By Rhett Rasmussen and Doug Berg
From April 24th to May 4th a Mini-School group of 9 people took a canoe trip on the Buffalo River in the backwoods of the Ozark Mountains in northern Arkansas. The group consisted of: students–Chris (Odie) O’Dell, Rob (alum) Stundahl, Greg (Treatment) Anderson, Karl Rehpohl, Brent Thompson, Jarrett Harrington, myself–Rhett Rassmussen; staff member–Doug Berg; alumni assistant–Jim (J.J) Jensen. After a day and a half of driving across windy Iowa and Missouri and having an unfortunate mishap with a canoe which forgot that its main purpose in life was to float on the water, not fly through the air, we finally arrived.
We spent our first night at Lost Valley campground near Ponca, Arkansas, only a mile from where we would begin canoeing. We set up camp and immediately took to the trails. We followed a stream and came to a couple massive caves. After exploring the biggest we saw some waterfalls and went back to camp. We all pounded down several helpings of franks and beans and then it began to rain–an occurrence which was to become all too common in the days ahead. We made another hike back to the cave in the rain, but after some actual encounters with bats and some imaginary encounters with dens of vicious rattlesnakes, we came back to camp and crashed out. During the night, some were awakened a time or two by what JJ referred to as the “hounds of hell”–a good old Arkansas coon hunt, with the coon hounds practically going through the middle of our camp. I slept through it all.
After breaking camp the next morning, we set out for the Buffalo River. The river looked great–clear, blue water, high, huge bluffs, hawks and vultures circling high above. It was also running pretty high–covering the roots and bases of trees and brush along the shore, flooding small islands, but it looked canoeable. We were psyched to get out there, but once again we had to wait as Doug and JJ shuttled the van and canoe trailer 100+ miles downriver to Buffalo Point campground, where we would end our paddle. This job took until mid-afternoon. We then got underway, paddled for a couple hours to get used to the river, missed our campground due to some miscommunication, paddled, portaged, and waded 1/4 mile back against the current to the campground, set up, went swimming and fishing, had a good mac and cheese dinner, had a good campfire session until the rains began again, then crashed.
The next day was cloudy with periods of rain. It was a hard day, but beautiful. We hiked up on a 500′ cliff on the “goat trail”, we ran many rapids, we hiked around the lush, green countryside in an area called “Hemmed-in-Hollow”, a natural amphitheater with a 200′ cataract of water plummeting down. We felt we were in a magical place much of the time, paddling beneath the massive cliffs, lush, thick green forest and jade-colored water. Late in the day, our luck turned. Doug was paddling his little solo canoe, his Merlin, a canoe not built for whitewater. He had been doing fine, taking in a little water once in a while, but not enough to need to put on his canvas cover for the boat. Then came Grey Rock Rapids and we were in them before we could do much about it. We all took on water, but it was too much for Doug’s boat. Same standing waves filled his canoe and he swamped, banging his expensive Kevlar canoe on the rocks as he rode it down. Doug suffered no damage, the boat some damage, and the camera total damage (no slides this trip.) Then the rains came–hard. We lucked out and found a good, but trashy campsite, cooked dinner under a tarp and crawled into wet tents, damp sleeping bags, and damp spirits.
The next day was clear and much cooler, warming up as the day went along. We paddled hard all day and met Mark Warren at Carver Campground. Mark drove all the way from Georgia to meet up with us and paddle the river. Doug, Rob, and Odie know him real well, JJ knew him a little, and most of the rest of us had met him when he did a concert for Mini-School in January. We were all looking forward to getting to know him better. We played football and Frisbee at the campground. Then we were later joined by Mark’s friends Chatty Wight and her daughter Caroline. They were really interesting people. Chatty is finishing college in Prescott, Arizona, an environmental college that really does a lot of trips and really sounds cool. Her daughter, Caroline, is a graduate of the University of North Carolina and just finished an 80-day course with the National Outdoor Leadership School. Her course was a sailing and sea kayaking course in Baja, Mexico. She told us all about it, about getting right up next to huge whales and their babies, about NOLS’ philosophy on low-impact camping. She was really a neat, intelligent person and we were all glad to get to know her and hear about her adventures. Caroline and her mom, Chatty, were on their way home to Atlanta from out west. Mark had been in contact with Chatty and had told her about the Buffalo River trip. They arranged to meet him and us in the middle of the Ozarks on this day so Chatty could canoe with us. Caroline would drive the rest of the way to Atlanta and Chatty would go home with Mark after they were done canoeing.
The next day of paddling was hot and harsh. The sun really beat down and sunburns, especially mine, started to rage. Mark told us about a plant called goose grass that you could make a wash from that would soothe it. But mostly we suffered. We camped near a place called “The Nars” (Arkansas for “Narrows.”) We called it bat house, as across the river were bluffs and small caves. We camped on a sand bar. The swimming was wonderful and the river currents did incredible things here as they swirled through and around the caves. Stundy amazed us all with his culinary achievements as he put together a vegetable stew from scratch with dumplings yet, that couldn’t be beat. Doug topped it off with an apple muffin for all of us, baked in the trusty Mini-School bakepacker. Brent amazed us all with his fishing patience. We spent a great evening around the campfire, lying in the sand, talking about activism and people power with Doug. Mark amazed us all day with his knowledge of plants and their uses. Chatty was fun to get to know, and after only one day of canoeing we felt like we had known her a long time.
The next day was cloudy and muggy with fewer rapids on the river. Karl and Greg had a mishap with one as their canoe got tangled in some brush and capsized. All was 0.K. except the seat on the canoe. We camped near the tiny town of Gilbert where there was a store. It was great to have a carbonated drink again. After another great dinner–chicken fettuccini topped off with a spice cake–some of us fished, with some luck by Brent. Oh yeah, our campfire was made this evening by Odie and Mark. Mark made a board from a dead cottonwood branch and carved a small depression and a notch in it; then he made a drill from a mullein stalk. Odie and Mark rapidly rotated the drill between the palms of their hand and it spun in the depression in the board. Soon smoke started to rise as a small coal accumulated in the notch. The coal fell onto some highly flammable tinder which Mark had made from juniper bark. He blew the coal into flame, the tinder lighted and burned, he placed the tinder under a teepee of kindling which he’d assembled before, and Viola! Buffalo River Fire. It was a good fire. Mark told us a cool story around it about how the first beaver came to be. In the story we also learned about sycamore trees and other animals of the woods. That night, toward morning, it poured. The rain kept us in our tents an extra hour or two, which upset everyone terribly.
In the morning, J.J. talked to a ranger who said the river was predicted to rise 15 to 20 feet overnight. We got going to paddle the 23 miles to Buffalo Point before the floods came, looking over our shoulders all the while for a 20 foot wall of water to come bearing down on us. We made it. It rained hard again that night at Buffalo Point and the next day the river was a brown raging torrent with trees floating down it. We ended our canoeing adventure just in time as the whole state of Arkansas flooded the next time.
After Doug and J.J. took Mark back to his truck at Carver and got J.J.’s truck, they came back and we got underway. The ride home was rainy and uneventful and it was good to get home and get dry. The trip was excellent. We had some tough times but we didn’t let them stop us. We saw some great country, we got to know each other better, and we got to know Mark and Chatty, 2 great people.