Try a moody river float for a sensational journey

Where the Buffalo and horses roam

By George Oxford Miller
Special to The Commercial Appeal
March 23, 2003

Sometimes the Buffalo River rages, other times it whimpers.

If it were a person, you would say it needed Prozac. But today, it flows along even tempered and with a happy gurgle. It's spring, the trees are cloaked with fresh-leaf green, and the blue sky promises a perfect weekend for an outing on the premier floating stream in the Ozark Mountains.

Whether for a day or a week, a canoe trip on the Buffalo National River is one of the signature experiences of the Ozarks. The river cuts through the heart of the midcontinental wilderness, tracing a path through both nature and history.

We rent a canoe from the Buffalo Outdoor Center, one of several canoe liveries, and put in at Ponca for a two-day float along a particularly scenic section of the river. The bottom land forest along the riparian corridor supports one of the finest examples of hardwood forest remaining on the continent, and the richest bird life in the Ozarks. Some 23 species breed here, including a dozen warblers.

The scolding of a winter wren bids us bon voyage as we shove into the shallow current, and the butter-flash of an American goldfinch guides us downstream.

Fifteen minutes into the trip, we round the first loop in the river and float by the National Park Service's Steel Creek campground. I do a double-take and snap my binoculars to my eyes.

Grazing in a grassy field, an elk raises its head and watches us float silently past. The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission reintroduced elk into the park, and now a herd of 300 to 400 is well established. The agency also released 1,400 ruffed grouses into various parts of their former range, including the Ponca area.

One goal for our float is to explore Hemmed-In Hollow, whose claim to fame is a waterfall that plummets to the base of a box canyon. The 177-foot sheer drop makes it the highest waterfall between the Appalachians and the Rockies - that is, when it's flowing.

I've tried unsuccessfully to reach it twice before; once the Buffalo flooded, once it dried up.

After several hours of floating, we round a bend and see Big Bluff towering 500 feet above the river. The sheer cliff sweeps around a horseshoe bend dwarfing canoes and affording an unhampered view of thousands of acres of unblemished wilderness for those who hike to its crest. A bald eagle, a winter migrant still visiting one of the nearby lakes, drops off its perch and soars effortlessly overhead.

Unlike ranges such as the Rockies thrust up by colliding continental plates, the Ozarks originated as a flat plateau. Over the eons the Buffalo carved its meandering river channel across the even terrain. Then 300 million years ago, uplifting began doming up the region. With its meander established, the Buffalo sliced deeper into its bedrock channel forming a continuous series of hairpin bends with towering cliffs. In 1972, the 125-mile-long river was designated the nation's first National River.

We finally reach the box canyon harboring Hemmed-In Hollow and tie up the canoe.

After fording several creeks and trudging up a steep trail, we reach a ribbon of lacy water spilling through a notch in the horseshoe rim of the cliff. The wind whips the stream back and forth across the rusty, calcite-stained cliff and wafts the spray down the narrow canyon. The play of the waterfall in the wind is like an errant pendulum counting time with random swings.

After spending the day exploring the hollows dissected by crystalline creeks that plunge from the ridge tops, we camp near Granny Henderson's house. Eva Barnes Henderson hasn't sat on her front porch in four decades, but you can still enjoy the view she loved for 70 years. When Congress created the Buffalo National River, the 83-year-old woman lived alone with her dog Bobby in a clearing above Jim's Bluff, a popular pull-out for canoers.

It's easy to imagine her rocking back and forth after a long day and watching the setting sun paint the landscape with the warm tints of evening light. The view encompasses an outcropping of rocky bluffs that rim a great semicircle of the Buffalo River valley.

Unbroken forests cover the slopes. According to the topo map, the ridge rises about 1,300 feet above the river and Granny's picturesque home spot.

Today, the soft greens of spring paint the landscape with subtle hues and tones. Shadows and sunlight dapple the mountains, and the river whispers in the distance. Life doesn't get much more peaceful than this.

Unless you have to take care of a yard full of chickens, cows and hogs and tend the garden and orchard and house and haul water a quarter-mile up a steep hill.

A sign on the house quotes Granny Henderson saying she spent a full day doing "chores, chores, chores, and more chores." Her photograph shows a worn, wrinkled, but contented expression as she stands beside a blooming rose bush in her yard. Apparently, she drew sustenance from beauty, both natural and cultivated.

Newspapers plastered in an upstairs room date from the 1920s, so she had accumulated more than half a century of personal history in these woods by the time the Buffalo National River was established.

Peach and apple trees still grow in Granny's front yard. Her house, elegantly constructed with milled lumber, is still watertight and sound, but with no one to keep it up, the barn has collapsed.

Nature slowly reclaims its own.

The next day we complete the float to the take-out at Erbie for a total of 17 river-miles. Before leaving, we hike back to Goat Bluff, another ridge line high above the river, for a bird's-eye view of where we've been. The Buffalo meanders through the narrow valley and disappears around a horseshoe bend. With 120 miles of floatable river between its headwaters and its confluence with the White River, the Buffalo has given us only a glimpse of its hidden wonders.