Days with my father in Eden

Back on my MySpace blog, I wrote at length about my time in the wilderness. I go to a certain place outside of Van Buren called Lee Creek Reservoir every time I get a chance, and most of the time I'm with my father. He knows it best, as it is an area (now turned into a park area by the city of Fort Smith) in which he grew up as a small child. It's so typically Arkansan - creeks and rocky ledges abound, and if you get up early enough you can spot deer usually in the process of sprinting away from you.

I found a mountain biking enthusiast site which talks about this place. It's here:
http://trails.mtbr.com/cat/united-states-trails/trails-arkansas/trail/PRD_164622_4514crx.aspx

One of the posters back in January 2004 had the following to say. I don't know where he got his information, but he is correct about the grave stones - there are some out there that are clearly marked as Confederate soldiers:

"I do not ride a bike on this trail, but enjoy a nice little hike. The trail has many historical features, one being the site of a Civil War battle between Confederate Infantry and Union Horse Soldiers. The Southern Forces were retreating from Pea Ridge,Arkansas trying to get reinforcments to Van Buren, The Battlement walls are still visiable and some of the Grave sites are of Soldier of both sides, Buried where they fell. The trail is nice for a family to go on an outing and easy for the children to keep up. I recommend Spring or fall as the best time. Summer time is Hot and Humid and makes it difficult to enjoy..."
Anyway, I took my camera out there early last Saturday morning. We picked a couple of cups' worth of blackberries. I also got some interesting insects in the camera lens that were lurking about the blackberry patch. I even found a dung beetle scurrying around in a pile of deer shit, though he had dug himself too deeply by the time that I had been able to get my camera out. I didn't think we had those in this part of the world...

My father and I use this place to recharge our batteries. There's a magic about it that speaks to us every time we go out there. My dad said that his mother used to forbid him from going out there (but he went anyway), telling him that there were "demons at Crack-in-the-Rock". Crack-in-the-Rock is the old name for it long before the reservoir was built there, as there is a giant crevice at one part of the trail where you could easily fall in if you were careless.

This past Saturday when these pictures were taken, my father and I saw several deer. They were much too fast and much too surrounded by wilderness for me to have gotten them in the eye of my camera, however, because I still haven't figured out how to do manual focus (you'd have to be able to do that in order to focus in the distance) because the automatic focus keeps catching the trees in the foreground. One of the first deer we saw were a couple of fauns - one still possessing the little white flecks on their bodies, resembling Bambi...