Spring 2018

When I was 17, our family took a trip to the Smoky Mountains from our home in Nashville. While there, I happened to notice that the highest point in Tennessee was just down the road from our hotel. It was a beautiful summer's day so we piled into the car and made our way to Clingmans Dome (6644 feet). Little did I know a lifetime hobby had begun. We may have done at least one High Point of one state or another. Maybe you have been lucky to visit 5 or 10 high points as you passed by on your way to doing a trip to somewhere. Then, there are people like me: High-Pointers, people who have a few points under their belt and want more. We are the folks who purposely plan trips so a state high point can be climbed. Sort of like Pokémon for hikers. I currently have 32 high points under my belt and I am planning to increase that number later this summer. For me to cover my journey properly I am breaking the story into pieces and our Pack and Paddle Editor will print additional entries over the next few issues of Pack and Paddle. To [...]

The Rodney Dangerfield Tree of Buffalo River Ledges Illustration is a profile of the mature tree found growing in Boen Gulf. The leaves are thin and supple “shade leaves” from an understory sapling. Many Ozark hikers are familiar with the common trees such as oak, beech, black gum, and hickory that make up our scenic upland hardwoods.  Other trees such as sycamore, sweetgum, and river birch are notable for the way they line our waterways.  But one important Ozark tree, like that famous comedian of old, just cannot get any respect. Exactly how important the cucumber magnolia (Magnolia acumenata) is in our forests was revealed by a recent study.  The significance of this unassuming tree was demonstrated in a dendrochronological study completed as part of a University of Arkansas student Master’s thesis.  The project selected a remote and inaccessible gorge in the upper Buffalo drainage as a location where the difficult access by loggers could have allowed the trees there to escape logging. These trees just might represent a fragment of virgin Ozark forest and the student’s tree ring study was designed to test that hypothesis.  The remoteness of the study site is indicated by the fact that the [...]

Anna Weeks of the Arkansas Public Policy Panel recently set up a meeting between several environmental groups and Alan Gates, the lawyer from Little Rock who wrote the current Arkansas nutrient trading law, and who now represents the 4 cities in Northwest Arkansas which hope to establish nutrient trading in the Illinois River watershed.  The basic idea is this.  Suppose that a watershed has a goal of meeting nutrient limits, say total maximum daily loads (TMDL) of total phosphorous (TP).  There are two primary sources: point sources (wastewater facilities, industry, etc.) and nonpoint sources (agriculture, urban/suburban runoff).  If a point source finds that it is much more expensive to reduce their discharge of TP than the cost from non-point sources, then the point source can pay the nonpoint source to reduce TP discharges, and take credit for the reduction. It’s a win for the watershed. TP levels are reduced and everyone gains financially. The Illinois River watershed has had a long history of excessive poultry litter application, causing very high TP loads and massive algae blooms in Oklahoma streams and lakes.  This problem culminated in 1992 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Arkansas must abide by a stringent Oklahoma TP limit, [...]