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Gay and Frank White on the Buffalo River      It all began with me, a dewy-eyed newlywed, being called an SOB by the man I had recently pledged my life to.  It did not end well.  At least in the moment.      It happened on the Buffalo National River in a canoe.  My new husband, Frank White, wanted to introduce me to the beautiful outdoors of Arkansas. He loved camping, hiking, and canoeing and wanted to share the joys of those adventures in the Natural State.  As a new transplant to Arkansas, it was all new to me!      On my inaugural voyage on the Buffalo River, I was a novice, not knowing “come here” from “sic’em.”      As it happens in floating, we encountered a bend in the river and the current headed us for a rather large rock!  From the booming voice in the stern, I was not paddling correctly.  Of course I wasn’t!   I was a bit panicked thinking my life was about to end with a faceplant and drowning on that big rock!   It seems Frank panicked too because he raised his voice (in fear) and unable to tell [...]

By Tammy Jernigan, Bayou Chapter of the Ozark Society (BCOS) Chair      When the Walter B. Jacobs Nature Center reopened this year after an extensive, yearslong reconstruction, visitors stepped into a revitalized space filled with modern exhibits, accessible trails, and renewed purpose. But beneath the fresh timber, new classrooms, and updated interpretive displays lies a story that began more than half a century ago — one in which the Bayou Chapter of the Ozark Society played a defining role. A Vision Begins: 1971      In 1971, long before the first boardwalk was built or the first school group arrived, the 160 acres owned by Walter B. Jacobs were little more than a quiet patch of Caddo Parish woodland. Its potential was clear, but its future was uncertain. That’s when members of the newly formed Bayou Chapter stepped forward.      At the request of parish officials, Bayou Chapter volunteers conducted the initial land assessment to determine whether the property was suitable for a nature center. Armed with maps, notebooks, and a deep respect for Louisiana’s natural heritage, they surveyed the forest, cataloged its plant and wildlife communities, and evaluated its suitability for public access and environmental education. [...]

By Jackson Rhoades and Phil Brown The Ozark Highlands Trail Association (OHTA) and the Ozarks Keystone Trail Endowment (OKTE) are excited to announce a joint volunteer effort to construct approximately 19 miles of new single-track trail through the dramatic OHT–OKT Buzzard Roost Gap. This new volunteer-built trail (VBT) segment will extend north from the current northern terminus of the Norfork Trail at CR 1028 (Fish & Fiddle Road), tracing the rugged west shoreline of Norfork Lake to the Panther Creek bridge on CR 396. Once completed, it will form the final link in a spectacular and highly anticipated continuous trail section from Norfork Dam to the Arkansas–Missouri state line. The original Buzzard Roost route was expertly flagged by volunteer James Hodges in 2019. While much of that early flagging faded over time, a skilled team of OHTA volunteers has recently reflagged the entire corridor, completing the first major milestone toward construction. Volunteer crews will begin the initial clearing of leaves, limbs, and debris along the route, allowing hikers and trail runners to preview the alignment late spring/early summer 2026. Once the full corridor is cleared and finalized, work will transition to building the trail bed itself. Trail construction will [...]

By Fred Paillet, OS Education Chair      The global warming issue remains a great environmental concern, but so much has been written about the subject that only deals with a small subset of the topic.  Here at last is a truly complete presentation of the carbon cycle that puts our current CO2 problem in perspective from the premise that carbon is the essential element for life on earth.  In a universe trending towards heat death by increasing disorder (entropy), evolution represents the selective process of creating ordered life by redirecting the natural flow of energy to offset increases in entropy.   At the very beginning, life probably originated in an early O-free environment through hydrothermal circulation in travertine pinnacles where H-rich alkaline fluids entered acidic metal-rich waters – a process called serpentinization.  Natural chemical energy release created organics, then natural processes found ways to funnel energy into tighter spaces, developing enzymes to accelerate things – with the higher energy release the better the survival (that’s evolution).  An initial oxidation event at 2 billion years ago came from cyanobacteria enhancing photosynthesis but then fell back in a “boring billion” until the Cambrian “explosion” of life.  That created an energy [...]

By Fred Paillet, OS Education Chair      “Rocket Science” has for a long time been taken as a catchword for the ultimate in technical complexity.  That’s usually in the context of comparison with computations that ought to be guided by common sense.  In that vein, the title of this piece might be interpreted as suggesting that all the fuss about global warming is being given way too much hype.  The weather is something we all experience every day, and climate is just the average of that experience over longer time intervals.  The temperature changes by tens of degrees during the average day.  Why all the worry over an average degree or two?  Here I am taking the same trope in EXACTLY the opposite sense.  Climate change as a study is NOT rocket science only because it is MUCH more complex.  Let me explain how that is, along with reflections on my own specific battle with that subject.  If you remained unconvinced about the complexity of the atmospheric carbon cycle you can get the full story in glorious detail from: The Story of CO2 is the Story of Everything, by Peter Brannen (2025) reviewed here in this Pack and [...]

By Dana Steward, Youth Grants Committee      The Ozark Society Youth Grant committee has awarded ten youth grants a total of $11,922 for the 2026-2027 cycle.  Twenty-four schools and nonprofit agencies in Arkansas, Missouri, and Louisiana applied this year for the awards, which offer grants up to $2500 for public and private schools grades K-12 in the areas where we have a chapter presence.     Grantees and their grant awards include Red River Quail Forever, Shreveport, $1000 James River Basin Partnership, Springfield, $1500 Greater Ozarks Audubon GLADE program, SW Missouri, $1440 Sonora Elementary School, Springdale region, $1000 Ozark Bird Conservancy, NWA region, $1790 Thaden Lower School, Bentonville, $500 Mount Sequoyah Rainbow Roots Club, Fayetteville, $1500 Clinton High School Environmental Club, Clinton, $1500 Forest Park Elementary PTA, Little Rock, $2000.      Satisfying the grant mission of hands-on student participation in environment awareness and conservation, the ten grantees proposed projects to involve some 1879 students who will engage with pollinator habitat and gardens, water monitoring and conservation, bird and bat data collection and observation, owl nesting, building and conserving an all campus and community trail, and educating ecology leaders.      This makes the OS Youth Fund committee’s [...]

By Gay White, former First Lady of Arkansas and OS Member      It all began with me, a dewy-eyed newlywed, being called an SOB by the man I had recently pledged my life to.  It did not end well.  At least in the moment.      It happened on the Buffalo National River in a canoe.  My new husband, Frank White, wanted to introduce me to the beautiful outdoors of Arkansas. He loved camping, hiking, and canoeing and wanted to share the joys of those adventures in the Natural State.  As a new transplant to Arkansas, it was all new to me!      On my inaugural voyage on the Buffalo River, I was a novice, not knowing “come here” from “sic’em.”      As it happens in floating, we encountered a bend in the river and the current headed us for a rather large rock!  From the booming voice in the stern, I was not paddling correctly.  Of course I wasn’t!   I was a bit panicked thinking my life was about to end with a faceplant and drowning on that big rock!   It seems Frank panicked too because he raised his voice (in fear) and [...]