Our route from Fort Smith towards Little Rock would follow the Arkansas River valley, providing an unusually flat path through an exceptionally hilly area. Long ago French explorers had penetrated the Ozarks via the Arkansas, trading with the natives whose footpaths followed the river. Old way meets new, new way replaces old. Those not in line with the new way do not survive. The pattern was set from centuries past.

The white settlers became more numerous and the boats larger. Homesteads were erected, and communities emerged. Riverboats crawled the river and the towns where it docked thrived. For a brief while the Butterfield Stage Coach ran down up the Arkansas River Valley on it’s way across the country to California. Next the railroad was built through the valley, breathing life into countless whistle-stop towns and depot cities along its path. The rail lines were the arteries of commerce for decades, and cities bypassed by the railroad languished.

Later, the era of the automobile arrived. A highway was built, Route 64, and towns along it thrived in the new fashion, providing service stations and cafes to the cars and trucks rolling down main street. Finally, the interstate came, vacuuming traffic and commerce away from the old highway and railroad. Towns with an exit ramp evolved and survived, taking the flashy clothes of the new age: truck stops, fast food, and Motel 6.

Towns not along the superhighway struggled, still wearing the old garb of a two-story main street and Patsy’s Diner. Their way is not fast enough, not new enough, not uniform enough for the zooming crowds of the interstate. “Give me the same tank of gas, the same can of coke, and the same bag of fries I had six hours ago in wherever that was, and I’ll be on my way.”

This leg of our journey, Laura and I followed a federal highway that braided with a railroad and an interstate along the north bank of the Arkansas all the way to Little Rock. At the nodes where old 64 and I-40 crossed, we passed through a 2007 city, with shining BP stations and fast food aplenty. In the loops away from the interstate, we traveled through Arkansas half a century ago, eating in mom & pop diners, waving at people rocking away the day on their front porch, passing dozens of flea markets and hundreds of homes whose accumulations of worthless oddities had not yet reached official flea market status.

Our first day out of Van Buren, we stopped mid-day at a park across from a bluff on the Mulberry River. We read and rested for a while, took naps on the picnic tables, then headed down to the water for a swim. The water was like chocolate milk, but it felt good to swim and escape the heat for a while. On our way out, we met a husky older fellow in a black western-style shirt, black denim jeans, and black leather boots with silver spurs sitting and staring absentmindedly at the river. He spun us the tale of a rough and lonely life: “Judge put me in the military when I was young…when I got out of the military (well, actually, they put me out)…I grew up all over, but my wife grew up here [Mulberry]…Spent 32 years in a truck; now I live alone in a four bedroom place up the road…got no kin folk, but you gotta live somewhere.”

His spoken autobiography was certainly not a cheery one, yet he didn’t speak with any bitterness. Perhaps the years of loneliness had softened him towards others. As we talked, an older gentleman walked past in a well-worn wetsuit top and faded swimming trunks. His face was set with a single-minded purpose: to do his daily backstroke in the river. As he slowly disappeared upstream, the man in black piped up, “I used to swim in that river, but mostly fish now. I’d never go near that bridge; there was a rattlesnake that swum across ever’ afternoon at the same time.”

“Rattlesnakes swim?” Laura asked, a new arena being added to her fear of snakes.

“Gotta get across somehow…Used to think the only good snake was a dead snake. Now I think they’re here for a reason, just like us.” On that note, we left him to his thoughts and were on our way to live out our reason for being at the moment: to experience Arkansas by listening to stories like his.

Passing through Ozark, we noticed a self-conscious effort to embrace the Arkansas stereotype: there was a Hillbilly Quick Stop, a Hillbilly Inn, and a Hillbilly Realty. Usually, a place that is self-proclaimedly parochial isn’t, but in this case there may have been some truth to their self-image: we passed by two used car lots where the only customers were inspecting the tractors for sale on the lot.

The countryside now was a rolling bucolic scene, with hay fields interspersed with long chicken barns. If the signs above the mailboxes were to be believed, everyone’s name here seemed to be Tyson. The cut hay smelled wonderful; the chicken trucks smelled otherwise.

We had our first flat tire that day along US 64. The entire process of removing gear, removing wheel, removing tire, finding puncture, patching puncture, replacing tube, replacing tire, replacing wheel, and replacing gear took about 30 minutes. In that time, surely no less than 100 vehicles passed us, and the neighbors across the street also arrived home. Though we did not require or seek it, it was surprising to us that no one had stopped to offer assistance. Apparently growing up in Oklahoma had skewed our perspective of what is normal courtesy.

Despite a hot and tiring day, we pushed on, having heard that Arkansas’ wine country lay ahead. We had visions of California’s Napa Valley or Germany’s Rhine; we got Altus. At first glance, it was a charming small town boasting two wineries and a small town park surrounded by quaint businesses. But upon closer inspection, the park was a converted RV ground (electrical boxes still sprouted in rows across the lawn), and almost all the businesses turned out to be alcohol-centric. The old train depot was a liquor store, as was the building across the street. Caddy corner was a bar, and nearby was another. Two “restaurants” were also on the square, but after walking into one, we realized that they were actually bars that served food.

Tempted by the city park, we asked a passerby where the police station was located so we could ask permission to camp. “We had one cop, but he left,” she said. Hmmm. After eating our dinner and observing the makeup of the locals passing by, we no longer felt tempted by the park.

We pressed on, disappointed and tired. Laura in particular was disheartened by the unwelcoming interactions we’d had with the locals and the uncertainty of where we would stay that evening as the sun dropped lower and lower.

A few miles later, our prayers were answered: a perfect place to wild camp. To the north of the road stood a unfenced fallow field, tall with grass and wildflowers. A fifty yard long line of cedar trees provided a dense natural fence between us and the road, and we pitched our tent just behind it. The sunset and wildflowers were beautiful, providing hope that the rest of our time in Arkansas might be better.