Horseshoe Canyon Ranch

"The gods of the hills are not the gods of the valleys. The valleys raise corn but the Ozark hills produce extraordinary men and women. Their passing closes one of the most romantic and colorful chapters in the history of our country." Vance Randolph, The Ozarks: an American Survival of Primitive Society

The Boston Mountains slouch over the Ozark Plateau, creeping across northwest Arkansas like a tired old woman lost to an ancient war of time and erosion. Deep hollers like potmarks and creeks like wrinkles cover her aged face. As far as mountains go, she is humble in stature but her dense timber, deep hollers, and dark caves conceal mysteries that capture the imagination like a hex or a vision. Witches were said to have roamed the woods of Pulaski County "thicker than tick seeds," and Jesse James himself found refuge in the hills near Jasper, Arkansas. 

The people who live in Ozark country "were, until very recently, the most deliberately unprogressive people in the United States," wrote Vance Randolph who loved these hills enough to write their withering history in the early 1900s. Time has a way of hiding -- self-editing -- so Randolph not only wrote about Ozark dialect, folklore, and folk songs but also the witchcraft, violence, and bootlegging that was hidden in the hills. When asked on his deathbed, why he devoted himself to these stories, he replied "The stuff is like whiskey, you get fooling with it and it's difficult to stop."

Resistance to change was not only the chief characteristic of the Ozark people but also, until very recently, the land itself. While modernity encroached rural Appalachia in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries through the advent of logging railroads, the TVA, and a certain national park, the Ozarks remained on the other side of things. For a time, hidden from and unaffected by "progress."

Jamie cruising The Greatest Show on Earth

Time hides and time reveals. And over the course of millions of years, lazy old time reclaimed for itself large escarpments of sandstone that rise above the valleys. Climbers from all over come to pull on the bullet hard, orange and grey and black rock. And there's plenty of rock to go around. The greatest concentration of which lies in what is now a four-star dude ranch near Jasper, Arkansas named Horseshoe Canyon Ranch.

The ranch boasts hundreds of bolted lines, a plethora of enticing splitters, and the highest concentration of beautiful boulders in the state so whether you're clipping bolts, plugging gear, or stacking pads -- there's something for everyone. Beautiful rock, pleasant camping, luxurious cabins, and short approaches make the ranch a veritable playground for sandstone junkies. If you like the steep stuff, get your pump on at the Goat Cave; a beautiful and rarely visited crag with enough 5.12s to keep you busy, shade to help you send, and goat droppings to give a soft landing in the event of a ground fall.




While climbers are welcomed guests and treated with the highest level of southern hospitality, Horseshoe Canyon is first and foremost -- a ranch. Horses and goats and their canine protecters roam at will. They are, most likely, the happiest mammals between the Rockies and the Mississippi. It is not uncommon to fall asleep (or wake up) to the sound of galloping, grass munching, and neighing outside your tent. The ranch's nonhuman hosts make for a truly unique climbing experience and are hospitable enough, but a word of caution: free range animals will freely range into your unattended food. And goats really like bananas.

If you find yourself lucky enough to call the ranch home for a few days in the layover between spring and summer: climb in the morning shade until the heat overcomes your ability to grab the North 40's monster jugs, then drive back down the mountain and cool off in the Buffalo National River. Here you can float in its clear, blue water, deep water solo or jump off its limestone cliffs, or grab a bag of margarita in the adjacent Boone County and simply bask in the river.

May means cool nights for campfires and midday dips in the Buffalo River

Newton County, her mountains, and her people are still reminiscent of another time. Fewer people live in Jasper, Arkansas than sit in the pews of most churches in Nashville, Tennessee. Old men with canes and dip cups sit outside diners and talk to you about the weather. There is a definite "Mayberry-ishness." Get your fill at the Blue Mountain Deli with the tastiest sandwiches, pizzas, and breakfast omelets and made with the freshest ingredients. And then go into full on glutton mode with their made-from-scratch baked goods. We literally fought over the apple pie a la mode made from local Ozarkian apples. The town recognizes climbers pretty easily and, in our experience, are one of the most climber-friendly communities out there. When -- not if -- you go, don't spoil it.

Climbing at Horseshoe Canyon is like whiskey, you get to fooling with it and it's difficult to stop. 

the biggest jugs I've ever fallen from: Ride the Short Bus in the Goat Cave

#dirtbagswag whips 002: Eli and His Subaru

Many say it is the greatest public works project in history. Some say it was a military conspiracy to transport  nuclear missiles during the cold war. Some say it helped destroy small highway towns like those along Route 66 (re: Cars). Still others, hopeful romantics like myself, claim that the United States Interstate Highway System is a testament that the best parts of the human spirit are still alive.

When Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, he could not have anticipated the far reaching impact it would have. It's not perfect, but its 47,000 miles of highway are the physical manifestation of the human desire to go. To go where we haven't been before. To go to the places we love, the places we need. Driving is, for me, a sacred space where human spirit, deep thought, and the open road meet in an almost divine triune.

There is a stretch of Interstate 40 that runs 105 miles across Tennessee between Nashville and Crossville that holds a very special place in my heart. It is the quickest route to my favorite place in the world, the confluence of Clear Creek and the Obed River. And most of those trips have taken place riding shotgun in Elijah's 2004 Subaru Forester. In that liminal space between origin and destination, we've talked about our differing but deep appreciation for Quakerism, how Renaissance era humanism propelled French exploration, and asked why yogurt companies advertise almost exclusively to women. Over the course of two years, Elijah has become one of my closest friends and I owe much of that to Dwight D. Eisenhower and Japanese auto engineering.

They say there's more Subarus per capita in Boulder, Colorado than there are broken down RV's in the entire state of Alabama. And it's rumored that some Subaru dealerships give out free whey grass and coconut water enemas with every test drive. In 2010, a Subaru study showed that "lesbians are four more times likely to own a Subaru than their heterosexual counterparts." And in 2013, Subaru basically told the Super Bowl, "we're not a part of your system," and opted to buy ad time during Animal Planet's Puppy Bowl instead. When my roommate suggested buying one, his American-made car dealer father replied, "No son of mine will drive one of them hippie cars." And oh, by the way, Subaru's signature, symmetrical All Wheel Drive drivetrain is more rugged than John Wayne and Ronald Reagan combined. 

When it comes to Subaru's consumer demographics, Elijah is the standard -- the poster child. He is an Ellen Degeneres doppleganger, a coffee fanatic, a "grow local, eat local" enthusiast, and a pretty darn good climber too. And he has the bumper stickers to prove it. Subaru, if you're reading this and looking for a commercial or advertisement model, Eli won't answer his phone but I know where he lives and he accepts payment in Coronas and burritos. 

the quintessential

Eli may be the embodiment of Subaru's stereotypical marketing demographics, but he is also the embodiment of the human spirit and desire to go. From the northeast to Southern California, from Okinawa to Nashville, he's lived in more places than I've traveled to and he has traveled to even more. He's seen covetous amounts of the world over and yet no place enraptures his soul like the burnt orange desert landscapes of Moab, Utah and the hidden strips of sandstone along the Obed River. To hear him talk about these places is to listen to Edward Abbey or Wendell Berry or even Jefferson himself. Elijah's desire to go has never triumphed his love of place and his 2004 Subaru Forester is the mode in which those best parts of the human spirit stay alive.

Whip Specs

make and model: 2004 Subaru Forester X
under the hood: 2.5 liters and 173 wild ponies
dirtbag mods: Eli installed curtains, a bed platform, and cooking apparatus for his cross country road trip around Edward Abbey's American West, but now just prefers to lay the seats down and roll up in a comforter with his dog Rocky. It also has a CD player.

Elijah and I graduated this May and we just had our last climbing trip at the Obed for a while. Life -- the human necessity to go -- means I'm leaving for guiding work in Colorado and he'll be God only knows where (possibly Antarctica) when I get back. The good news about the interstate is it is a never ending thing. It is as unending as the human necessity and desire to move and to go. And just as the interstate's 47,000 miles merge and intersect, so does the limitless movement of our lives.

Here's to Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Father of the Interstate Highway System.

Here's to Subaru Foresters marketed almost exclusively to outdoor enthusiasts, lesbians, and outdoor enthusiast lesbian look-a-likes.

Here's to Elijah, a travel companion, study buddy, lunch date, margarita enthusiast, belay partner, and friend.

The Dixie Cragger's Summer 2014 Mixtape

(via google)

The Southern Agrarian, Robert Penn Warren once said, "Storytelling and copulation are the two chief forms of amusement in the South. They're inexpensive and easy to procure." If you grew up in the Deep South, that much is clear. What's fascinating is the intrinsic link between the former (possibly the latter as well) and southern music.

The counter-narratives of black spirituals subverted white racist sensibilities with hope.

In Appalachia, fiddle and banjo attempted to preserve the rural way of life against the threat of industrialism and recency.

Bluesmen and blueswomen kept catastrophe and celebration in balance amongst the systemic oppression of Jim Crow America.

Lynyrd Skynyrd (in its original conception, at least) attempted to tell another side of southern experience beyond its negative national perception: good, smart, artistic people dwell in these parts.

The North Carolinian poet James Applewhite wrote, "The South has been notorious for mythologizing itself." These songs both celebrate the South and lament her cultural contradictions. These songs are the soul of the South laid to bare. Folk, country, gospel, hip-hop, bluegrass, rock n' roll - it's all there. Whether you're driving down dusty roads, chasing the shade at the crag, sitting on your front porch rocking chair, or finding yourself out there in the land where they don't hold doors for folks: this one's for you.

As for me, I've headed out west for the summer again. And as always, it is a bittersweet departure; I'm stoked for the big mountains and high country but leaving your friends and kin is always a major bummer. While driving across those great midwestern plains, you better believe I'll be screaming along with Dallas Taylor on the opening track, "we can't help but be blessed, when you've been raised by God's finest." 

CAUTION: mixtape may cause you to slide across the hood of your car and crawl in through the window like Bo and Luke Duke. Listen to it on Spotify HERE.

1. Maylene and the Sons of Disaster - Raised by the Tide (II)
2. Possessed by Paul James - Sweet But Bitter Life (There Will be Nights When I'm Lonely)
3. Rising Appalachia - Cumberland Gap (Filthy Dirty South)
4. Hurray for the Riff Raff - Blue Ridge Mountain (Small Town Heroes)
5. Doc Watson - Omie Wise (The Definitive)
6. The Osborne Brothers - Georgia Mules and Country Boys (From Rocky Top to Muddy Bottom)
7.  Ralph Stanley - Dixieland (Old Time Pickin': A Clawhammer Banjo Collection)
8. Mandolin Orange - There Was a Time (This Side of Jordan)
9. The Drive By Truckers - Three Great Alabama Icons (The Southern Rock Opera)
10. Carl Perkins - Tennessee (Sun King Collection)
11. The Drive-By Truckers - Carl Perkins' Cadillac (The Dirty South) 
12. The Band - The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down (The Band)
13. The Golden Gate Quartet - Go Down, Moses (Negro Spirituals)
14. The Sacred Harp Singers - The Trumpet (The Fiancee)
15. Nappy Roots - Awnaw (Watermelon, Chicken, and Gritz)
16. Carolina Chocolate Drops - Cornbread and Butter Beans (Genuine Negro Jig)
17. Muddy Waters - Deep Down in Florida (Hard Again)
18. Killer Mike - God in the Building (I Pledge Allegiance to the Grind)
19. Mavis Staples - Down in Mississippi (We'll Never Turn Back)
20. Austin Lucas - Alone in Memphis (Stay Reckless)
21. The Showdown - Breath of the Swamp (Temptation Come My Way)

Listen to it on Spotify HERE.