Photographs courtesy Arkansas State Parks; Bridge photograph by John Traverse.
Activities at Village Creek State Park include horseback riding along the trails, a professionally designed 27-hole golf course, or fishing and relaxing on Lake Austell or Lake Dunn. The author (above) obviously enjoyed the park’s Swinging Bridge — still in use today — at age 6.
We’ve taken a wrong turn. This being 2017, “taken a wrong turn” means “made an inferior selection among the route options proffered by my iPhone.” We dutifully obliged when we were directed to exit the interstate and navigate a series of county roads — 2.9 miles here, 1.2 miles there — not knowing that these county roads would be one-lane affairs, big throwing rocks scattered loosely over russet dirt that spins around the car like dry red surf.
Don’t trust your phone no matter how strongly it suggests you take those county roads the last leg of the drive to Village Creek State Park. Or, if you do, prepare to proceed very, very slowly, reassuring your rattled dog in the backseat, all the while wondering if a rock has punctured some essential component of your car’s engine.
Take I-55, instead, to U.S. Highway 64, and you’ll land at the entrance to Village Creek. From downtown Memphis, you’ll drive about an hour.
On the November morning that we — “we” being my German-shepherd mix, Lily Bear, and I — packed our water bottles and our dried figs (me) and our dried turkey bark (Lily) and lit upon the trails, it was hiking weather: clear and silver-cool and bright, with just enough wind to set flocks of amber leaves gliding earthward.
By land area, Village Creek is the second-largest state park in Arkansas. The park’s nearly 7,000 acres straddle Crowley’s Ridge — an anomalous land formation jutting from the flood plain of the Mississippi and stretching about 150 miles, from southeastern Missouri to Helena, Arkansas.
Part of the anomaly of the Ridge is its richness — the forest in Village Creek teems with hardwoods (oak and hickory, beech and sugar maple, coffe tree and tuliptree), and in the fall, the leaves seem gilded, or like sheets of hard caramel, shattered.
Commissioned in 1967 and opened in 1976, the park was relatively young in the early 1990's when I first visited as a child with my parents and assorted family dogs.
There’s a photo of me in summer; I look about 6, in rainbow tie-dyed T-shirt, flying across the swinging bridge. Another photo, taken on that same trip, shows us walking along the Military Road Trail. The trees are bare, and the ground looks cold. We hiked longer than we had planned that day, I remember: My lungs were open and cold, and back home, the steaming Brunswick stew was implausibly ambrosial.
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The Military Road Trail is one of the most distinctive features of the park. The photo at left shows the passage today, worn by thousands of feet, hooves, and wagon wheels. In the second image, Cynthia Marshall and her daughter (the author), accompanied by their German shepherd, walk along the same area in 1990.
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Although the park as we know it has been on the map for only four decades, its trails are much older. The most memorable hiking at Village Creek is along the Military Road Trail.
Before this sunken trail was used in the Civil War, it was, after being completed in 1829, a significant section of the Trail of Tears: the Memphis to Little Rock Road. This trail expedited the federally sanctioned, forcible removal of native people from their land. Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Cherokee people were made to travel this road, away from land they had occupied for centuries. Many did not survive. Today, the trail seems still pressed by their footprints.
Sections of the Military Road Trail are carved deep into the surface of the earth, as though some ghost river once flowed there. The trail is wide here — 15, maybe 20 feet across — hemmed by the earth’s flesh, and by the roots of the trees that perch along the edges of the groove. It’s another 20 feet up from the trail to the ground level on either side.
As you tramp along the trail, rustling through dry leaves, do scramble up the sides from time to time. You’ll find you’ve climbed high enough to see the undulations of the land beneath the forest, and Lake Austell close by. You’ll stand there, at the top of the edge of the trail, and you’ll stare out through tree branches, and for a moment, you’ll find that the clamors of 2017 have gone mute. And you’ll feel ancient in this quietness. And in this ancientness, you will feel whole.
To reach the Military Road Trail, you’ll have started at the Visitor Center, then climbed a fairly steep ridge — there are wooden steps to help navigate the sharper inclines — on the Lake Austell Trail. After the climb, you’ll emerge by the lake, an 85-acre fishing spot with beach areas along the perimeter.
Lake Austell, as it happens, was home to the fifth-largest bass ever caught in Arkansas. Lake Dunn, also at Village Creek, can claim the largest bass ever caught in the state, a bucketmouth bass weighing 16 pounds, 5 ounces.
That record has been tarnished, sadly, by the fact that the fisherman was without a valid fishing license at the time he hooked the bucketmouth. It was reported that “wildlife officers seized the fish as evidence.”
Let this be a lesson to you. If you lack the motivation to obtain a fishing license, the water will not dry up before you. There are pedal boats to be rented, in summer, and a wading area through which to splash.
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Photographs courtesy Arkansas State Parks
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Should a person be so inclined,she could see Village Creek from the back of a horse. Twenty-five miles of trails, winding along Crowley’s Ridge, are open for horseback riding, and the park offers a camping area tailored for those traveling with horse trailers. With amenities like wash bays and ceiling fans in the stables, a horse might find its lodgings rather more posh than the camping experiences of my youth.
Camping is available not only for horses, but for humans, too. Cabins, even, which can be reserved for weekend mini-breaks. But do check in advance, as there are only 10 cabins (each with its own fireplace, rumor has it).
And yes, it should be mentioned that there is a golf course — 27 holes — at Village Creek. Candidly, mentioning its existence is really the extent of what I can tell you about the golf course. The only reason I’ve ever tolerated a round of golf is the walking, and there is ample walking on the trails without any interruptions to whack at things with sticks. More my style to select a perfect stick in the woods, for a jaunty addition to my stride. But if you are someone who is motivated by golf, I have heard from a friend who knows his golf courses that this one is “truly beautiful.”
But back to the trails. After Lily and I crossed the dam on Lake Austell’s southeastern tip, near the boat ramp — where we (well, I) traded waves with a few fellows with fishing gear — we saw not one person for several miles. Not one.
I hesitate to tell you this, because it was so deliciously peaceful, walking those woods without any interruption save the occasional distant boat motor. How different an experience it would be if that sunken trail were filled with people, with their children and their chatter. The woods are crowded already with the faint, ancient murmurs.
Please, forget everything you’ve read about Village Creek. Stay home. An hour is far too long to drive. What use do you have for natural beauty, for the deep mysterious smells of the forest? What possible benefit might you gain from a day’s respite from your life’s particular variety of controlled chaos?
And there’s no joy at all to be had in the swinging bridge you’ll find when you emerge from the earthen half-tunnel of the Military Road Trail. You’ll know you have arrived at the swinging bridge because, first, you’ll see it suspended over a creek, and second, you’ll observe that it is helpfully signposted: “SWINGING BRIDGE.”
The swinging bridge isn’t particularly long — perhaps 40 feet? — so repeated crossings are strongly encouraged. Necessary, even. Lily and I sprung across it once, back again, and then thrice more, laughing. In fact, I challenge you not to grin while you are bounding and bouncing across.
If you hike the Military Road Trail as a loop, you’ll cross the dam again on your way back to your car. Boots scuffed with mud, the dog panting — a good moment to stop for water, and to summon a flash of energy back into pleasantly tired legs. You’ll need to get over the ridge again.
Lily and I ambled back over the dam, our attention seized briefly by a flash of linen-white moth flitting just ahead, teasing her just at eye-level. Reentering the woods for the final scramble, we came across a tree whose every inch of bark is scarred by carved initials — NS, JR, BI ⁄ AA. Whispers.
Back at the Visitor Center, the world begins to shuffle back into its 2017 form. Our car emerges from behind a boat trailer. My keys emerge from a backpack. Lily’s fur is lightened by dry-leaf dust; she’ll need a bath tomorrow. We navigate out of the parking lot, and onto the road. Take a right out of the parking lot; before long, you’ll see a sign for Highway 64, and be on your way home.
Village Creek State Park
201 County Road 754
Information: 870-238-9406
Cabin Rental: 877-879-2741
arkansasstateparks.com/villagecreek
Anna Traverse is the communications specialist for New Memphis.
