Date: 4/6/24 1:56 pm From: Carol Joan Patterson <0000003a0ccbe138-dmarc-request...> Subject: Re: BUFFALO, HOPEFULLY FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD
There's been too much change since I've been here, and since I've been birding - and in fact, every year more loveliness is GONE. I think all Arkansans love our naturalness - so this does not make sense. Donald and I do still see cool life on the Buffalo - haven't been yet this year.
On Friday, April 5, 2024 at 10:01:42 AM CDT, Joseph Neal <joeneal...> wrote:
An obvious problem of having lived a long time in Northwest Arkansas City is remembering 50 years ago when what is now burgeoning metropolis was small towns and an almost city. That’s right – when Fayetteville’s current 100,000 -- heading quickly for 200,000 -- was 25,000. A full third of that was University of Arkansas students, like me.
Yes, that’s right. I was part of the “madding crowd” circa 1964.
Now a lot of stuff gets pretty crowded. We old timers don’t like change, but the Rx is: change can also help. I’m consuming less salt and fat, eat more natural food. And if the sun is shining and temp moderate, I avoid the crowds.
Don’t go Buffalo on any holiday or any weekend. But mid-week often works. It is, to put it mildly, and borrowing from Thomas Hardy, “far from the madding crowd.”
Yesterday I was over at the ancient river with family visitors from Oregon: my daughter Ariel Kate and her partner Sean. We didn’t have it to ourselves, but there were not a lot of other visitors, either. You could hear the river think. If there was a madding crowd, it was just the blue skies, flowering Dogwoods, and Zebra Swallowtails.
They hiked Ponca low water bridge to Steel Creek. I went birding where below dramatic high bluffs Steel Creek flows into the Buffalo. They did the hike in one hour. Saw very few others on the trail. Among the few folks I encountered was a young man who was interested in what I was seeing.
Finally, if memory serves me, when Fayetteville was 25,000 there were folks who thought Fayetteville was already too big for its britches. Students like me were part of the problem back then.
