3/31 – 4/3/19
3-31
After stopping for some spectacular ice cream (or rather, frozen custard) at Ted Drewes, I began the long drive south to the Ozarks, where I planned to spend the next three days kayaking. Exiting the interstate, I followed a series of twisting roads up and down endless ranks of sunset-stained hills. I reached Pulltite Campground just as night fell, and chose a site a few feet from the rushing Current River.
As I set up my tent, the only other person in the campground walked over and invited me to join him at his fire. Since the temperature was already below freezing, I was happy to comply. My neighbor – a former financial consultant in his early sixties – turned out to be a St. Louis native who had been canoeing the Current River for years. Although he had an unsettling habit of describing gruesome canoeing injuries (and seemed to think that my inflatable kayak was likely to pop on the first rapid) he proved reasonably pleasant company. Finally, as the fire burned low, we shook hands and returned to our respective campsites. The temperature had fallen into the low twenties, and frost was already beginning to glisten on my tent as I crawled into it. My sleeping bag and clothes were warm enough, but I had to wrap my coat around my feet to keep them from growing numb. As a frozen lantern precluded reading in bed, I rolled over, drew the sleeping bag over my head, and fell into a restless sleep.
4-1
Emerging from my tent shortly after dawn, I found the campground white with frost, and wisps of fog streaming from the Current.
After changing into my kayak gear and shoveling down a breakfast of trail mix, I drove the twenty meandering miles to the launch site, located at the end of a treacherous gravel road and beside what appeared to be a burned-out resort.
Popping the trunk, I extricated my inflatable kayak, now about to embark on its maiden voyage. Since it was virtually identical to the one I sank in the Detroit River a couple years ago – not a comforting thought – I inflated it with exaggerated care, and gingerly eased myself into the seat. Despite these precautions, the kayak began to twist and dip almost as soon as I entered the river. Realizing that I had never subjected my old inflatable to anything resembling a swift current or whitewater, I pulled onto a gravel bank to make some adjustments, deflating the seat and changing my posture.
Once I was finally able to paddle with some semblance of stability, I could begin to appreciate the beauty of the Current River. The water was pale green, and perfectly clear to depths of five feet and more. Limestone bluffs reared hundreds of feet overhead, crowned by windswept pines. Eagles seemed to soar over every bend, watching for fish and the victims of kayak accidents.
To balance this beauty, the weather was bitterly cold. The temperature never climbed out of the thirties, and a whistling wind stole most of the warmth a grudging sun allowed. This ensured, if nothing else, that I had the river to myself.
The Current River is about 80% spring fed, and I was seldom far from the trickle of water running from rivulets and fissures in the bank. The most impressive of these, and probably the highlight of my entire day on the river, was the aptly-named Cave Spring, which poured hundreds of gallons each minute into the river from a gaping limestone cavern. I paddled into the mouth of the spring as far as I could, and watched its waters, milky blue with dissolved limestone, shade into the sea green Current.
A few miles downstream, I landed at my campsite, deflated the kayak, and began the grueling bike ride back to my car. Nineteen of the twenty miles were paved, but none of them were anything like level. Up and down, down and up – nuisance hills, leg-burning hills, get-off-the-bike-and-walk hills. There were no shoulders, so the occasional passing car (invariably a rusty pickup) got up close and personal. By the time I reached my car, I was sweating despite the cold, and thoroughly regretting my decision to bike shuttle the next two days.
Around mile three of my ride, the pedals of my bike had begun to wobble alarmingly. They seemed to need tightening, a task that would require a plus-sized Allen wrench. Knowing that my modest toolkit didn’t have one, I stopped at the only place in the area that might: the general store next to the Akers car ferry, a few miles downstream from my launch point. I explained my problem to the proprietor, who called his two sons in from the back room to scour various drawers and boxes for the tool. As he and his older son continued their search, I fell into conversation with the younger son. I soon discovered, to my astonishment, that this bearded, tobacco-chewing giant was a Roman history buff, who was thinking about applying for a graduate program. After telling him a little about my own background, I tried, as gently as possible, to communicate the fact that running a car ferry in the Ozarks probably offers better pay and benefits than most jobs in academia.
When the required wrench proved elusive, the owner directed me to follow his sons to the tool shed a few miles up the road. I did, and soon found myself in a large barn filled with car parts and the smell of grease. As the older brother scrounged around for the wrench, I discussed the city of Rome with the would-be grad student. When the wrench was finally located and we attempted to tighten the pedals, we discovered that it wasn’t the screw that was loose, but a part inside the pedal housing. To have that replaced, I would have to visit a bike shop. In the meantime, I profusely thanked the brothers, gave the younger one some parting advice on applying to graduate programs, and began the drive back to the campground. Along the way, I stopped to see the Devil’s Well – an impressive sinkhole at the end of an abominable road – and to gather wood for the fire I planned to start that evening. The sun was setting by the time I finished, and the air temperature beginning another plummet below freezing.
As I prepared dinner (ramen and canned soup) on my propane stove, I noticed that my only neighbor was gone, leaving me alone in the frosty campground. It was rather eerie, at first, to be so palpably the only person for miles, particularly once darkness had fallen, and night birds began to call with voices like human laughter. But soon, as so often before, I eased into the solitude, and felt the familiar peace of watching an awesome canopy of stars kindle overhead. I made my fire, and read for an hour or two beside it – almost, but never quite, warm.
4-2
The temperature was in the mid-twenties again when I woke, and the Current River steaming again in the refrigerated air. After enduring the familiar finger-burning experience of packing away a frosty tent, I followed an hour of winding roads south to the Jack’s Fork River. Though discouraged to find that both the put-in and take-out were only accessible by long gravel tracks, I made my usual preparations, wriggled into my damp wetsuit, inflated the kayak, and kicked off into the fast-flowing water.
The Jack’s Fork is a beautiful river. Like the Current, it has crystalline green-tinted water, fed by dozens of small springs that trickle and rush from towering limestone cliffs. I saw many bald eagles, including a pair that soared only a few feet overhead. Along the nine miles or so of my run, I bounced through numerous riffles and rapids, but none substantial enough to distract from the pleasures of the trip.
Then, all too soon, it was over. Deflating and folding the kayak, I hopped on my bike – and made it about a hundred yards before spinning out on loose gravel. Resigned to the inevitable, I walked the three long miles to the pavement. The following few miles, on which I was finally able to use the bike, were relatively pleasant. The air had warmed nicely since the frosty morning, and the first wind in days that didn’t sting swept gently over rolling fields. After I turned onto the busy highway, however, the ride became considerably less enjoyable, and I spent the next hour getting sprayed with gravel by logging trucks. By the time I left the highway and finished the long walk down the rutted track to the put-in, it was early evening.
Along the lengthy drive to Arkansas, I was entertained by a procession of billboards announcing the latest and greatest acts in nearby Branson, prominent among which appeared to be a musical based on the life of Samson and a dog show called “canine capers.” Shortly after crossing the state line, I managed to cut off an Arkansas state trooper in the dark while going 20 mph over the speed limit. Naturally, I was pulled over; but I managed to earn the sympathy or pity of the officer, and escaped with a warning. After another hour of late night driving along a bent and bucking road, I rolled into a campground beside the Buffalo River, pitched my tent by lantern light, and more or less immediately fell asleep.
4-3
For the third straight morning, I woke to the sound of a rushing river. Emerging from my tent, I could see the huge bluffs along the Buffalo, invisible the night before, looming over the pine-screened river a few hundred yards away. Shaking off fatigue, I struck camp, slung my sopping tent into the trunk, and began the twisting ride to my take-out point. Though now familiar with the wretched quality of Ozark access roads, I was taken aback by the loose gravel and fifteen degree inclines of the track down to Kyle’s Landing, and mentally winced at the thought of walking my bike back up it.
Driving back to the put-in at Akers, I inflated my kayak, cast a dubious glance at the unexpectedly swift and turbulent current, and launched. I soon realized that the Buffalo was the most beautiful river I had ever paddled. Monumental bluffs, some more than five hundred feet high, towered over the pale green river. Waterfalls sprang down rocky slopes. A warm breeze, heavy with the fragrance of flowering bushes, stirred the branches of the budding trees. It would, in fact, have been just about perfect – if not for the rapids.
My inflatable kayak is basically a child’s toy, most at home on placid lakes, large swimming pools, and ambitious puddles. With careful guidance, as I had discovered, it could handle riffles and even class I rapids. The Buffalo, however, proved to have several substantial class II rapids, complete with wave trains, awkwardly-placed boulders, and stream-spanning ledges. Most of these I could run, but only at the cost of filling my kayak with fifty-degree water. Since I had recklessly neglected to wear my wetsuit, this water pooled around me, soaking and chilling and periodically forcing me to paddle ashore and bail. After careening off a two-foot ledge and nearly submerging my kayak, I took to portaging around rapids I judged too intense for my jumped-up rubber ducky to handle – a process that invariably entailed plunging through thickets of thorns and negotiating slippery rocks.
When I finally arrived at Kyle’s Landing, soaked and shivering, I began the process of deflating my kayak and bracing myself for the brutal ride back to the put-in. Just as I was unlocking my bike, however, I was saved by the Nicest Guy in Arkansas. He appeared from the mostly-deserted campground beside the landing, strolling along with a hiking stick and whistling contentedly. When he saw me, he meandered over and struck up a conversation about the river. When it emerged that I planned to bike back to Akers, he immediately offered to drive me there. He was, he said, waiting for his friends to join him in the campground, and had plenty of free time. Figuring that the odds he was a serial killer were acceptably low, and deciding that in any case I’d rather be murdered than cycle back to my car, I accepted.
And what do you know – he didn’t kill me, or even try to. Instead, the Nicest Guy in Arkansas offered me advice about running the rapids, a waterproof map of the Buffalo, and a sugar-free grape soda. He steadfastly refused my attempts to buy him lunch or offer money, rhapsodized at length about the beauty of the river, and dropped me and my gear at Akers. Then, with a smile and a wave, he was gone.
Having thus saved three hours, I was able to make the long drive to my next stop in daylight. More winding two lane roads brought me through towns stranded in lonely valleys, up ridges overlooking the “Grand Canyon of the Ozarks,” and down Arkansas Scenic Byway 7. I arrived in Hot Springs around sunset, plowed through a heaping plate of fries and ribs, and then spent the rest of the evening attempting to dry my soaked tent and sleeping bag inside a cramped motel room.