An Ozark Overview

 The Great Outdoors: part one

     We know the ‘Ozarks’ is a large mountainous area that includes most of northwest Arkansas and southwest Missouri.  Of course, a lot of this vast area is taken up by cities, towns and farmland collectively referred to as ‘private property’.  What’s left is ‘public lands’ and in Arkansas the public lands include the Ozark St. Francis National Forest (ONF) 1.2 million acres, the Buffalo National River (BNR) over 95,000 acres and some other much smaller public areas.

    Within these two large nationally protected areas are at least eight designated wilderness areas including: two adjoining Upper Buffalo Wilderness Areas, Ponca Wilderness, Lower Buffalo Wilderness, Leatherwood Wilderness, East Fork Wilderness, Richland Creek Wilderness and Hurricane Creek Wilderness. The ‘wilderness’ designation is intended to provide a higher level of protection against ‘human interference’.  Things like roads, logging, mining and even powerlines are prohibited along with all types of mechanical conveyance (cars, trucks, ATV, bicycles ...).

    The list of ‘prohibited uses’ varies from one wilderness area to the next though, for example no motorized vehicles allowed in Richland Creek Wilderness but they are apparently just fine in Hurricane Creek Wilderness which has a road going right through the heart of the wilderness that even crosses Hurricane Creek numerous times along the way.  Trail maintenance is a major activity for the National Park Service (NPS) in Ponca Wilderness with over 30 miles of maintained trails but prohibited in most other wildernesses.  A ‘wilderness area’ is supposed to ‘provide a pristine natural setting unencumbered by human presence’, but this isn’t always the case.

Richland Creek Wilderness

     Also within the National Forest are a whole slew of Special Interest Areas, Scenic Areas, Nature Preserves, Natural Research Areas, Wildlife Management Areas...all told there are a lot of public lands in the Ozarks, so why not get out there and explore some for yourself.  most visitors seem to congregate at just a few popular and therefore overcrowded locations.

   Popular because: 1- They are easy to get to, on a paved road or close to one.  2- They have at least one unique or special feature.  3- They are plastered all over the internet.  If you feel like I do, that 'communing with nature' is not a group activity and should not include crowds of other people nearby, you may want to avoid the internet which tends to ‘steer’ people to the places most often documented, photographed and visited.

   ‘The internet has taken over our lives’, (I hear this all the time) is really true and it’s too easy to sit on our butt and read about someone else’s adventures in the great outdoors including video.  Okay, the internet does have a ton of useful information about pretty much everything, but don’t stop there, get out there for yourself, an ‘online experience’ is only a ‘wish list’ for the real thing. The ‘world wide web’ really has taken over, printed media (newspapers, books and magazines) are slowly becoming extinct.  I suppose there’s no going back to the good old days, so I had better get used to it.  Have you ever said that?  I do quite often, and evidently, I’m slowly changing my ways.