Winter 2025

By Alice B. Andrews, Ozark Society Conservation Chair      We all enjoy a pleasant walk in the deciduous forests of the Ozarks at any time of the year.  In my case, the varied textures and seasonal changes of our oak and hickory forest provide so much more visual interest than the dark spruce-fir forests of Colorado or the lodgepole pine deserts of Yellowstone.  One important component of this scenery is the lowly, often overlooked lichen.  Lichens inhabit virtually every hard surface in view, be it composed of tree bark, bedrock, or even exposed soil.  When we take time to look at individual lichens we are often amazed by the variety of sizes, shapes and colors we see.  Lichens figure into historical accounts where desperate and starving arctic explorers like Alexander McKenzie and John Franklin subsisted on the boiled tissue of rubbery lichens they called rock tripe – not the most appetizing but easier to digest than shoe-leather stew.          The excruciatingly slow growth of lichen colonies is now used as a measure of elapsed exposure time for surfaces in front of receding glaciers – a science known as lichenometry.  The lichen’s intimate partnership between disparate [...]

By Lowell Collins, Youth Grants Committee      The Ozark Society Youth Grant Program gets a few proposals every year submitted by students. Some of the most interesting and unique projects are those that are developed and led by the students themselves. The following are some interesting examples.      Fayetteville High School’s eco-Fashion Club came up with a great idea to keep textiles out of landfills. The club gets a lot of donations in the form of clothes and other textiles. Most of the donations are used for projects like upcycling, pop-up markets, and clothing swaps. But some textiles couldn’t be put to good use. In order to recycle the unusable textiles, the club used a textile recycling business that requires the material to be submitted in Retold Recycle bags which each have a cost. The Ozark Society grant funded the purchase of 10 Retold Recycle bags to divert these unusable textiles from landfills and give them a second life. Throughout the year, students were able to fill the bags with textiles and project scraps that would have ended up in the landfill. To keep this program going, they’ve used the money from their pop-up markets to buy [...]

By Lowell Collins and Mary Schlatterer The Fall meeting of the Ozark Society was held November 7-8th in Bentonville, Arkansas. Here are some picture memories of a great time.

By Brian Thompson, Ozark Society President      I had the pleasure of visiting with Bill Driscoll, the latest recipient of our Sassafras Hiking Award.  Bill hails from Tecumseh, Missouri.   Bill: “Well, I’m not much into awards, but considering all the trail I’ve done, I thought what the heck.”   Bill is retired from the Missouri Department of Conservation, the Forest Division, having worked as a fire fighter for thirty plus years, mostly manning fire towers (pretty cool, huh.)   Bill can look at a distant plume of smoke and tell you if it’s something “under control” or a possible problem.  He was often on his own fighting these fires, getting help where he could depending on the location.   He explained to me that in recent years, small local fire departments have formed, and that local control has inspired folks to be a lot more careful.  “The fire load has dropped tremendously.”      Bill described an early major hike with his wife where they did the Colorado trail in 2006, starting out with packs in the 50-60lb range.  He notes that these were some early hard lessons and that folks along the way helped them determine [...]