Visiting Little Rock: A Race is Run

“There’s a secret to seeking isolation. Solitary views atop a mountain peak or cresting wave or sloping dune are rarely lonely. Instead, they seem only exceptional to me.” – Old Sean

Self-Quarentine

I’m officially resettled back in the United States, living that ridiculous life of quarantine.  I awaken on a sofa.  I write on the sofa.  Sometimes, I do my workouts on the floor next to my sofa.  On good days, I call friends and lament the situation from my sofa to their sofas.  I await the inevitable government mandates demanding people stay inside around problem locations.

Coronavirus has reshaped my life trajectory for this year.  Initially, I managed to get out of China for vacation just before the coronavirus began its initial spread and long before it reached my province.  I traveled Japan as the news unraveled and China gradually started to panic and shut down. 

Finally, I was illegally let go from my job and fled to Vietnam to begin arbitration.  After a month there, I managed to return to the United States where I self-isolated by hiking the Ouachita Trail outside of Little Rock.

A Quiet Return

Little Rock was a unique experience.  The area, much like the rest of the US, is gradually closing down in a confused stoppage of misinformation and conflicting reports.  Certain shelves at the market are completely cleared out while others retain a scattering of goods.  Public transport is regarded with suspicion and often canceled.  I took a couple of rather quiet trips around town, mostly on foot.

My highlight splurge was a visit to McDonalds for a Shamrock Shake (because it’s the season and there are some things I miss).  Little Rock also has a very nice place known as the River Market.  This has a pretty great range of shops and activities looking over the Arkansas River. 

I visited it once before years ago during a road trip with my brother.  During that time, the area had a lively populace and fresh breeze, all enjoying life with mundane abandon. 

However, this visit was clouded with a miasma of grim expectational. There were people cutting wide berths from one another, basically moving to opposite sides of the road when paths crossed.

Despite the strange atmosphere, there are a number of things to see around Little Rock. Junction Bridge is worth a walk and a visit.  The parks around that area are really nice and the William E. “Bill” Clark Presidential Park Wetlands is worth an additional stroll, even this time of year when the flora isn’t so green. 

However, ultimately, I stayed fairly distant from everyone.

The real local tourism gem pulled straight from Atlas Obscura is the Flying Fish Restaurant.  Aside from offering a pretty decent gumbo, the walls are covered in talking fish plaques that sing show tunes when you press them.  Very American.

Journey Prep

The majority of my time in Little Rock was spent working on collecting gear for my hiking trip.  Most of my supplies were mailed ahead so I could pick them up from an Amazon hub. With isolation in mind, I used curbside pickup to avoid interacting with others.

But trekking food had to be hunted down in shopping centers I could reach on foot. Again, curbside pickup. 

Since I’ve just returned from Asia, I’m operating with a extra layer of paranoia. While I’m not terribly concerned about getting sick myself (I have a robust immune system), I’d never be able to forgive myself if I passed on an illness.

As such, to help self-isolate, I told myself I would hike the Ouachita Trail.  I used curbside pickups and self-check-ins at hotels to stay far from others. Within a pair of days, I was fully-prepped to begin hiking.

Into the Hills

Walking out of Little Rock nearly took the full day all on its own.  The bus systems didn’t run on Sunday and I ended up hoofing it.  In the spirit of further isolating, this was probably for the best.

It was raining heavily the entire walk and by the time I made it to the trail head, I was fairly winded, but doing alright.  Setting up camp for the first time in the twilight went smoothly (I had practiced quite a bit in my hotel room, familiarizing myself with my recently-purchased gear).

The Ouachita Trail is managed by FoOT (Friends of the Ouachita Trail) and they do a stellar job of keeping it up.  The trail is marked with extreme clarity, using blue paint on trees, rocks and even road crossings.  Getting lost on the trail itself would take an impressive lack of attention.

That being said, the trail itself is quite challenging, but not from a technical standpoint.  There are no tricky climbs, painfully steep mountains, towering vistas or daunting cliff edges.  A novice hiker could tackle the trail without too much trouble.

However, the terrain itself is staggered and slow.  Fist-sized stones are scattered across the ground and footing is a somewhat uncertain prospect.  There are very few flat patches of ground and the majority of the trail contains gradual inclines or declines.  During rainstorms, miniature valleys create numerous creeks, some of which are challenging to pass.

As such, virtually anyone could hike at least a segment of the Ouachita Trail, but not very quickly.

A Trace of Storms

Unfortunately for me, my hike was during early spring and I was doused in water the entire time.  My life outside was one of storms.

It rained when I woke up.  It drizzled as I walked.  Clouds were constantly overhead and by the third day, everything I owned smelled like mildew.  The only times I was semi-dry was during the nights, when I slung out my camping hammock and rainfly.

Nights were fairly cold, but easy to sleep in once I was wrapped in my quilt and perched atop my sleeping pad.  The best thing about this trip was the ease at which I got potable water.  I usually just put a pebble on my rainfly, waited for water to pool and then used a finger on the edge of my canvas to make a faucet to drink.

All of my gear was waterproofed as much as possible, with covers for my backpack. My food was religiously stored inside giant Ziploc bags with air squeezed out. 

Additionally, a heavy-duty poncho was draped over my body and an umbrella was a constant companion above my head.  This gave me a turtle-like defense from downpours, allowing the gap between my back and backpack to remain perpetually dry.

A Reality of Rain

But when water falls from the sky day-in and day-out, there’s no way to avoid it forever.  Even when the drizzles slackened, trees continued to drip on my head until another patch of clouds looped through.

As the days wore on, moisture accumulated and even trying to dry my clothes with body heat on sheltered nights yielded only bad smells. 

My boots, thankfully, were waterproof and outlasted everything else, but the ground was slippery and half of my time walking was spent following a stream that had adopted a trail route as the fastest way downhill.

I had planned on hiking for my entire self-isolation, meaning twelve more days of striding.

But by day six, I was flummoxed.  A brutal thunderstorm had struck during my precious daylight hours, bringing my progress to a bare crawl.  The forest, with widely spaced trees and scant leaf-cover did nothing to halt the downpour. 

The ground betrayed me too. My feet were almost half-submerged, despite being just below the crest of a mountain.  Despite my poncho, umbrella and backpack rain cover, I could barely take a stride without leaving a muddy crater wherever my foot stumbled.

Once the interior of my boots were wet, I knew I was finished.  I was trudging glumly, fighting my way downhill as much as uphill. Worse yet, another dark swell was haunting the horizon, promising further rain.

Every journey teaches me something.  This one taught me that I’m a wimp.

Soggy Surrender

With my gear worn down by the constant weather, I decided to tap out.

Sighting dramatically, changed trajectory, taking a adjacent trailhead away from my planned route. For the next day, I squelched through the land, eyeballing my printed-out topographical map as I cut towards modern roads.

When I finally, finally made it to Highway 7, I veered towards the tiny town of Hollis. From here, I did my best to hitch a ride.  It took a couple of hours of walking and waving, but I was specifically looking for a pickup truck en route back to Little Rock.

By this point, I smelled ungodly.  I was dripping and squishing with every step and my last dry pair of socks had already soaked up what water they could.  My biggest concern while walking was the live fish potentially living between my toes.  I wasn’t in a state where I could sit inside the cab of a vehicle without ruining the upholstery.

So when a blue pickup truck eventually trundled down the road and stopped despite the mild rainfall, I loaded into the bed and knocked on the back window twice. 

Within two hours, I was still bent against the outdoors rain but back in Little Rock.  At a traffic light, I disembarked, yelled thank you over the rainfall and slouched over to a McDonalds.  Plucking my cell phone from a Ziploc bag, I borrowed their Wi-Fi and found myself a nearby hotel.

Then it was back to walking.

Secondary Isolation

When I finally reached my hotel, my next three days were spent drying out and washing my gear.  Additionally, I was hit with all the messages I had missed while on the road. 

There was very little to do or see while I was in my new self-imposed isolation hotel. I basically just ate the rest of my camping supplies, continued brushing down my gear and watching cable television.  Which is kind of bad. I haven’t had cable TV in almost half a decade. Was it always this bland?

Regardless, with my “quarentine time” almost done, my plan was to head back to Dallas after a few more days of rest.  But with potential road shutdowns, I decided to head back a little early.  The last thing I wanted to do was get stranded somewhere expensive.

So instead of finishing my last days of hotel stays, I hair-dryered the last fibers of my hiking gear and repacked everything.

Back to DFW

The following morning, I rented a car from Enterprise.  The drive was swift, and the roads were fairly empty, allowing me to zone out on cruise control for the entire ride. 

Annoyingly, the car had an automatic warning feature that blipped and beeped once a driver gets too close to the road’s lines.  Doing so a few times in ten minutes causes a judgmental little cappuccino picture to pop up on the electronic dashboard. Below it, bold text appears. “Consider taking a break.”

Fortunately however, I didn’t crash. 

I managed to make it to Dallas where I met a couple friends, people who I’d sent some supplies to. They’d been safeguarding the gear I couldn’t afford to carry on my hike, such as my laptop. 

Afterwards, I dropped off the rental car and moved into another friend’s empty guestroom, which fortunately boasts a backyard. And access to a lake and empty walking trail.  Which is as good a place as any to weather this lockdown season.

Here I’ll stay.  There’s nowhere else to go, no jobs are really hiring and the world will remain shuttered for the foreseeable future.

My race is run, and here I am.  I’ve found a place to live and I can continue my online work for as long as need be.

Welcome home to the States, eh?

Best regards and excellent trails,

Old Sean

Written March 30th 2020

Read more about visiting Little Rock and seeing the world by visiting Leftfade Trails Destination Info.

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