Our brains are funny creatures all their own. I cannot imagine mine is the only odd one on the planet. Archival “-isms” pop up when needed, whether I ask for them or not. Some are from friends’ voices from over the years, others are snippets of prose from books or movies. I forget they are dormant in my brain storage, and then there one is….all cheerful, saying, “remember….we’re in this together…”.
I read the book twice over the decades, and seen the movie version once. The movie was good, but the book was better—more chockfull of the kind of “-isms” that seem to be ageless, and continue to surface in me even now. The book is Harold and Maude by Colin Higgins, and I can envision the actress Ruth Gordon, playing Maude about to turn eighty in the plot. “Harold,” she had said, “You have to try something new every day….after all, you only have a lifetime….” This might not be an exact quote. But it is my memory, so it is exact for my purposes, and for the voice lingering in the shadows making its case.
Familiarity is good too…I certainly return again and again to certain places, activities, and people. The connections deepen, the experiences expand. Since my Virginia friend is unavailable for a visit along my usual trajectory from Texas to New England, the “-ism” shoots up like a Jack-In-The-Box puppet: Pick a different route this time….somewhere you have not explored. After all…..’you only have a lifetime’.
And so, I meander my way to and through northwest Arkansas en route towards western Pennsylvania. Eureka Springs to be exact...
I read the book twice over the decades, and seen the movie version once. The movie was good, but the book was better—more chockfull of the kind of “-isms” that seem to be ageless, and continue to surface in me even now. The book is Harold and Maude by Colin Higgins, and I can envision the actress Ruth Gordon, playing Maude about to turn eighty in the plot. “Harold,” she had said, “You have to try something new every day….after all, you only have a lifetime….” This might not be an exact quote. But it is my memory, so it is exact for my purposes, and for the voice lingering in the shadows making its case.
Familiarity is good too…I certainly return again and again to certain places, activities, and people. The connections deepen, the experiences expand. Since my Virginia friend is unavailable for a visit along my usual trajectory from Texas to New England, the “-ism” shoots up like a Jack-In-The-Box puppet: Pick a different route this time….somewhere you have not explored. After all…..’you only have a lifetime’.
And so, I meander my way to and through northwest Arkansas en route towards western Pennsylvania. Eureka Springs to be exact...
Thorncrown Chapel
I lower myself onto the blue-fabric cushions halfway down the aisle and next to one of the 425 windows that total about 6,000 square feet of glass in the chapel structure.
Standing forty-eight feet high, the twenty-four foot wide, sixty-foot long, chapel was constructed in 1980, commissioned by retired schoolteacher Jim Reed as a non-denominational pilgrimage and meditation chapel. The structure was constructed using only native northwest Arkansas materials: pressure-treated Southern pine, and area flagstone for low walls and floor, that two men could carry through the woods without help. The chapel looks like an open-air structure, but is, in fact, an enclosed air-conditioned space that seats up to 100 people. Now popular for wedding ceremonies, the chapel holds Sunday non-denominational services, and has daily free visiting hours for those wishing to experience the meditative tranquility of the place.
Standing forty-eight feet high, the twenty-four foot wide, sixty-foot long, chapel was constructed in 1980, commissioned by retired schoolteacher Jim Reed as a non-denominational pilgrimage and meditation chapel. The structure was constructed using only native northwest Arkansas materials: pressure-treated Southern pine, and area flagstone for low walls and floor, that two men could carry through the woods without help. The chapel looks like an open-air structure, but is, in fact, an enclosed air-conditioned space that seats up to 100 people. Now popular for wedding ceremonies, the chapel holds Sunday non-denominational services, and has daily free visiting hours for those wishing to experience the meditative tranquility of the place.
Referencing the aesthetic of the Prairie School of architecture made famous by Frank Lloyd Wright, E. Fay Jones, an apprentice of Wright, designed the chapel for visitors to be able to connect with the surrounding landscape.
Soft music plays over the speaker system as my eyes follow the architectural lines crisscrossing the peaks of the ceiling trusses. I’ve always enjoyed the lines of Wright’s designs, and this structure holds a pleasing aesthetic for me as I gaze through the chapel’s lines to the trees and sky beyond.
Soft music plays over the speaker system as my eyes follow the architectural lines crisscrossing the peaks of the ceiling trusses. I’ve always enjoyed the lines of Wright’s designs, and this structure holds a pleasing aesthetic for me as I gaze through the chapel’s lines to the trees and sky beyond.
Blue Spring Heritage Center
A long-held sacred site for Native peoples, Blue Spring pumps thirty-eight million gallons of pure water into the nearby White River daily. Now on the National Register of Historic Places, the site continues to offer education about the healing properties of this spring, the history of the Cherokee stopover in 1839 on the Trail of Tears after the Cherokee were forced away from their ancestral lands in Echota, Georgia.
I sit in one of the several gardens surrounding the Spring, facing east to start. The four directions represent the Native tribes' deep connection to the earth, the natural cycles of life, and the spiritual forces that guide and protect them. The sun splays warmth onto my face and the breeze dances through spring flowers nearby. Across a bridge over where a mill dam once stood, a limestone bluff once housed artifacts from the past lives once existing in this sacred space.
Eureka Springs
Although Native peoples regarded the many mineral water springs as sacred in this geographical area for centuries, Eureka Springs found its genesis as a health center by 1879, finding its peak by 1890. As those who chanced upon the springs cleared up skin lesions and other ailments, the word spread, causing Eureka Springs to become on almost overnight resort. Starting with tents and rough-built shanties, the railroad adding Eureka Springs as a stop brought with it the makings of a real town. But as medical discoveries, and the public’s confidence in them, grew, the visits declined, and the railroad moved its presence to a nearby town instead. In the 1920s, auto tourism brought back those seeking the medicinal waters, but then the Depression took its toll. Buildings were dismantled for the wood, and the town started to disintegrate...until the 1960s, when artists and writers flocked to the town for a less expensive and simpler lifestyle.
Today, the artsy Bohemian underscoring of the town is prevalent with tourist-driven shops and galleries, expensive parking in limited lots, and a hop on/off trolley system delivering tourists to the historic downtown, and other outlying attractions like Thorncrown Chapel and the Blue Spring Heritage Center.
Today, the artsy Bohemian underscoring of the town is prevalent with tourist-driven shops and galleries, expensive parking in limited lots, and a hop on/off trolley system delivering tourists to the historic downtown, and other outlying attractions like Thorncrown Chapel and the Blue Spring Heritage Center.
A friend of a friend recommended a visit to the funky town to take in the vibe, but one hour of up and down the hillside streets perusing storefront windows full of trinkets and paintings, signs offering photos of my aura and ghosts tours, and handmade funk-art, I decide to move on out of the town into the Ozark foothills.
A friend of a friend recommended a visit to the funky town to take in the vibe, but one hour of up and down the hillside streets perusing storefront windows full of trinkets and paintings, signs offering photos of my aura and ghosts tours, and handmade funk-art, I decide to move on out of the town into the Ozark foothills.
Buffalo National River Corridor
I’ve heard northwest Arkansas is wild and beautiful….a bit cooler this time of year, and hey, lots of spring wildflowers along the bluffs of the Buffalo National River corridor. With more time, I would have rented a kayak, arranged for a shuttle. Maybe planned a multi-day backpacking trip.
Instead, I linger along the river’s stony edges beneath the limestone bluffs, hike the higher elevation trails down to the bluffs to view the panorama, hike the forest trails in search of hidden waterfalls and caves, and explore the area’s zinc mining history in ghost towns like the old town of Rush left to decompose from its heyday in the early 1900s.
Mostly, I listen to the breezes in the newly leafing-out deciduous trees, greening up more each day. I watch for snakes, ticks, chiggers, some of which are a moot point while I stay centered in the well-trodden trails, edges lined with poison ivy which can wreak havoc all over my body. I am back in the wild, surviving what can try to kill me at every turn. I would have it no other way.
Instead, I linger along the river’s stony edges beneath the limestone bluffs, hike the higher elevation trails down to the bluffs to view the panorama, hike the forest trails in search of hidden waterfalls and caves, and explore the area’s zinc mining history in ghost towns like the old town of Rush left to decompose from its heyday in the early 1900s.
Mostly, I listen to the breezes in the newly leafing-out deciduous trees, greening up more each day. I watch for snakes, ticks, chiggers, some of which are a moot point while I stay centered in the well-trodden trails, edges lined with poison ivy which can wreak havoc all over my body. I am back in the wild, surviving what can try to kill me at every turn. I would have it no other way.
Lost Valley’s short trail offers hidden natural bridges, caves, and waterfalls:
Designated the first National River in 1972 for protection in the Ozark Plateau between the Missouri, Mississippi and Arkansas rivers, the public land was named after the now-extinct woodland bison.
Prehistoric sites date back up to 8,000 years and newer cultural sites encompass village sites of hunter/gatherers, prehistoric bluff shelters, farmsteads of Mississippian homesteaders, hunting grounds of the Osage Indians, and ghost towns like the Rush Mining District at Buffalo Point.
Mostly, the area provides recreational opportunities for paddling on the shallow Buffalo River, campgrounds, hiking trails, and other activities. Along the river, limestone, sandstone, and dolomite bluffs up to five hundred feet high contain caves, cliffs, sinkholes, springs and waterfalls. Big Bluff opens up along the spur Goat trail, and warnings about the drop-off cliff are serious—search and rescue attempts each year are sobering.
My fear of heights guides me to only safe footing and sitting within the bluff overhang as I watch more adventurous and confident hikers continue past me onto narrower ledges. I am content to watch kayakers far below navigate the bend in the river, and a group of riders guide their horses across a shallow section of the river waters.
My fear of heights guides me to only safe footing and sitting within the bluff overhang as I watch more adventurous and confident hikers continue past me onto narrower ledges. I am content to watch kayakers far below navigate the bend in the river, and a group of riders guide their horses across a shallow section of the river waters.
Thunder Canyon holds a waterfall gem near the upper Buffalo River near Compton. This 3.4 mile out- and-back trail mostly follows the Cecil Cove Creek, and crosses the creek three times before the Thunder Canyon side trail splits to the left, without signage. Limited signs hardly exist in true wilderness-designated tracts of protected lands, but this well-worn dirt path funnels the hiker easily towards the dead-end waterfall “thundering” down and through a low stone slot canyon towards the Cecil Cove Creek.
From the late 1800s to the early 1900s, fifteen zinc carbonate mines popped up in the Rush Mining District, housing as many as 2,000 to 5,000 workers and families at times. During World War I, zinc values skyrocketed, but after the war and its need for zinc, the ore’s value diminished, and by 1917, the mines were abandoned. Some families stayed on into the 1960s using the housing, store, and post office, but eventually left for jobs in other area towns.
Wildflowers Slideshow
Popping up amidst the leafing-out poison ivy are a smattering of spring wildflowers, including wild azalea, low blue phlox, mayapple...
Some favorites from my hikes:
Some favorites from my hikes: