Walking bliss
Hikers welcome autumn with Ouachita Trail outing
JESSIEVILLE — Sunday was the kind of day we live for in Arkansas.
The sky was clear and blue, without a hint of a cloud. A stiff easterly breeze — Hurricane Ian’s fingertips — rustled through the leaves and made the temperature feel cooler than 81 degrees. The oaks were green, but my hiking companion rejoiced to see a tree with red foliage, her first of autumn.
All in all, it amounted to a postcard perfect day to hike the Ouachita National Recreation Trail. It starts near Pinnacle Mountain State Park and meanders westward through the mountains to its terminus at Talimena State Park in Oklahoma.
“I really picked a great month to be born,” I said with a gloating tone.
“I was born in April,” my friend said. “That’s a good month too.”
“For sure,” I said. “October and April make all the other months tolerable in Arkansas. They have all of the good things.”
“December through March. Ugh!” my companion said. “It can be 70 degrees one day and 7 the next.”
“And summer, whose names shall not be spoken,” I said, causing her to laugh.
Our starting point was Iron Springs Day Use Area on Arkansas 7 north of Jessieville. The Ouachita Trail crosses Arkansas 7 about one mile north of the day use area, but an access trail connects the day use area to the main trail. A loop leads from the day use area to a vista above the day use area that looks far across the valley below.
Until the early 1990s you could camp at the day use area, and I often did. It is possible, maybe, for the small stream that runs through the day use area to flash flood in heavy rain. A small dam once formed a pool in which my children loved to wade. Rocks and silt have largely filled in the pool. Combined with drought, it is barely knee deep. If not for the water control valve that stubbornly pokes through the rocks, you would not know that a dam exists.
There remains a hand pump similar to those at other campgrounds in the Ouachita and Ozark national forests. Citing E. coli contamination, the U.S. Forest Service removed the handles from all of the pumps in the 1990s, but to my knowledge they are still functional. There is also a privy with surprisingly clean pit toilets considering their close proximity to the highway.
Travelers use the area to break the long drive from Russellville to Hot Springs. Picnic tables invite lingering. Some are covered, and some are not.
My friend and I came to hike. We spent a good part of the spring on a waterfall tour through the Ozarks, but we suspended our travels when the weather got hot and we got too busy. The return of cool, pleasant weather prompted us to renew our adventuring.
The trail to the overlook is not for the fainthearted. It begins at a footbridge that crosses the creek and goes straight up like a rocky, ankle turning, knee-grinding stairway to heaven.
I was grateful that somebody left a long, thin stick leaning against the bench at the wooden deck at the trailhead. It had obviously served as a walking staff, and its former owner had courteously passed it forward. “Want this?” I offered. “For what?” my friend asked.
“It’s like a third leg,” I said. “You push yourself forward with it, but it also gives you stability. When you take a step, it absorbs your weight and helps you stay lighter on your feet. Keeps you from staggering and falling.”
She did not think much of that idea and refused it.
After a vertical ascent through broken rock, the trail levels somewhat at a steep angle that includes several severe switchbacks. I have always been a very good climber. I can almost run up a trail. Descent is tenuous. I must go down a hill very slowly, with considerable trepidation.
“Why is that?” my friend asked. “I’m not nearly as fast as you going up, but going downhill is easy for me.”
“I’ve always been that way,” I said. “My knees and ankles feel so fragile, like I’m walking on toothpicks. So I just kind of pick my way along.”
A few hundred yards up the trail, my friend found another stick that was suitable for a staff. She didn’t like the way it felt in her hand, so we traded. She immediately noticed the good results. She hadn’t gone 50 yards when a rock rolled from under her foot. The staff kept her from falling. It happened again on the way down.
“I got some hiking poles for Christmas,” she said. “I should start using them.”
At the top is the overlook. Trees have grown up around it, and the view is not as panoramic as it was. My friend’s sharp eyes picked out a deer stand in an opening near a road. She told me a story about visiting a small school with her son when they moved to Saline County years ago.
“We visited a biology class and, I kid you not, the teacher told her students to bring in their deer hearts for extra credit,” she said.
On the way down, my friend stopped frequently to pick up tiny quartz crystals that were so clear and flawless that she suspected them to be glass. Their characteristic hexagonal facets proved they were indeed crystals. They were some of the most perfect specimens I’ve seen except for their tiny size.
“I’ll put them in a big bowl,” she said. “I’ve got all kinds of things in there. It looks like a packrat nest to anyone else, but everything in there means something to me.”
When we reached the boardwalk at the bottom, my right knee was afire and my right ankle felt like it was in a vise. They demanded that I get in better shape, which will happen with a steady diet of trails like this.
My friend and I left our staffs leaning against the bench, passing them forward.