Welcome to Arkansas

My duties at work officially ended on August 10, a Friday, and I didn't need to be back to Columbia until the following Thursday. So I thought I'd go on a little adventure.

It was a last minute trip, and I couldn't get any takers, so I decided to head off on a solo trip.

Requirements: It had to be cheap, it had to be outdoorsy and it had to be some place I'd never been before. I settled on the Ozark National Forest in northern Arkansas, by the Buffalo National River.

I meant to leave Friday after my work shift, but it was such a busy week I had done no planning, let alone packing. So I left Saturday afternoon after running some errands and throwing together my gear. The trip down was long but no problem. It was a nice drive, as I stayed on slower highways. I saw some cool terrain, and arrived in Arkansas close to sun-down.

The problem was, I still hadn't really done any planning, except for looking at the atlas and printing some crap off the Internet about the area.

When I arrived I had no idea where the campsite was. One wrong turn led me down a long and rocky forest service road that seemingly would never end. It turned into some crazy night-time offroading, so it could have been worse.

I returned to the main road and stopped at the first campsite I could find. I took one of the last sites -- right next to the bathhouse -- so my introduction to the Arkansas woods was punctuated by the slamming of doors and flushing of toilets while I tried to sleep. The same sounds woke me up early the next morning. A campsite neighbor stopped by and we talked about tents and bears and Alaska and then I hit the road, in search of a ranger station for a good map.

I found the most secluded campground, right on the river, at Rush Landing. Rush is an old zinc-mining ghost town. On my way to the site I stopped to poke my nose around some of the dilapidated buildings and take some pictures. There was the sound of plodding feet before a rather large blue-grey wildcat jumped out of a building and lunged into the surrounding brush about 15 yards from where I stood.

It was a strange-looking cat -- much bigger than any domesticated cat, but not a bobcat or a mountain lion. It was much too far away from any kind of civilization to be a domesticated cat anyway. I have no idea what it was.

I made it to the campsite without becoming Kibbles 'n' Bits and met my neighbor. Bob and his girlfriend were getting ready to leave, so I'd finally be all alone. But before they left Bob stopped by to shoot the shit a bit and share some of my beef jerky. He had been pulled over by the Park Service the day before. They searched his car and traded him a $250 ticket for a joint.

I related to Bob the story of the wildcat, without telling him exactly where it was. He knew the cat -- "Did it jump out of the second building on the left, if you were going back that way," he asked. Why indeed it did. He described the cat in perfect detail and said he thought it looked some kind of oversized Persian. I, however, can assure you it looked nothing like this:

After they left I took a nap, read for a bit and cooked a backpacker's dinner with my new alcohol stove (which ROCKS). Carrie gave it to me for my birthday. The sun went down a bit and I hiked up the river a ways to watch all the animals come down to the water for dinner.

If you look carefully here, you can see a Great Blue Heron at the water's edge, and three deer wading across the river.


I'd say I nearly stepped on a cottonmouth,
but isn't that what everyone always says when they spot a snake?

Night came and as I was using my headlamp to do a couple things before hopping into the tent, many many pairs of eyes popped up around the campsite.

Then I heard a snarl beyond the range of my headlamp. Great. The wildcat has come to eat me, and he's brought his friends. But I'm exhausted and sweaty and muddy so I tried not to think about it. I went to sleep on top of my bed roll with my right hand on my knife and my left hand cradling my headlamp over my crotch.

I had a solid hour-long nap before the smell of cat piss and life-or-death snarling awoke me.

I lifted the rainfly and shined my light out toward the noises. Oh good. No wildcats. Just 15-20 monster raccoons. I do not exaggerate with these numbers. I was completely surrounded by these demon creatures.

The campsite was apparently in the four corners of the raccoon territories, as various raccoon factions fought tooth and claw within 15 feet of my tent all night, vying for the rights to my food. They sounded like big cats fighting, and reek of cat piss. I could smell them getting close to the tent before I even heard them.

Apparently a few of the raccoons from the more clever faction had learned how to climb the slippery metal poles that were designed to protect your food.

Then I lost my mind. I flew out of the tent, and armed with a big stick -- lets call it the Stick of Justice -- I unleashed all I could at the raccoons, trying to get them to go shoo.

I whacked one off the pole with a homerun-worthy swing, sending said raccoon and the end of the Stick of Justice flying. The tip of the Stick of Justice met another raccoon in the ribs with a well-placed throw. The single stone within a 50-yard radius came in handy. As did a log by the fire pit. Then the raccoons found my jeep, and were literally fighting in my back seat. The Stick of Justice responded accordingly. I realized that I had left a pack of high-energy Clif Bar-brand gummybear things under the seat, which were now eaten. So I was fighting raccoons hopped up on sports energy snacks. I felt like a gladiator in the coliseum surrounded by lions.

In the end, the raccoons won. I finally crashed in my tent a little after 2 a.m. The sleep itself was a little nerve-wracking because they were still fighting outside my tent. Had the raccoons more effectively banded together to go on the offensive, my tent would offer little protection. In an effort to save weight and not sweat to death while sleeping I'd only brought the rain fly and footprint.

It seems my offensive stick-wielding had only prolonged the inevitable. I awoke to a chewed-threw tent bag now mostly empty of food. They had eaten my entire pack of pita bread, and eaten into my two backpacker's meals and beef jerky. They only thing they didn't chew into was my jar of peanut butter, which was so unappetizing at that point that I threw it away. I had planned to cross the river and go backpacking in the wilderness for a couple days, but now I had no food. I also overslept so it was already well on its way to reaching 100 degrees. So I nixed the backpacking portion of the trip and just played in the river until I was nearly starved and drove back to Columbia and back to civilization.

I think I'm going to have to get a bear canister for the next time I'm in an established campsite. I should have just put my food in the raccoon-proof trashcans. Or brought a pellet gun. At least then I could have popped the little bastards from within the comfort of my tent. I keed, I keed...