spring being one of the last stops. The trail is only 6/10 of a mile but I took my time, stopping to take pictures and read the information in the tour brochure. When I visited, a large flock of Canada geese floated on the blue-green water with a smattering of ducks thrown in for good measure. I even got to see a clutch of goslings learning to dive for food alongside a mature goose. They may seem like nuisance birds to some, and I know they can be aggressive, but I love to watch them toodle around on the water.

What you see in the picture above is the pool formed at the site of the spring with one set of rapids (not the spring!) in the foreground where the pool spills over its banks into the lake. As the water of the spring erupts from a subterranean artery more than 70 feet deep, the pool covers the actual bubbling up you might expect to see at the source (this other photo illustrates). This pool then spills over in two channels around a small island, and without the dam, would have been a river from there. The building of the dam created Spring Lake. The color of the lake stunned me at every view as the sun shone all day. It turns out, the color comes from the high nitrogen content of the spring water. In fact, the water contains concentrations of nitrogen and oxygen that are too high for most fish to survive in the spring or in the lake. In addition, because the water filters down from the surface of Missouri before entering the underground channels that form the spring, it also picks up harmful human-created chemicals. When the water runs over rapids, and most importantly over the dam, the action creates aeration, bringing the levels down to the perfect environment for the fish and other aquatic life of the Spring River. Yes, that’s what made it into the poem!

One of the things that has surprised me about my project is that some poems suggest themselves quickly and some of them are being quite stubborn. Mammoth Spring’s poem worked itself onto the page in November and in December I revised it to a point where I’m ready to include it in my next set of submissions. I wish I could document the process of the quick drafts in order to understand why some of the other poems are so recalcitrant, but alas, there’s no rhyme or reason (hah! another pun).

Next Stop: Bull Shoals – White River

Posted by Sandy Longhorn
27
Dec
2023

Mount Nebo (52 Parks: 52 Poems)

Date of Visit: 23 September 2023

Dardanelle, AR

77º and breezy, full sun

After sitting out eight weeks of the hottest temps of the year, I returned to my parks & poetry project with the onset of slightly cooler weather. For my ninth park visit, I chose Mount Nebo, and as promised in the last post, it was a doozy. The morning started well enough as I navigated (by car) the elaborate set of switchbacks on state highway 155 that lead up and up and up to the park entrance, past a gorgeous overlook of the Arkansas River valley, and then on to the Visitor Center. Between 1933 and 1935 the Civilian Conservation Corps played a crucial role in reviving what had once been a thriving resort area on the mountaintop, and I have to thank the CCC for my adventurous day. But, I get ahead of myself. As with all of my trips, I started at the Visitor Center and met several friendly staff members. We talked about my hiking choices, and I set off for the Rim Trail, which boasts some stunning views from the flat top of the 1,350 foot mountain.

The official description of the Rim Trail reads, “Originally blazed in the 1890s, the trail was fully developed by the CCC in the 1930s with the addition of stone steps and retaining walls. Spectacular views spread over 100 miles of the Arkansas River Valley before you, including the 1830s water route of the Trail of Tears and 34,000 acre Lake Dardanelle.” The maps list it as easy-to-moderate, and having already hiked Devil’s Den, Pinnacle, and Petit Jean, I never stopped to read the fine print about the one “strenuous” stretch from hwy 155 to Sunrise Point. Instead, I fell enthralled to the views and set off down the path with nothing but thin air stretching out to the left the entire way. You’ll see in this picture from the trailhead the distinct differences in elevation. At the base of these stairs, I turned east (right) onto a partially dirt and partially sandstone trail. I stopped to take my numerous pictures of lichen and moss covered boulders and appreciated the shade of oaks and hickories. I traipsed down rough-hewn stone steps, thinking of the men who nearly a century ago swung pickaxes and hammered chisels to make my hike possible today.

After stopping to chat with some folx camping and practicing what I first thought was Tai Chi but turned out to be Ba Gua, or Bagua Zhang, a Chinese martial arts form, I crossed hwy 155. About 100 yards after crossing the road and moving east, the trail comes to a glorious promontory rock. I met some oncoming hikers and their dog and then took my turn standing on the edge of the earth, stunned by the landscape rolling by beneath me. And then I stepped back onto the trail, starting to get a bit hungry for my lunch which waited for me back in the car. I came to a series of three tight sets of switchback stairs carved into the mountainside, carved I suspect by the CCC troop all those years ago. I made it down and around the first two with ease and stopped to take a picture of the last set to share with Mom so I could hear her gasp at what I’d traversed. With my phone secured in my pocket and my trekking pole in my right hand, I took the first step down. Unfortunately, I must have looked down through the reading section of my bifocals instead of the distance section and I misjudged the depth of my step. Where I thought my foot would strike stone, it sank through the air and I became instantly unbalanced.

And so, dear readers, I took a fall, the worst fall of my life, but still a fortunate one. A fallen tree brought my tumbling body to a halt, preventing me from sustaining far more serious injuries. No broken bones, but a laceration at the top of my forehead that proved what I’d always heard about head wounds. They do indeed bleed a lot. I came away with a puncture wound to my left knee and took my first ambulance ride. I’m so grateful to Mark & Tory (the EMTs), Ellen (the park ranger), Adam (Yell County 911 Dispatch), David (the first hiker on scene who calmed me down), and to Genevieve and Stephen (the next hikers who also happened to be RNs…I gotta say, if you’re gonna fall off a mountain trail, these are the people you want to meet…double thanks to Stephen who hunted through the brush until he found my glasses!). Finally, huge thanks to the good friends who came to my rescue that day and over the next couple of weeks. You know who you are. I love all y’all.

I’ve already written a poem about the fall, but I’m not sure if it fits the project. I do know that I want to return to Mount Nebo and finish the Rim Trail. I might have to take the advice of one of my wise friends who just turned seven and scoot down those stairs on my butt, but I am nothing if not stubborn and determined.

Next up: Mammoth Spring

Posted by Sandy Longhorn
14
Nov
2023

Withrow Springs (52 Parks : 52 Poems)

Date of Visit: 14 July 2023

Huntsville, AR

77º after storms early morning, cloudy skies

Withrow Springs is near Hobbs, so I stayed over in Eureka Springs with friends (thank you, friends!) while making these two site visits. With the heat of July definitely ramping up, I was fortunate to have two stormy nights that cooled things off a bit for the morning hours and created lots of wispy clouds on the mountain roads. The Visitor Center at Withrow Springs is relatively small, but like all my other park visits was staffed with friendly and knowledgable people. After getting my map squared away and making my plan for hiking, I stepped outside and met an incredibly young, but super nice park interpreter who was corralling a giant beetle on the sidewalk. He was delighted when I showed him the Seek by iNaturalist app on my phone, and then I was delighted when the app identified the bug as a variety of longhorn beetle. It was an auspicious beginning to my day.

A short drive took me to the trailheads for the War Eagle Trail (overlooking War Eagle Creek) and the Dogwood Nature Trail. Because I was only there for the morning and couldn’t do both trails, I opted to hike down to the overlook on the War Eagle Trail first. Besides my Seek app, whenever I’m hiking, I’ve usually got my Merlin app from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology going as well. On this hike, a Kentucky warbler sang out from directly above me, but despite all of my neck-craning and my slow dance around the base of the tree, I couldn’t find it for the life of me. (Sneaky birds!) Unlike some of my other hiking in June and July, it wasn’t particularly hot while I was out on the trail, but it was incredibly humid. I was flummoxed over and over by my glasses fogging up on the trail. Regardless, the view from the overlook was stunning (once I stopped long enough from my lenses to clear up)!

The Dogwood Nature Trail, 3/4 of a mile, was the highlight of my day. Most of the trail was a relatively narrow path through all the trees! Various species of maple, oak, and hickory, along with the titular dogwoods, and a smattering of other upland Ozark forest varieties, including Eastern red cedar and paw paw with their huge leaves. The trail is all hillside and ravine and the ground is covered in ferns as far as you can see into the understory. As I discovered, along with all of this green comes a plethora of spiders. In this case arrowhead orbweavers galore. Turns out, each night they weave their sticky nets across the path because just as the trail funnels people through the forest, it also funnels insects right into the hungry hungry spiders’ webs. After being covered in bits of web and the remains of many a winged insect for the third or fourth time, I finally learned to lead with my trekking pole. I mastered a sweeping, circular move that allowed me to gather the web in front of me and move the remains to nearby trees. I felt terrible destroying all that labor, but not as terrible as I felt covered in yuck and the occasional spider.

While on the Dogwood Trail, which definitely changes elevation as you move up and down the hillside and cross tiny creaks, streams, and rivulets, I stumbled on another great find. The skeletal remains of either a raccoon or a possum. While not intact, I’d say I found about 80% of the skeleton alongside the shallow creak bed. As I studied the bones, I dreamt up a scenario of a black bear or bobcat making a nice meal out of the unfortunate smaller mammal. This could have been the case, but given their numbers, a lowly coyote was the more likely diner. After studying the remains, I meandered the rest of the way back to my car, covered in a sheet of sweat and about a pound of trail dirt that I’d managed to kick up onto my legs. The last note in my logbook reads: a great day if somewhat damp. Indeed.

Unlike the nearly non-existent poem draft for Hobbs, the draft of Withrow Springs came much more easily. Sneak peak: there are ferns; there are spiders.

Next up: Mount Nebo (and it’s a doozy!)

Posted by Sandy Longhorn
09
Nov
2023

Hobbs State Park-Conservation Area (52 Parks : 52 Poems)

Date of Visit: 13 July 2023

Rogers, AR

85º feels like 94º ~ full sun, another heat advisory

A friend of mine had mentioned this day-use only park to me about six months before my visit, and I’d read the park website, of course, but nothing prepared me for the scope of the states largest park, 12,000+ acres, double the size of the next runner-up, Village Creek. The visitor center contains a wealth of information on the flora and fauna of the Ozark forests, as the park and conservation area sprawls across a former logging company site, much like Petit Jean. Located along the southern shore of Beaver Lake, there are also plenty of streams and shoreline to explore. Another remarkable note about Hobbs: it is the only state park where regulated hunting is permitted. Even though I was fairly certain the hiking trails would be “safe,” I confess I had a bit of hesitation over this fact.

After spending nearly an hour reading in the Visitor Center, I headed out to the Ozark Plateau Trail, directly adjacent to the parking lot. This is an ADA compliant asphalt trail that endeared itself to me with its shade, birdsong (buntings, tanagers, and wrens, oh my!), and ease of walking. I fell even more in love with it when I noticed a dirt offshoot on the trail that led to a small talking circle with fallen tree trunks as benches. At the front of the benches rested a sandstone “brick” spray-painted with unless, throwing me into Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax and the lesson that book holds about logging. I confess that I looked around for a moment in search of the The Once-ler!

Later I visited the Historic Van Winkle Trail, the site of the home, mill, and spring of the Peter Van Winkle family during and after the Civil War. The trail itself was beautiful, again with lots of shade trees, but the information presented was troubling. The signage tells of the Van Winkle saw mill and acknowledges that at least 18 slaves “worked” at the mill “on the eve of the Civil War.” These displays never use the word “owned.” The signage makes it a point to state that in 1850 there were 47,100 slaves in Arkansas, but fewer than 200 in Benton County. After visiting Prairie Grove Battlefield, how the state parks approach Arkansas’s history of slavery and oppression of people of color keeps rising to the surface of my visits. And as someone who studies language, how the use of language to present (or not present) the horrors of that history interests, troubles, and disquiets me. I applaud the state parks for creating displays that acknowledge slavery and the treatment of indigenous peoples in the state, but I often find the signage walking a fine line between white-washing and truth-telling. This unsettling continues to be a through-line in all of my park visits to date. As I walked the trail to a portion of the mill foundation along the banks of Clifty Creek, I kept thinking on the presentation and wondering if and how I might discover the “truth” of it all. I have no answers yet.

I rounded out my visit with a hike on the Sinking Stream Trail where everything was damp and fecund after the overnight bout of storms. If it hasn’t become apparent yet, given that much of my hiking in June and July took place during heat warnings, I’ve gained a new depth of appreciation for dense, hardwood forests. This trail gave me a great opportunity to walk in the shade of giant sycamore, oak, and hickory trees. I’ve finally engrained in my knowledge bank the difference between a white oak (rounded leaves) and a red oak (pointy leaves), and I can spot a mockernut hickory from 20 feet away. And all that chalk white bark of the sycamore, well, you don’t even want to get me started. If anyone ever studies this project of mine and finds my cache of trail photos, they will have a ton of tree pictures to swipe through. Trees, creeks, and rocky outcrops, I can’t help it; I’m addicted. Here is pic of what I’ve learned (from visiting Bull Shoals-White River State Park recently) is called a “den tree.” These secret spaces have always fascinated me, but I love them even more now that I know their name. And this is where I return in every park visit, to the idea of being able to name the world around me and in that way, somehow establish this as my home.

At this point, I’ve visited 12 parks, blogged about 7 (counting Hobbs), and have drafts for 8, all but my latest 3 just visited and Hobbs. This poem is being shy. Perhaps the blogging will help the core of the poem surface.

Up next: Withrow Springs

Posted by Sandy Longhorn
24
Aug
2023

Prairie Grove Battlefield (52 Parks : 52 Poems)

Date of Visit: 30 June 2023

Prairie Grove, AR

90º with partly cloudy skies and yet another excessive heat warning

When I set out on my 52 Arkansas State Parks : 52 Poems project, I confess that interacting with the natural landscape consumed most of my imagination. I knew, of course, that museums and battlegrounds made up several parks, but they weren’t forefront in my mind. Driving into Prairie Grove Battlefield State Park, I saw first the Hindman Hall Museum (which also serves as the Visitor Center) and then, the sprawl of the battlefield on the ridge with historic buildings scattered about. After several days of hiking in the Ozark Mountains, the asphalt walking trail provided a great way to end my three days of visits in northwest Arkansas, especially given the heat. While the park serves first and foremost as an historical landmark with educating visitors about the battle that played out on December 7, 1862, given the most attention, I fell a bit in love with all of the old and well-tended trees on the ridge.

As I walked the trail and read placard after placard about the battle between Confederate General T.C. Hindman (Arkansas) and Union Generals James G Blunt (Kansas) and F.J. Herron (Iowa), I became overwhelmed thinking about the conflict that divided us then and how continued and rising conflicts seem to be tearing the country asunder once more. Periodically, I turned to the trees and I kept returning to the question of how old the trees on the trail might be. Could any of them have been around during the battle? Later in the day, attending an interactive lecture on the park’s historic buildings, I learned that there is a volunteer arborist who visits regularly and who believes several of the trees may be “witness trees,” trees that today might date as old as 200 years.

Whenever I write about the flora and fauna around me, I resist the urge to personify or to ask the natural world to help me hide from the reality with which I might struggle (i.e. climate disaster, divisive human conflict, misogyny & all the -isms, &etc.) I want to be a steward of my environment at the local and global levels, and one of my lifelong questions in this mission is this: What do I ask of my environment and what does my environment ask of me? And now you see how quickly these poem drafts morph into huge ideas even as I grapple with the overpowering amount of information I gather at each site.

All of that being said, about three-fourths of the way through the battlefield trail, I encountered this set of twined trees. A black walnut and a hackberry, to me, these were the most fascinating natural encounter I had during my visit, and let me tell you, I wanted so very much to see these as some sign of hope about two very different “sides” of any conflict eventually growing to understand each other.

Between my time on the trail, reading and listening to the exhibits in the museum, and attending the interactive park interpreter session, I came away from the park mulling over the language of war. Here are a few of the headers from exhibits: “Six Mortal Hours,” “The Slaughter Pen,” “Commence the Music” (where “music” refers to the Union artillery, “Our batteries opened on them, and then commenced the music.”), and “Blazing Away Like Fury.” Many of these phrases come from letters written by commanders, soldiers, or local residents who observed the battle from nearby locations. Of course, being born and raised in Iowa, I had to stop and text my family a picture of one sign that read, “With drive and determination the Iowans erupted onto the battlefield once again.”

I thought a lot about my relationship with the Civil War and the North and the South as I walked the ground that contained artifacts, shrapnel & bone, from 160+ years ago. Growing up, my education assured me that I walked on the “right side of history.” In fact, the only documented connection I have to the Civil War is that James Longhorn came from England to the US in around 1860 and joined the Nineteenth Illinois Regiment, eventually being promoted to 1st Lieutenant. Not sure how many greats I am from this ancestor or whether I’m a direct descendant or a niece, I do know he’s there in my genetic memory. When I moved to Arkansas in 1999, I began to gain friends who grew up with strong southern identities, and I would gently kid these friends, “well, we know who won the war don’t we.” Now, 24 years later, as I identify as an Arkansan, I find myself wrestling with what this means in terms of confronting our history here and being “on the wrong side.” The current political climate in Arkansas (and in Iowa for that matter) mean that I face living in a place (places if I still count Iowa as one of my homes) that seems determined to move backward and into more divisive times.

This image of the flat river plain that served as the approach for the Iowans in the Union troops on December 7, 1962 haunts me. It was the Illinois River they forded in their approach of the ridge directly behind me as I photographed the scene. I stood there, on a relatively quiet morning, shaded by lovely, old trees and felt compassion for the people on all sides of the battle, the Confederate & Union soldiers and their support staff, as well as the local people, especially those who were driven from their homes that day, homes that the Union armies would burn to the ground the next day. Aside that atrocity, the Union leadership also commanded that all captured Confederate horses be shot and killed, despite their own troops begging them to “save the horses!” All of this is to say that to claim one is on the “right” or “wrong” side of history is a complex and troubling paradigm, and I expect this will simmer up in the poem as well.

This poem may end up being the most somber of the collection. Time will tell.

Next up: Hobbs State Park-Conservation Area

Posted by Sandy Longhorn
22
Aug
2023

Devil’s Den (52 Parks : 52 Poems)

Date of Visit: 29 June 2023

West Fork, AR

93º (feels like 102º), forecast for hottest day of the year so far, afternoon temps around 100º, bright sun all day

Devil’s Den State Park may be one of the three best known parks in the state (along with Pinnacle Mountain and Petit Jean). It is renowned for its caves and its trails.

Once upon a time as a wee graduate student attending the nearby University of Arkansas Fayetteville, I hiked Devil’s Den Trail and made a brief appearance as a caver, a very brief appearance. Before my recent visit as a more confident hiker, I already knew that most of the caves were now closed in an attempt to stem the spread of white-nose syndrome in the local bat populations. Sadly, I learned that, in fact, all of the caves are now closed to the public. This lead to information that I know will make it into my poem about this visit: two endangered bat species live in the park, Ozark big-eared and Indiana bats, and Ozark big-eared bats only live in northwest Arkansas, northeast Oklahoma, and a bit of southwest Missouri. A remote cave in Devil’s Den hosts their largest surviving colony. I wish I could post a picture of one of these super cute little flyers, but alas. Also, FYI: “The maximum fine for harming endangered bats is $100,000.”

Like several of the parks I already visited, the 1930s Civilian Conservation Corps played a huge role in helping to establish this rugged park. One of my favorite artifacts on display in the Visitor Center was this laminated edition of the 1936 camp newspaper, Voice of Satan. The Corps started work on Devil’s Den in 1933 and three years later, there were enough men earning a paycheck to send home to family to constitute a small town barracked amid the upland forest of the Ozarks. Ninety years after they labored, it remains easy to see the physical remains of their efforts. You can see the strike marks of their axes and chisels in the rocks that form the dam on Lee Creek, creating Lake Devil (the original major attraction of the park for visitors). Given my fascination with this history, I made sure I had time for the CCC Interpretive Trail, one of the least used trails at the park. Along the trail are remnants of rock foundations, a hand-built rock culvert and the ghostly, shadowed walls of a root cellar (I didn’t go in there). Walking the trail gave me a sense of the size of the camp, and in the heat, sweating and yet protected by sunscreen, bug spray, and good hiking gear, I thought of those men who dressed out in uniforms in the heat or the cold and got down to the work of making a beautiful but rugged space more accessible to the general public.

As an amateur (very amateur) hiker, my proudest accomplishment so far in all my travels may be completing Devil’s Den Trail. The trail guide calls it a “moderate” trail and lists the elevation change as 100 feet. What it doesn’t say is that the elevation change doesn’t just happen once. I hiked up; I hiked down; I hiked around and around and up and down. It was fabulous, but super challenging. More than ever, I was grateful I’d had the foresight to buy my Black Diamond Trail Back trekking poles (in my signature dark crimson, of course). While hiking the trail, I gained a new understanding of something I’d read in the Visitor Center. The caves here are unique in the US. Yup, in all the US! “According to geologists, 10,000 to 70,000 years ago Lee Creek removed enough material to cause a corner of the mountainside to break off, slide and crack, creating several interconnected crevices.” They have great names like the 50-foot deep Big-eared Crevice (where those big-eared bats I mentioned above hibernate in the largest numbers), Imp’s Leap (named by men from the CCC), and Dead Horse Crevice (sadly, self-explanatory). All along my hike, I saw small, unnamed crevices and found myself gazing down into the slices of rock, wanting to know what it would feel like to be down at the bottom staring up.

I ended my day at Devil’s Den on a bit of a disappointment. The heat got the better of me when I tried to hike Lee Creek Trail. There’s little tree cover, but there are supposed to be some great fossil viewing opportunities on the creek bed. I will definitely be returning to scope those out, and I also want to hike the short Woody Plant Trail in the spring. While I’ll go back for these experiences, the poem right now is shaping up to be bat-centric, alongside the extreme beauty of the rocky, sandstone outcroppings and shady upland forest. Central questions swirl around the influence of human hands on the natural world.

Next up, Prairie Grove Battlefield.

Posted by Sandy Longhorn
06
Jul
2023

Pinnacle Mountain (52 Parks: 52 Poems)

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.)

Pinnacle Mountain overlook of the Maumelle River. The skeleton of a dead loblolly pine in the foreground.

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.

neon blue-green water in the quarry pond with pine trees on the shores

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.

Posted by Sandy Longhorn