Hiking Ozarks Highlands Trail with Simple House, Chet and Charlie

Lent is a difficult time to find time to be away from the parish, but some disciplined calendaring preserved the week of the Feast of the Annunciation free of appointments. Rather than complete another section of the AT, my son Chet and his dog Charlie and I planned sixty mile hike on the Ozarks Highland Trail. Jim, Kelley, Heather, and Sylvia from Simple House in Kansas City joined us.

The Ozarks are amazingly beautiful this time of year, a transition from the open spaces and distant views made possible by “leaf-off” to the earliest bits of green on the tips of trees, trillium and wild iris combined with pinks of redbuds, whites of serviceberries and earliest dogwoods and reds of maples. Life seemed to be gasping for light like a swimmer gasping for air.

The folks from Simple House were great company and great hikers. It was good to get to know them better. They are tough graduates of great Catholic colleges – University of Dallas, Franciscan University, and Ave Maria, giving a year or more of time to building friendships and evangelization among the poor in Kansas City. We were able to celebrate Mass together – perched on a rock beside a stream the first night after a hard slog through a path obscured by limbs from winter ice storms, the second evening at sunset on a rock outcrop after the welcome sun had helped warm us after a thunderstorm. For the Feast of the Annuciation we said the Angelus at a double waterfall about noon and then celebrated Mass back the Lodge at White Rock Mountain. Our final Mass was under a tarp as we hiked down to meet Chet at his final campsite.

The Ozarks Highland Trail is even more challenging and in some ways more beautiful than the AT. Chet and I had surmised that because the Ozarks are not true mountains, it would be an easier hike. Not so. The ascents and descents are just as steep and are more numerous. The OHT does not have the benefit of so many trail volunteers, and some sections were not cleared of last winter’s debris from the ice storm. Stream crossings are more of a challenge, too. We had to wade through knee deep streams, and the trail crossed several that were impassible at the trail the crossing, requiring substantial detours. But the beauty of the trail more than made up for its challenges. I have never seen so many waterfalls. Jim was great at spotting wildlife – a bear, turkeys, and deer. I identified what I believe was an elk hoof print.

We didn’t make the miles we intended, but getting picked up early meant an unplanned stop at the General Store in Oark – an opportunity you should not miss if you ever pass through there deliberately or by chance. We had fresh baked pie with ice cream! The town pig wandering outside was no extra charge.