Little Bluff cabin cam March 31 - I made a quick run down into the top of Indian Creek Canyon early this morning to photograph a very special 44' tall waterfall - EVANGELINE ARCHER FALLS (read about her at the park service web site here). My photo of it (above) is now available as one of the NEW 24"x36" limited-edition 50th anniversary prints of the Buffalo National River - click for more info.

***Gallery will BE OPEN this Saturday 01/02/22 10am-5pm (mask required)

 

Print Of The Week Special (above)

JOURNAL UPDATED on the 29th

03/05/22 High winds and a tornado nearby this evening, plus an incredible lightning show! We're thankful we didn't get any damage - but man those winds were LOUD!

03/03/22 We are headed to Van Buren this morning to visit the astonishing works of art by Charles Peer at the newly opened Arts On Main (info here). His pastels are some of the very best on the planet!

03/02/22 Meteorological SPRING (March 1 - May 31) has begun and our heirloom daffodils have come back full bloom after being frozen for a while...

03/11/22 Oh what a difference a day makes! Yesterday in the 60-degree warmth of sunny blue skies I was so happy that I threw myself on the ground and rolled around in the forest like a big old bear scratching off his winter coat - it was DELIGHTFUL! But this morning frigid winds from the north drove the wind chill down near zero and I had to bundle up with my own winter coat for the hike to work. The neighborhood cows have been busy - look at how many new-born calves there are, and this is only a small part of the herd - hope they were born with hand and foot warmers. Predicting 3" of snow today

03/12/22 It is very bright outside tonight! I normally take a walk after dinner (and a movie), but since I mostly sat in the gallery for 10 hours today I had to make a LOT of steps in the dark to complete the little red circle on my watch. And oh what a delightful hike it was! The ground was totally brown - all the snow from yesterday melted away today - quickest that has happened in several years here. But the moon being just over half full lit up the landscape so much that I was able to walk full speed through the forest, almost nonstop until I’d done a couple of miles, and ended up back at home.

The only time I stopped was to lay down flat on the ground so I could look up at the moon - it was literally straight above me and I could not strain my neck enough to see it while I was standing (not a terrible place to spend some time in the winter woods at night - on the ground in the leaves looking up through the trees at the moon). My buddy Wilson ended up sitting on top of me - he was trying to get me to get up and go again, but it had quite the opposite effect, haha. Usually when I’m in the gallery all day for an open house I easily walk around enough to complete the little red circle on my watch. But today I only had three customers for a total of about twenty minutes (a trio of delightful ladies - three generations!) - most of the rest of my day was sitting at the computer not typing (I have no idea what I did all day).

Friday while there was heavy snow coming down I stood in the kitchen kneading pizza dough - Friday night is almost always PIZZA night - YIPPIE! And unlike some other weeks when the weather was not great for gathering firewood (rain/snow/ice), I had prepared and spent a good bit of time the day before the snowfall gathering kindling and dry split wood for the pizza oven (as always, THANKS Kennie and Spanky!) - all I had to do yesterday was strike the match and the oven raced up to 950 degrees.

During the multi-hour snow event the heavy snow moved around quite a bit with the rapidly changing winds. While kneading the dough the snow was mostly coming down at a 45 degree angle - blowing in hard from the north. I would look up in delight and the snow would become like star trails as it blurred across my brain. But once, when I was almost done kneading, I focused sharply on the snow it all seemed to freeze in place - and I was looking at a zillion individual snowflakes! (the wind stopped for a second or two and the flakes were all suspended for a moment) It was a CLOUDLAND MOMENT!

Then the blowing snow - and my kneading - continued. For the record, both my lovely bride and I proclaimed it the BEST pizza I’ve ever made! Only problem - I always make two small pizzas, using only 1/2 as much flour as even a “personal” pizza takes - then I roll them out super thin. Each cooks in the wood-fired pizza oven in about 90 seconds right before my eyes. The problem comes when it only takes us about that same amount of time to fully consume both pizzas, and then POOF, it’s ALL GONE! Oh well, I’ll get another chance in a week…

Speaking of small morsels of food, a couple days ago as we were sitting in the prow having lunch, we noticed the buzzards were flying REALLY close to the cabin - within 20 feet of us. They were so GIANT and GRACEFUL - wing span I bet nearly six feet. The wind was blowing pretty good and the buzzards were able to do some amazing acrobatics as they swooped in and dove around trees. Back and forth, probably four or five different buzzards - and they got down to within just a few inches of the ground. When they get like this it can really be quite a show because they will often swoop down over the cabin and we don’t see them until they are RIGHT THERE in front of us. Anyway, we couldn’t figure out why they were coming so close - until I remembered that a couple of days before I had caught a mouse in the RV and had tossed the body over the fence below the cabin. All those giant birds making such a fuss over a tiny critter.

One other note from today - after toiling for many days over several weeks time my lovely bride completed reformatting her popular ARKANSAS DAYHIKES FOR KIDS AND FAMILIES guidebook to make it available as an ebook on Amazon. Like so many other aspects of our business life these past 21 years together, we’ve tried to do almost everything ourselves instead of paying other professionals to complete our book projects (we simply can’t afford to hire others). We figured it would be pretty easy to convert the text and maps in our guidebooks into ebooks. WRONG! It takes FOREVER and ever! This is the fourth ebook that we’ve produced - our goal is to make all of our guidebooks available as ebooks for those who prefer them. All guidebooks will remain in print for as many years ahead as we can keep doing them - the ebooks will just be an additional format.

Dayhikes ebook on Amazon

03/14/22 I spent a good time of time yesterday wandering through the woods on the north side of our property looking for a new trail location (warm Sunday afternoon with a pile of work to do in the office, so what else could I do but get OUTSIDE!). We already have a 1.1 mile trail around our property, but when the summer jungle hits, the northern part becomes, well, kind of like a jungle. The main issue is ticks, especially seed ticks - those are the tiny guys that simply by a foot rubbing up against one small plant growing next to the trail can deposit an entire metroplex of seed ticks onto my foot (thousands). Those spread all over, including onto the pups and my lovely bride. I could spray roundup the entire distance, but it would take multiple applications at great expense. The south side of the trail is not an issue - I can drive the tractor along it and keep the saplings and weeds mowed and we use that trail all year.

SO I have a plan to locate a trail on the north side slopes that will allow tractor access for mowing a couple times a year. The current north trail runs alongside our beautiful creek and waterfalls, but across very steep and rocky lands - no way to mow it. It’s little more than a goat trail (that goat being me), and is GREAT in the winter, especially when the creek is up and waterfalls flowing. But it is mostly abandoned in the summer - we simply hike the road back to the cabin instead. A new trail would allow us to make a complete trail lap in the woods of about a mile in the summer (1.125 miles in the winter), and also visit a part of our property we rarely see - in fact just this past week I “found” a small spring that I’d never seen before.

Flagging tape is up for part of this route, and I’ll continue to refine the location and see if we’ll be able to get the tractor through it with a mower - may or may not work, but at least it’s a good excuse to get me away from the computer and out in the woods on these warm early spring days! (There is a LOT of downfall along this proposed route - meaning entire mature trees that were knocked down during the 2009 ice storm that caused so much damage - those will require a lot of chainsaw work to clear out of the way. Much of the rest of this route is through open forest with little clearing work needed other than lots and lots of saplings to be removed.)

BUZZARD UPDATE. I also got to spend a bit of time on the couch in the prow and I think the winds were too high for much buzzard activity. Although there was a pair of large redtail hawks that I watched with amazement as I munched on lunch - they seemed to be in the courting ritual, and while they did run into each other a time or two I never did see them “lock claws” and tumble out of the sky with grins on their beaks - so it could have been some other type of dance they were doing. None the less they provided me with a wonderful lunchtime air show!

My lovely bride COMPLETED her very first large quilt project, doing all the work herself from beginning to end - the hardest part being the last step - the actual quilting - oh my goodness that long-arm quilting machine she has makes so much noise, but what an AMAZING job Pam did making it work to perfection! I’m so glad that men can’t operate one of those - I’d be a total failure...

03/15/22 It was total dark when my lovely bride stepped into the great room this morning and proclaimed “I’ve finally found a perfume you can get me that I’ll wear - BANFF PASTA!” (neither of us wear perfume nor cologne) Ahhhhh yes, Banff Pasta is one of those most incredible aromas that will linger inside the cabin for a day or two after it’s been cooked. Yesterday was Pams yoga night, and I like to have something yummy waiting for her when she gets home after a tough workout. Banff Pasta is a dish I came up with after eating it at a small cafe in Banff, Canada back in 1995. While I know its not exactly the same recipe, my version turned out pretty good (it’s included in the CLOUDLAND JOURNAL ~ BOOK ONE recipe pages). Sometimes my dish is just OK, but last night it was indeed as good as or even better than the original (I took Pam to the very same cafe in Banff when we were there a couple of years ago). FYI, you can get a digital version of that Journal on Amazon here - Book One covers my first year of life at the newly-built Cloudland Cabin in 1998 - all of it “BP” - before I met Pam.

Speaking of the Cloudland Journal, last summer Pam spent weeks and weeks going through years two and three of the Cloudland Journal (it’s no longer available online since the master servers were erased by the host many years ago, but I was able to find archived versions of it on the deep, dark web - my original text from those years were written on software that no longer exists/or is not supported by any computer system, bummer). Book Two will include me FINALLY finding the love of my life - and it will detail our meeting, which is kind of funny. Plus those years include what happens when two young ladies from the city relocate into an old bachelors log cabin in the woods in the middle of the wilderness, the ordeal of The Search For Haley, ASPEN THE WONDER DOG, and so much more. This will be an ebook only, and I’ll keep you posted here if and when I ever get my part of the book digital file completed and uploaded to Amazon...

03/22/22 HOLY MOLY the woods are SCREAMING tonight! Peepers. Spring peepers. We’ve been hearing them on and off for the past several months, but nothing like they are singing tonight. In fact when I first stepped outside late tonight I thought it was SUMMERtime - the woods were making so much noise! Thou just tiny spring peeper frogs. You can always tell when you pass a pond or wet area while driving when the peepers are awake - even doing 50mph on a highway you can often hear them for a second or two as you pass. Poor guys - they’ve been awake by the promise of warm weather only to be shut down by freezing temps dozens of times this winter - like tonight - it’s gonna be in the low 30’s tonight - no spring peepers in the morning. But they’ll be back peeping once the temps warm up…

A couple of weeks ago I noticed a spot of green in the middle of our trail that passes through the old homesite on our property. When I rerouted the trail last year it now winds through the ruins of what was no doubt a pioneer homestead. Nothing much left now but the lower half of a root cellar (with stacked short stone walls and a couple of decking roof timbers), and a single depression in the ground several feet away - no stone foundations or chimney base. Lots of heirloom flowers and shrubs though. We do find glass items from time to time - mostly bits of shattered window glass or parts of glass bottles - and also a few metal items, with the largest being part of the body of an old Model T.

As we’ve been hiking the new trail section we’ve been wearing down the ground - or should I say wearing away the ground and exposing the dirt and rocks beneath. From time to time bit of glass and metal scraps will be slowly uncovered (I normally just toss whatever it is into the depression to get it out of the way, but in a pile). I had no idea what the bit of green was but I had a plan - I would take a photo of it each week to post here and we could all follow its progress - hoping it might be some toy or easter egg or maybe a jewell!

Well my plan only lasted two weeks, and instead of the green object becoming more and more uncovered with us hiking and also several bouts of heavy rain, this morning I noticed it seemed to be getting more covered up! Being the impatient person I am it only took me four or five kicks with my boot and out it came. SURPRISE - not an emerald or Easter egg, but it was part of a necklace bracelet, I think. It is about the same size and shape as a persimmon seed, and solid, with a tiny hole drilled through it from end to end. No telling how long it has been underground, or when it was dropped or tossed or simply forgotten there next to the shed, house, or cellar.

03/23/22 FIRST WILDFLOWERS of 2022 on our trail - toothworts - YIPPIE!

03/29/22 What a delightful beginning to a new week this morning! I sat in the prow sipping a bit of Iceland coffee watching the “conjunction” of an orange crescent moon, a slightly red Mars, a brilliant Venus, and a one other bright spec that was Saturn. All four were within an inch or two of each other in my line of sight - all against a dark pink/blue dawn sky. (I was too lazy to take a picture)

As the planets and moon faded a new day the sun broke over the distant horizon, lighting up the big pine trees just beyond our deck (and my smoothie was half gone). As has been the case each day now for a while a fat bluebird sat at the end of a tiny branch to take in the spectacle of it all. Monday morning - my most favorite time of the week! (well, pizza night is pretty close too)

 

03/30/22 - HEAVY downpours and many storm & tornado warnings - about 3" of rain so far this morning. Found several wild plum trees in bloom on our hike to work (our first trees to bloom this year - anbd we have probably 5 of them scattered along our mile-long trail through the woods, though probably half or more are clustered on one side of the historic homestead). With the 50mph+ winds it was tough to get a sharp photo! It's 8:30am now and the world has gone very dark outside, still and quiet... 10am - MORE HEAVY RAIN but no damage - total of just over 4" rain this morning with maybe more on the way - WATERFALLS!

Had to abort a waterfall hunting hike late in the day due to high water, but I did fnid a nice new-to-me twin falls on a side drainiage.

Journal Archives - previous months

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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