Place-based Poetry

05
Jul
2023

Woolly Hollow (52 Parks: 52 Poems)

30 May 2023 (backdated)

Greenbrier, AR

84º sunny, calm, light breezes

Woolly Hollow State Park was number 2 on my list because it is super close to where I live and because a good friend had taken me kayaking there several years ago, so it felt familiar. My first stop was the Visitor Center to gather information and make a plan for my day. It was absolutely gorgeous outside and I couldn’t wait to see what the park had in store. This park is definitely a recreational hotspot as most of the RV camp sites were filled and there were dozens of people making use of the beach at Lake Bennet.

From the Visitor Center, I first drove down to the beachfront to scope out the area before the heat of the day arrived (when I planned to be under cover of the trees on the trails. At the beach, I quickly became enamored with the story of the lake’s formation as part of the Civilian Conservation Corp under the leadership of Dr. Hugh Hammond Bennett.

Lake Bennett from the beach looking out to the far shore, heavily treed, green reflection on smooth flat water

According to park signage, “The Lake Bennett Watershed was the first project in the United States built to scientifically study the effects of water run-off, silt, and erosion control from a specific watershed. The experiment included building the lake and erosion control structures… .” The lake was constructed in 1935 by a group of CCC men, and as I later hiked the park, I couldn’t shake the idea of what these men must have gone through to transform a then nearly barren landscape into the treasure it is today.

I did have to laugh at the note on one sign that read, “Bare backfill of the dam was planted with kudzu vine to keep soil in place. Kudzu’s invasiveness was not understood at the time.” That may be the understatement to beat all understatements.

a view of the dam from the side, showing the new backfill from 2018

Here is a view of the dam as it stands today. Of note, the original backfill was all washed away when the dam was overtopped during flooding in 2017. Regardless, the dam itself stood up to the damage, proving that the 1930s hand-built construction has stood the test of time. For those interested, here’s a great short video on the repairs. I guess the kudzu wasn’t mightier than the floods after all.

Leaving the beachfront, I spent most of my time at the park on the Huckleberry Nature Trail. I hiked about a mile of it from the campground trailhead and then doubled back, given time constraints not allowing me to complete the 3.5 mile loop. I knew I’d found a good trail, when the trailhead signage included a quote from Proust! “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new landscapes but in having new eyes.”

I should note that when I’m on these trips I’m not hiking for exercise per se, meaning I meander more than hike. I stop and try to identify trees and plants, I scope out the area for any wildlife, and I spend a lot of time thinking. On the trail, I had the great fortune to learn some new wildflowers, thanks to the Seek app. There was woodland sunflower, firewheel (at the entrance in the sun), heart-shaped skullcap, and my favorite, clasping venus’s looking glass (a poem in the name itself). I also managed to scare up a prairie lizard. It ran for a tree trunk and perched there, letting me look my fill from over three feet away. I confess that if I hadn’t followed it with my eyes, I never would have seen it, its camouflage game was that strong.

Back down by the lake, near the artesian spring, for lunch, I managed two favorite bird sightings as well. A green heron coasted over and perched in a tree right in front of me, giving me a good show as it preened. Later, a blur of color hurled itself across the lake toward me. After it perched, I couldn’t get a good view, but it was calling up a storm. The Merlin app let me know it was a kingfisher, a bird I’ve never spotted and id’d before.

I ended my day by stopping at the dam trailhead for the Huckleberry Trail on my way out on the park road. That hike was a bit of a heart-thumper as the altitude change called on the quads and calves to do their work. The view of the dam still standing, stalwart in the sun, was worth it!

firewheel wildflower

Next stop, Pinnacle Mountain State Park

Posted by Sandy Longhorn
18
Jun
2023

Petit Jean State Park (52 Parks:52 Poems)

16 May 2023 (backdated)

Morrilton, AR

mid-70s with partly cloudy skies and light breezes


For my 52 AR State Parks: 52 Poems project, I chose to visit Petit Jean State Park first because it is the reason the Arkansas State Parks system exists at all. After the area was turned down as a potential national park, Dr. T.W. Hardison, a country doctor who lived on the mountain, lobbied the Arkansas legislature to create a state park system and to designate Petit Jean as the first of its kind in the state. In 1923, with 80 acres around Cedar Falls, the park became a reality, growing through the years to its current 3,471 acres. Much of the park’s infrastructure was created by the Civilian Conservation Corp in the 1930s, and while most CCC camps were populated by men ages 18 – 25, Petit Jean’s Company V-1781 was made up of WWI veterans (the V in their company designation stands for veterans). As park signage notes, “Due to this mountain’s challenging terrain, the veterans’ experience was especially valuable.”

Visiting Petit Jean I went in with the barest idea of a plan on how to approach the fieldwork of immersing myself in the land and learning about its specific history and how that fit in with what I had already researched. I started at the Visitor Center, which has an impressive educational display, and talked with the staff there about potential hikes and what I shouldn’t miss. This proved quite fruitful and I’ve followed this approach since. At Petit Jean, I quickly realized I could write 52 poems about this park alone, and narrowing down my content will be difficult.

Over the course of my day, I started at the Cedar Falls overlook, as this is perhaps the most iconic image / place associated with the park. From there, I hiked down to Cedar Creek using part of the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Boy Scout Trail. Because I knew I wanted to see a bit of everything (and this is an immense place), I didn’t complete any one trail on this visit. 

After getting my fill of the creek views, I headed back to the car and over to the “turtle rocks” and Rock House Cave. Park signage has taught me that the turtle rocks are most likely the result of groundwater working its way through the natural dips and divots of the rocks, “causing oxidation of iron and other heavy minerals in the sandstone.” The rocks are reshaped and discolored by this weathering to produce boulders that look as if they are the backs of turtles. As with the waterfall, my amateur photographic skills do not do this landscape justice.

Pictured here is another of my “stunning” finds, or what I find stunning anyway (natural world nerd here!). This is elegant sunburst lichen growing on one of the turtle rocks. The bright, brilliant oranges, reds, and yellows of this tiny living organism pack a powerful visual punch, and so I find myself diving into research on lichen on my way to learning more about this place that I plan to write a poem both of and for. 

Just past the turtle rocks, I walked down to Rock House Cave, which isn’t a true cave, but is a natural bluff shelter. This beautiful stone retains pictographs made by indigenous peoples sometime in the last 2,000 years. After studying the park signage, I was thrilled when I was able to find and identify one pictograph, which is at the center of the stone pictured here. As yet, I haven’t been able to capture in words how it felt to be standing in front of a text written here so long ago–humbling doesn’t even begin to cover it.

My final stop of the day was at Stout’s Point and the site of Petit Jean’s Grave overlooking the Arkansas River. The legend of Petit Jean, a young French woman who disguised herself as a cabin boy in order to follow her lover into the New World (unbeknownst to him until the day she died on this mountain) is well known around here. I’m finding plenty to unpack from her story as well as the stories being told by the land, the plants, and the people I met during my day at Petit Jean. 

This park is the fourth largest, and I know I’ll need a return visit to see the Seven Hollows area as well as to spend more time hiking the trails around Cedar Creek. As my first official site visit, I came away overwhelmed with information and over 180 images, which are crucial to my process as they are powerful reminders. After struggling to draft the beginnings of a poem, I’ve settled on the idea of writing a long poem in parts, including Dr. Hardison & the CCC, Cedar Falls & the Cedar Creek trails, Rock House Cave & the turtle rocks, the legend of Petit Jean, and whatever I find when I visit Seven Hollows. This one is going to be a whopper, but as I think it will also introduce all the other poems, that seems fitting.

Next up: Woolly Hollow State Park!

Posted by Sandy Longhorn
14
Jun
2023

52 Arkansas State Parks: 52 Poems

14 June 2023

Conway, AR

84º (feels like 92º) sunny with big puffball clouds drifting at a lazy pace

It’s been four years and one month since I last drafted a post for Myself the Only Kangaroo. I’m dipping a toe back in the waters as I’ve embarked on a new project some folx might find interesting, 52 Arkansas State Parks: 52 Poems. Over the next year, my goal is to visit each of Arkansas’ state parks and write a place-based poem there. While I’m starting slow and will travel to 16 in 2023, I’ve been granted a sabbatical for spring 2024 (thank you, University of Central Arkansas!) during which I’ll visit 22 parks, covering the remaining 14 in that summer. Or, at least, that’s the plan. I’m hoping posting on the Kangaroo will help me stay on track!

Why this project? Why now?

I have now lived in Arkansas for longer than I lived in northeast Iowa, the subject of the place-based poems in my first two collections: Blood Almanac and The Girlhood Book of Prairie Myths. While I have been curious about the land in my new home, land that is dramatically different from the glacier-sculpted rolling hills of my origin, I have not written much poetry rooted in the environment here.

I’ve read, over the years, about Arkansas’ six natural divisions and learned, in theory, the differences between the Ozark Mountains and the Ouachitas, which are separated by the Arkansas River Valley; I’ve studied the creation of the Gulf Coastal Plain in south Arkansas and the Mississippi Alluvial Plain that covers the east, those long flat croplands that hint at familiarity, and I’ve tried to comprehend the geologic miracle that is Crowley’s Ridge. Thanks to participating in Writers in the Schools as a graduate student way back in the day at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, I’ve driven from one end of the state to the other visiting towns small and large, and have, over the last two decades in the normal course of life, logged endless hours on I-40, I-55, I-530, I-49, and many state highways in between.

Compared to the sweeping, tallgrass prairie land of my youth, I walk on more rock these days and old swamplands with poor drainage. And the dirt, the dirt here is an entirely weird shade of light brown. Still, it grows sweet cantelopes and peaches, fat tomatoes, and legendary rice, among a host of other plants, shrubs, and trees.

Because I was born curious and inquisitive, I’ve learned about not only the land but also the people, the various cultures of the past and the present. I may be the one person in the last thirty years who’s checked out the entire shelf of Arkansas history books at Torreyson Library at UCA, and only the Google gods know how many hours of online reading I’ve done in the area. I can trace the lineage of the original peoples, the Osage, Caddo, and Quapaw and how they were nearly erased by first the French and then American settlers pushing west toward our manifest destiny. I live alongside descendants of slave owners and slaves. I am one of many northern “transplants,” and I am watching as new immigrants from Mexico, Central and South America, the Middle East, and Asia reshape our sense of self.

However, the people, largely rural or suburban (but trending toward town), mostly working class and proud of a day’s hard labor, some born into racism and homophobia, others working towards a more inclusive sense of community, these are people I recognize at the root. These people, the same as the Iowans from which I sprang, both embrace and wrestle with the land to the same degree. This, the people and the land, are what will drive the poems I aim to write.

It seems that without my even being terribly conscious of the transformation, I’ve become an Arkansan. Finally, I feel like I might have something to say about this place and the authority to say it, as well as to ask the questions that need asking. Knowing that 50-ish pages of poetry make the minimum for a book of poetry, when I learned last year that there are 52 state parks here, it seemed serendipitous and sparked the idea for the project. Discovering that 2023 is the centennial of the formation of the Arkansas State Parks system was the icing on the cake.

It’s a big project, one about which I’m excited and energized. Let’s go!

Selfie with Arkansas river in background
Stout’s Point at Petit Jean State Park
overlooking the Arkansas River
Posted by Sandy Longhorn