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!)
