Winter 2021

This is the Twelfth episode of my trips to visit as many of the fifty US States' highest points. In chapter eleven we looked at the trip I took in August of 2020 to Idaho and Nevada. This time it's a coast-to-coast endeavor to bag Maine and California in the summer of 2021. The goal for this year was to make a second run at Katahdin, Maine and then six weeks later to backpack on the John Muir Trail with Mt. Whitney, California as the highlight of that hike. Both trips were advertised as trips for the Ozark Society and required a lot of permit applications and logistics to pull them off. There was also a lot of physical conditioning required as both peaks would present challenges. By mid-May, most of the planning and prep had been done, so it was time to concentrate on trip one, Katahdin, in the Baxter State Park of Maine. Maine In Episode Eight I recalled my trip to the North Eastern states in September 2018. Among the peaks I attempted was Katahdin, Maine. It was a tough hike and I had to turn back because I ran out of time to make it safely [...]

Long ago during the Coal Age the rugged Ozarks were the western coast of North America as rising and falling sea levels caused the scene to alternate between shallow tropical seas and coastal swampland. Continental drift had placed ancient Arkansas on the equator and the collision of land masses caused a great arc of rugged mountains to extend from eastern Canada around to become the ancestral Ouachita range. This collision had produced a single continuous land mass (Pangea) extending all the way over the south pole. That, in turn, caused great ice sheets to come and go, as driven by periodic shifts in the shape of the earth’s orbit – the same shifts that have caused ice sheets to come and go in our present Pleistocene era. With the gentle slope on the edge of our continent, river deltas extended back and forth between southern Illinois and central Arkansas as ice sheets expanded and contracted. All the while, the advancing continental collision and build-up of sediments derived from mountain ranges being created caused river deltas to extend ever farther into our area. The sandstone deposited by those deltas would become the backbone of the Boston Mountains we hike on today. [...]

The Buffalo River Conservation Committee (BRCC) met at their quarterly meeting Monday, 11/30/21 in Marshall, AR. Secretary Wes Ward, Director of Agriculture, presided over the meeting. Chris Colclasure, Director of the Natural Resources Division within the Department of Agriculture was also present. As a reminder, Governor Asa Hutchinson established BRCC on September 23, 2019 to benefit water quality and resource management in the Buffalo River Watershed with emphasis on items that engage local stakeholders and landowners that have a positive impact on water quality and are beneficial for landowners in the watershed. Membership consists of the Sec. of Dept. of Agriculture; Sec. of Dept. of Energy and Environment; Sec. of Dept. of Health; and Sec. of Dept. of Parks, Heritage and Tourism. Funding for BRCC efforts is provided by Governor Hutchinson and the member agencies together to financially support BRCC. Members are required to work in cooperation with one another to identify opportunities to leverage each department’s unique expertise, relationships, focus areas and funding mechanisms in support of vitality of the watershed. BRCC includes a subcommittee of key stakeholders representing local landowners, conservation organizations, environmental and technical experts, representatives of the tourism industry, local county and municipal officials plus federal [...]

BOOK REVIEW: The Nature of Oaks – The Rich Ecology of Our Most Essential Native Tree, by Douglas W Tallamy, 2021, 197 p. In this book an entomologist follows oaks through the year in describing the ecology of the tree. The Ozarks lie in what is nominally the oak-hickory forest zone, and witness trees studies show that oaks composed about 70% of the early historic forest when first encountered by land surveyors. This book presents oak ecology from a caterpillar’s point of view through the eyes of a veteran bug scientist, and there’s a lot going on behind the scenes. One of the most important class of oak predator, the weevil, uses “beaks” to drill eggs into acorns. Maturing larvae then make an exit hole to get into the ground after the acorns fall, while ant colonies use the convenient exit opening after they leave. Retention of withered winter leaves on lower branches of oaks is seen as a deterrent to browsers seeking nutritious buds. The author cites extreme variation of tree host species and their load of insect (caterpillar) consumers. Oaks have the largest array of such consumers compared to few for tulip tree and black gum. He suggests [...]

In a recent visit to Pea Ridge Military Park, I was interested in seeing progress in eliminating invasive red cedar from the grounds. Cedar is notorious for invading old pastures in our area. Another tree that thrives in old fields is our white ash, a stately tree of upland forests. So, it was not unexpected to see large white ash trees left in the open forest when cedars are removed. What I had not expected to see was that these newly released ash trees (Pea Ridge photo) had large numbers of bare branches. I checked with a park ranger on his rounds and he verified that the emerald ash borer is now present at the park. We knew it was on its way and that all attempts at stopping the advance had been given up as futile (see the chapter of forest diseases in Ozark Forest Forensics). Pea Ridge 2021 This will be a serious loss to our old growth forests. And it’s not just white ash on uplands. Green ash is a major part of forests adjacent to wet prairie environments and stream bottoms. Blue ash is a relatively rare but important tree around limestone ledges such [...]

On Saturday, November 20, 2021 fourteen members of the Bayou Chapter spent the day constructing an equine trail at the OWL Center in Dubach, Louisiana. The Outdoor Wilderness Learning (OWL) Center is 800 acres of rolling hills, beautiful facilities, and programs designed to encourage teamwork, family bonds, character development, education, and fun! The trail was about 1/3 mile in length and had to be at least 10 feet wide in order to accommodate a horse with a rider and a walker on each side of the horse.  The trail also had to be very smooth with no roots sticking out. The reason for this is that the walkers need to be looking up at the riders and holding onto them and not looking at the ground.  First, the area was bush hogged, then we repeatedly ran a tractor pulling a harrow to clear the trail. Bayou Chapter Ozark Society (BCOS) volunteers then used sharpshooters, rakes, loppers, chainsaws and other tools at our disposal to smooth out the trails.  We also hauled dirt to fill in the holes that were left when the roots were dug out.  There were several 4 wheelers that repeatedly ran the trail to help smooth it [...]