My brother Travis called me one afternoon this late winter and asked me, "Hey West, what do you think of going on a backpacking trip with me for my spring break?" It took little more than a flicker of thought for me to respond, "Awe, hell yeah!" So it was decided that we would be spending the better part of the first week in March somewhere with warmth, wilderness, and inexhaustible lengths of trail.
In the succeeding weeks we debated several locales for our venture, with our only prerequisites being that it would be a place where we had the potential to be alone in the woods and also (for the first time in months) warm. Eastern Tennessee and Northern Arkansas turned out to be the frontrunners, and upon news that we could carpool with some rock climbers down to Arkansas, our decision was made.
The Ozark Mountains have the fortunate grace of containing some extremely vast areas of wild land, mostly in the form of National Forest and Parks. One of the largest of these tracts of forest is the Ozark National Forest, just south of the Buffalo River. After researching the area and discovering that there exists a trail called the Ozark Highlands Trail running 160 miles through the heart of it, we had only but to pick a 50 mile section of the trail and excitedly anticipate the trip.
I met Trav in Marquette, Michigan, where he goes to school at NMU, on March 9th. We spent a couple of days quizzing each other on what we were bringing or should bring, unpacking/repacking our packs, and buying trail food at the co-op there. The process of preparing for a week in the woods, dreaming up scenarios that could unfold and how much food we'd need, was really fun. Trav had gone on a solo spring backpacking trip last spring, so he had a vague idea of the amount of food we may need, but for the most part, we were winging it. We left the co-op with one $50 bag of provisions, which looked awfully small before we assured ourselves that many of its contents were of the dried variety.
Our ride, a pair of climbers named David and DJ, picked us up around 5 pm on Sunday, March 3rd outside of Trav's dorm. David was the owner of the vehicle, a roomy Nissan Xterra. He was an incredibly nice, soft-spoken guy who was not shy to let on about his excitement to climb in the Ozarks. DJ was a tall red haired Jesus-looking character who was a joy to get to know. I laughed many times to his simple one-liner-style philosophies. My notes contain a few DJ quotes from the trip, such things as, "I just pissed on Subway!" and "I'm gunna eat a banana." Or my favorite, after describing his love affair with a certain cliff face, "I just felt I needed to get closer to that rock. And I did."
David and DJ were bound for the Horseshoe Canyon Ranch, a sort of climbing mecca, located about 40 miles from our desired starting point. The duo turned out to be outstanding traveling company for the entirety of the time we spent with them.
After driving straight through the night and gleefully watching the Midwest snow disappear in the morning light, we reached our destination of Ozone, Arkansas (or rather the trailhead very near the small town) in the early afternoon of Monday morning, March 4th. The preceding careen down the small county highway just before the trailhead had prevented any chance of sleep-deprived lackluster. The time was suddenly now, and after a brief overview of our vague plan, a celebratory shot of whiskey, and a photo-op, we bid our new friends a happy week and set off into the woods.
I will shy away from a day-by-day analysis of the rest of the trip, but will instead try to describe as best I can the experience as a whole.
The Ozarks are tremendously beautiful. Though Trav and I had taken two trips when we were very young with our family to Arkansas, we didn't know quite what to expect from the flora, fauna, or topography of the area. As we walked from one remote gully to the next, the tree demographic seemed to be ever-changing. On one ridge we might be surrounded by swaying pines, and halfway down a slope the forest would switch dramatically to oaks. It made for captivating scenery. Trav and I agreed that at many places our surroundings were similar to our Wisconsin home; in other places, its appearance was completely foreign.
The plentiful rock cliffs, boulder fields, and waterfalls made for a perpetual highlight reel. There was rock and water everywhere. In the larger creeks, the water invariably had a blue tint to it, not unlike the glacial waters of the Rockies. I plied a few of the bigger creeks for early-season smallmouth, but to no avail. Normally, when traveling hundreds of miles for a trip, it is so I can fly fish in a new environment. On this occasion, I was content without the catching (a bizarre occurrence). It was enough to go through the motions and imagine what the fishing would be like there in another month or so.
We averaged about twelve miles a day, our longest day being a fifteen-miler, and I found myself enjoying the pressure that the pack and the miles put on my body. I was surprised at how spry I felt in the mornings after a night in the tent, cowboy coffee, and a hearty oatmeal breakfast. That being said, I was not immune to fatigue, and ten miles of trail made the camp dinners taste damn delicious.
Campsites were not designated by signs, though every mile or two a ring of rocks would appear next to the trail from where others had camped.
Meals were fun, and consisted of oatmeal in the mornings, spruced up with raisins, honey, chocolate chips, and sunflower seeds. Dinner was usually quinoa-based, with additions of dried refried beans, cheese, onions, olive oil, and salt/pepper. Everything tasted awesome, and we ended up with exactly enough food to remain fairly satiated throughout the trip, with hardly any left over at the end of the five days. Not bad for winging it...
At night, after assembling camp and dinner, we'd just lay around the fire, sip bourbon, puff on pipe tobacco, and enjoy each other's company under the stars, which were visible every night but the first.
I had along a couple of books, one of which was Jack Kerouac's Book of Haikus, and that became a topic of trail debate for Trav and I, as did the Beatnik generation as a whole. We tried our hand at American haiku-writing, despite the acknowledgement of our novice experience:
Cool breeze through the hills
Chickadee contemplating
Two Strangers on trail. -T
Ash from fire
falling
on camp poems. -W
From my journal:
For supper we cooked up first a pot of spaghetti noodles/olive oil/garlic salt/pepper/the last of our cheese. "Rucksack mac&cheese." It was fucking good. Feeling we deserved a bit more today, I cooked up some brown rice and black beans, which we added salt, pepper, and olive oil to in order to sufficiently fill us up. We ate our meal while drinking chai tea that we made. Now we're drinking bourbon and restoking the fire every half hour or so, while reading and writing. Trav has an old copy of a short stories collection and I, Jack Kerouac's Book of Haikus.
I brought the old Pentax film camera along and the photos below are from the first two rolls of film. There's still another roll in the camera that I'm excited to get developed soon. If you click the photos you should be able to see them in a larger view.
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| Food organization, pre-trip, in dorm hallway. |
In short, the trip was nothing short of amazing. It was a week that I have relived many times in my thoughts the past month, mostly because of how genuine the whole thing felt while out there with my brother.
Once a journey is designed, equipped, and put in process, a new factor enters and takes over. A trip, a safari, an exploration, is an entity, different from all other journeys. It has personality, temperament, individuality, uniqueness. A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us. Tour masters, schedules, reservations, brass-bound and inevitable, dash themselves to wreckage on the personality of the trip. Only when this is recognized can the blown-in-the-glass bum relax and go along with it. Only then do the frustrations fall away. In this a journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it. -John Steinbeck
