Dog walking is a year-round obligation; neither you nor they get to take summers off. But finding shady destinations for late-afternoon walks can be challenging. I'd nearly forgotten about Arkansas Arboretum. It's a 71-acre site at 11901 Pinnacle Valley Road (below Pinnacle Mountain along the Little Maumelle River) with a flat 0.6-mile paved walkway, along with several trails branching off into the heavily wooded surroundings.
Exploring those--one of which leads to a misty fairy-tale-like setting along the Little Maumelle River, complete with lily pads and croaking frogs--in addition to the main walkway adds up to about one and a half miles.
The park, which opened in the early 1990s, used to be a regular destination when I had two big dogs that were in need of distraction and exercise on hot days. Hardly any direct sunshine breaks through the dense canopy of trees. Our current trio of smaller terriers spends a lot of their summertime daylight walking time in tree-sheltered settings such as Paws Park in Little Rock's Murray Park and in Emerald Park, high above the Arkansas River in North Little Rock.
Both are pleasant outings, but everybody needs variety. So on a recent weekend we headed west on Cantrell Road (where there's a disconcerting amount of construction going on), then took a right on Pinnacle Valley Road to introduce the four-leggers to a destination that's pretty much perfect for our purposes.
If you're relying on me to identify the trees that border the park paths, you'll be lucky to discover which is a pine and which is a ... whatever. Growing things is not one of my skill sets. But that doesn't mean I don't appreciate the beauty and serenity of this place.
Visitors who pay closer attention to plants than I do can eventually figure out that the arboretum is home to roughly 200 tree species that grow wild in Arkansas. Some have names that correspond to their appearance, like the post oak. There are others that, despite a sign displaying a sketch of what the tree looks like, don't seem to bear any resemblance to that sketch.
Those signs are everywhere, offering details concerning many of the plants. At several places along the walk, visitors can press a button, turn a crank, and hear a brief recorded explanation of the area they are viewing.
That recording may be the only sound you hear, as it's practically silent except for bird calls and the occasional scrabbling of a critter that would just as soon not visit with you.
The arboretum's eight-foot-wide trail meanders through dense woods divided into six clearly labeled sections representing Arkansas' geographic divisions.
Each section contains trees found in the corresponding division: the Ozark Plateau Natural Division, where upland hardwoods dominate; The West Gulf Coastal Plain, with loblolly pine and bottomland hardwoods; the Arkansas River Valley, full of shortleaf pine; the Mississippi Alluvial Plain, with more bottomland hardwoods; Crowley's Ridge, upland hardwoods, and the Ouachita Mountain Natural Division, with shortleaf pine and upland hardwoods.
According to a 1995 story by Jack W. Hill in this newspaper's archives, the idea for the arboretum originated in 1976 when park interpreter Randy Johnson noticed that much of what he saw in the area looked like the state's various natural areas. Pulaski County Gardeners, always up for a challenge, got the project going.
The only downside to the arboretum is that the pristine splendor that I encountered on previous visits has worn off. Some of the signage is faded and dusty. Cobwebs cling to benches (which are plentiful) and several of the posters tacked on a billboard at the trailhead are out of date.
Fallen trees are hard to identify, even with descriptive labels posted near them. The off-the-beaten-track pathways are in danger of being grown over and losing their definition. The dogs' paws and underbellies picked up burrs along the way, but that's due to inattention by their owners.
Maybe that's why there were only two other groups of visitors there when we visited. Or perhaps most people don't know the arboretum exists. Luckily for us, mosquitoes and other insects don't know it either, which made for a quiet, reflective, and gratifying way to spend a hot Saturday afternoon.
The best part is that, even in these pandemic days, it remains open, when so many other parks are closed.
Karen Martin is senior editor of Perspective.