The northwest corner of Arkansas was hazy with dust as August crept towards its end after a summer of one hundred and two degree days. We were visiting a friend who invited us to join her and her family on a river float, in the hope that the cool water and the lazy current would be an antidote to the dry and austere heat that enveloped that part of the Ozarks. From Fayetteville we drove west on Route 62 to Tahlequah, Oklahoma, before taking a side road where a bend of the Illinois River shelters a cluster of businesses that sell access to the river: guided fishing trips, rental of inflatable tubes, rafts and canoes; the stores cluttered with displays of cheap sunglasses, floppy hats and sunscreen that everyone wishes they bought more of. Northwest Arkansas in where Bentonville is located-- the seat of the world headquarters of Wal-Mart, the retailing giant -- and that corner of the state has a slight polish, the roads are in good condition and the housing stock mostly looks decent. Driving from Arkansas into Oklahoma it becomes noticeable immediately after crossing the state line that things are a little more rundown -- ragged trailers and impromptu ranch houses with cheap siding and tin roofs line the roads, and in late August the hills are the color of burlap.
The other rafters were largely in groups: families, some couples, and crews of friends carting picnics in an assortment of coolers with cans of beer hidden in the ice -- there were signs everywhere warning the consequences of drinking while rafting, including the possibility of being banned from that stretch of the river. Visitors park their cars in the gravel lot and then are driven in buses to an embarkation spot -- a flat and sloping bank created by the slow movement of the river’s course over time. The long open bend floods in the spring when the water is high and rushing with snow melt and runoff from the surrounding Ozarks but in the depths of August it is exposed as the diminished Illinois River gently winds its way southeast -- across Oklahoma, through Arkansas and Tennessee, down through Mississippi and Louisiana, changing names along its wending path until it finally empties out into the Gulf of Mexico, after a wash through the delta that lays by New Orleans.
