Flatside Wilderness
Trail
by Lin Stone
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It had rained all night, then off and on again all day long when I stepped onto Arkansas's Ouachita Trail at Flatside Pinnacle Mountain. Shadows twisted in the crumbling light. Dusk was settling drop by drop because of the dark clouds overhead.
My possible campsite was two miles down the trail. Part of the time
I thought I could see. Then the trail would turn and I would see that I
couldn't. In the steepest places the trail was only one foot wide. Branches
were invisible in the velvet darkness creeping about my feet.
I hurried, scarcely able to revel in the sound of rushing waters off to my right and down the slope from where I trod. Misting rain was heavy on the air. Several times only my walking stick kept me from plunging down the slopes.
The Ouachita Trail starts at Pinnacle Mountain (Not Flatside Pinnacle, which is little more than a rugged 1,550-foot rock outcropping) at Little Rock and goes all the way across the Oklahoma border. At Flatside Pinnacle the trees are mostly oak, persimmon, and encroaching pine.
It is dark on the trail even at noonday. Before I'd gone a mile it was intensely dark. Finally I broke down and used a flashlight. Swinging the light in my hand made the leaping shadows even longer. Because of the rain there were two creeks and a stream to cross before getting to camp. (In Arkansas a "crick" only runs occasionally, as in or after a heavy rain. A "creek" will run constantly in the wet season. A "stream" will run constantly except in the dry season. A "river" will run until the Corps of Engineers dam it off.)
My unscheduled sleeping spot was near Crystal Prong Stream. The water was eight or nine
feet across, several feet deep. A foot bridge built by some rugged Boy Scouts got me across. Two fire sticks
dried out some wet stubble enough to catch fire, and I added enough twigs
and branches to warm a can of chili. Then I laid out a plastic tarp, my blanket,
and went to sleep.
The full moon woke me. A patch of sky let the beams in to caress my camp. I laid there in silent awe as the moon slipped into the open and swiveled on wings of silver steel far into the night. I had never seen the moon so full through fall tingled leaves before.
A friend of mine had chosen to go to Dallas instead of camping with me. His last words were: "Think about me in the Jacuzzi with room service and Cable TV while you are lying there in the woods."
I thought of him several times, and knew he had made the wrong decision; a night in a crystal palace could never compare with a moonlit night at Crystal Prong, even if it was wet!
All there was left of the dark clouds were the silver linings when I arose. There are three small waterfalls at that point, hard to shoot even in good light. Splattering water is always Sweeter. I bathed my face in one waterfall, drank from another, and filled my tin can at the third. Then I laid back down and reveled in luxury until the sun brightened the day.
This nearly 10,000 acre wilderness preserve is part of some of the remotest parts of Arkansas. Boy Scouts and avid hikers traverse it in sections at a time. There is a logging road at that point. I followed it up for a mile, climbed a mountain, and laid down to watch dozens of hawks soar in the crisp currents of autumn. If there was a soul on earth, I knew it not. All was silence. All was gold. In the whole vast distance, one tree, two, three, were turning limbs upward in surrender. All the rest were staunchly green.
I then remembered an old question from school. "If a tree falls in the forest with no one around, does it make a sound?" I could never prove an answer to that question, but as I sat there studying the forested landscape before me I changed the question to: "If a tree falls in this forest, does anyone care."
The answer is easy; "I do."
Your answer will be the same when you come hiking the Flatside Wilderness
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