Recently I spent part of a Friday afternoon at a professional conference in Little Rock. Since I don’t get to that part of the state often, I decided to make the most of the trip by spending several hours that evening browsing area bookstores. I enjoyed myself and made a few purchases for our library. Then I traveled to Petit Jean State Park to spend the night.

I had lingered in Little Rock a bit longer than intended and did not arrive at the park until after ten. At the first open campground I availed myself of the public facilities at the shower house. Thankfully it was heated, even though there was almost nobody staying at the campground. Then I folded down the back seat on my hatchback, locked myself in, and wrapped myself in a comforter to spend the night. Hopefully I would be up and around in the morning before anybody came by wondering about that strange person wrapped up in a giant panda comforter in the back of a dirty-looking little car.

While I wouldn’t call my poor-man’s camper comfortable, it kept me sheltered and secure enough to get through the night. In the morning I went to the shower house to make myself presentable. Then I drove to the park visitors’ center and read for a bit until it opened at eight. I paid my ten dollars for my overnight stay (cheaper than a motel) and prepared to spend the morning hiking.

Mount Petit Jean and its sisters, Mount Nebo and Mount Magazine, are natural wonders. Each rises steeply for hundreds of feet above the Arkansas River valley to a tableland. They are like islands located hundreds of miles from the nearest ocean. During our honeymoon in a cabin on Mt. Nebo we awoke one morning to see a dense bank of fog that blotted out any sign of the land below. It really did give the sensation of being marooned on an island in a sea of clouds.

Nebo holds the sweetest memories, and Magazine boasts the highest point in the state. Petit Jean has the most remarkable features. Its summit extends for a good six by three miles. The rolling summit, with its patchwork fields and woods, reminds one very much of the terrain at its base. If you didn’t know better you would hardly imagine you were a good six hundred feet above that countryside.

The summit also features a small fishing lake; private houses and businesses; an air strip, where well-heeled tourists fly in as if to some Caribbean getaway; a world-class museum of antique automobiles, based on Winthrop Rockefeller’s own collection; and the original site of Rockefeller’s Winrock Farms, which my grandfather helped to build many years before. The museum hosts a large car show every year. The air strip has on occasion witnessed fly-in exhibits of World War II-era aircraft. One of my most vivid memories of one of these air shows is of the mighty roar of an Avenger torpedo plane revving for takeoff. The fireworks display on the banks of the lake that evening was pretty memorable as well.

What really makes the mountain, though, is the natural beauty of the park. A stream called Cedar Creek cuts a canyon hundreds of feet into the heart of the mountain. The park encompasses this canyon and several other scenic hollows. It is a wonderful place to day hike.

That morning I headed first to the trailhead for the Cedar Creek Falls trail. It is located near the park’s rustic lodge, which sits on the rim of the canyon. Signs warn anyone with health conditions not to attempt the trail. They mean it! The trail drops hundreds of feet into the canyon among trees and boulders, down steep switchbacks. The hiker has to climb down several stairways made of local rocks so artfully placed that they almost look like natural formations. Here and there a section of mortared stone retaining wall bulwarks the trail.

At the bottom the trail crosses the creek and the going gets easier. One still has to scramble over rocks and across rills racing to join the main stream. Look up and you can see a green fringe of tiny-looking pines around the rim hundreds of feet above. Down in the canyon the trees run to hardwoods, such as red oak and sycamore. And everywhere you see rock, boulders and overhangs and buttresses of sandstone veined with dark iron ore.

You catch your first glimpse of the waterfall in the distance, as you look upstream over a tumble of great boulders that form a section of rapids. As you meander along the stream you spot it a couple more times. Finally you climb a pile of rocks and find yourself on the downstream end of a natural bowl in the rock, hundreds of feet across and higher than it is broad. Ledges overhang much of this bowl. Across the bowl you see the waterfall. It plunges a good sixty or seventy feet or more into a pool that fills the bottom of the basin. As a kid I recall hiking here with a church group and swimming there. Now, sadly, swimming is no longer allowed.

On this day the recent rains had the falls flowing hard. Their booming filled the basin. Spray turned much of the wall around the falls dark. I had the place all to myself. For a while I scrambled around, taking pictures, admiring the view, and thanking God that I had had the chance to come and see this beauty.

Then I returned the way I had come. Back up at the trailhead, another trail skirted the rim of the canyon to the Bear Cave. This is not really a cave so much as a series of narrow passages between great masses of rock that almost meet overhead. They were indeed once used as bear dens. The last bear seen on the mountain was killed here.

I returned to the lodge and drove to another trailhead. This one descends more stony stairs into the canyon above the falls. A bit down the trail a bridge crosses the creek beside a quiet pool. It mirrors the bridge and the surrounding trees beautifully.

Across the bridge one can either head further upstream or climb up to the rim. I chose the latter path. Soon I found myself back near the top of the canyon, hiking along cliffs. The cold day had warmed up nicely. Here and there I caught a strong, pleasing scent of sun-heated pine needles and resin.

At one point a very steep and rocky little side trail—you’ve got to be very careful here—takes one down to an overlook above the falls. Further on one comes to the Rock House, a huge rock shelter near the rim of the canyon. The mouth of the Rock House is well over thirty feet high and much wider. Archaeologists have found evidence of human habitation here going back eight to ten thousand years.
On the walls, if you know where to look and have a keener eye than mine, you can see half a dozen red ocher petroglyphs on the veined sandstone. Nobody knows now what they meant. The people of that earlier time must surely have felt that this place, so high and hard to reach above the surrounding land, had some great significance.

While I was there a pair of doves flew around the rock shelter. The echoes of their cooing sounded truly unearthly.

Back down in the canyon I returned to the place where I had descended and took yet another side trail to the best overlook. From here you can get spectacular views of the falls from high above. I saw not only the falls but the other overlook and the doll-like people on it, and the even tinier figures of hikers on the trail to the falls.

At this point my time was up and I really had to go. I had hours of travel before me to get home. There was much else I could have seen given time. I might have hiked the Seven Hollows trail, where each hollow has its own distinct sights. I’ve never seen the grotto and the natural bridge they are said to contain.

I could have gone to the scenic point on the eastern end of the mountain, where cliffs and boulders provide spectacular views of the Arkansas River and the farmlands below, the doll’s houses and the ribbons of road, the sight of eagles flying below one’s feet. Once from up here I saw the awe-inspiring sight of a storm cell proceeding slowly up the valley. On my last visit I saw Dad cutting hickory switches and demonstrating his boyhood skill at making hickory whistles.

I’ve really got to go back to this island in the sky to see more of its beauty. I’ll be counting down the days until I get the chance.

Why do I suddenly want to visit Arkansas?