What’s Next?

Outdoor authorities speak on the challenges and opportunities
for Arkansas’s glorious outdoors.

By Dwain Hebda

The water, woods and mountains of majestic Arkansas are unchanging and timeless, but the question of how to best use and protect those resources is a constant. How we manage our natural attractions is an eternal jigsaw puzzle where every piece is cut into the same shape; the overall picture is often hard to see even as random pieces fit together.

The pandemic year has underscored the challenges and opportunities for Arkansas’s outdoors like never before as people flocked to the wild as a way to recreate safely in the era of Covid-19. The meteoric rise in work-from-home arrangements gives people the chance to move and live where they want regardless of the location of their job, and more are choosing Arkansas for quality of life all the time. And the intense focus of the past two years on issues of diversity and equality means taking a hard look at addressing the things often prohibiting segments of the population from enjoying campgrounds, trails and outdoor activities.

Arkansas Wild visited with multiple sources — including three fresh faces in leadership roles at key outdoors-related agencies — to see how the outdoors are evolving in The Natural State. What follows are their accounts of what we have done and what we have left to do.

ROLLIN’ HOME

Cali Transplant Transforming Local Trails

Jeremy McGhee discovered mountain biking after suffering a motorcycling accident in 2001 that left him paralyzed from the waist down. That brought him to Bentonville in 2016 as a presenter at an international cycling conference and, so taken with the surroundings and the trails, he bought a house there where he lives about half the year.

Settling into his new home, he’s tackled trails on a specially designed bike, documenting his adventures for his social media channels the UNPavement. But he’s more than just a consumer of dirt; he’s also a leading expert in how to adapt trails for riders of all abilities.

“I have an awesome bike that allows me to get out on the trails and enjoy nature,” McGhee said. “But it is wide and it is limited. I might be going down a trail and it could be fine, which is a majority of the time, or something happens and I have to turn around. Imagine being a paraplegic and turning that big bike around on a single track with a drop-off.”

That’s precisely the kind of feedback OZ Trails and NWA Trailblazers were after when they approached McGhee to ride and report back on the suitability of routes to accommodate as many riders as possible. It can be harrowing — just watch his video on Wonderland in Bella Vista — but provides an illuminating look at what adaptive riders often face.

“In my experience out on the trail, I’ve got myself into some pretty precarious situations,” he said. “When you don’t have the luxury of walking your bike out or if you’re unable to fix the bike, you’re just stuck. And a crash can happen at any moment, no matter what, even if I’m on novice terrain. Shit happens.

“I had one crash that was pretty minor but I wound up off-trail, down the hill a little bit. My bike’s not broken, I’m not injured, I just need to get my bike 7 feet up this embankment. And I was able to get myself back up to the trail, but I struggled for about two hours trying to get my bike up. I finally had to call for help.”

Catching McGhee’s laid-back SoCal attitude or that of his fun-loving comrades, you’d never know how staunch the opposition has been around here among riders over amending trails.

“The climate in Bentonville currently is folks are very concerned,” he said. “The term used in the mountain bike world is we’re going to be sanitizing trails. Completely untrue. The biggest misconception I come across in trail adaptation is there’s one type of adaptive trail. Couldn’t be further from the truth. It is multi-experience and very complex. When you consider the gamut of adaptive riders, it is huge.”

“The second misconception is we want to adapt every trail. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to ride every trail out there, but I understand that’s not feasible. So, my approach is to go after low-hanging fruit. Pinpoint those small changes to get maximum return for minimum updates. I totally get it when people within this community are really protective of their trails and the experience. Because you know what? So am I.”

Open to All

Small Changes Pay Off Big

A forested oasis in the city, Little Rock’s Camp Aldersgate hosts multiple camps throughout the year for children with physical challenges as well as those battling disease. And one look at the modified zip line, treehouse or climbing wall here tells you they don’t buy into the myth of the outdoors being only for the able-bodied.

“So many of our population have been put into a corner where they’re not able to experience [the outdoors], not because they’re not able to, but because they haven’t been given the resources to get out in nature,” said Ian Shuttleworth, program coordinator. “They’re all able to and they’re all wanting to and willing to. It’s more about providing them the opportunity to do it.”

Camp Aldersgate is a living showroom of adaptive outdoor activities, the kinds of things that have been slow to make their way into green spaces, camping areas and other wild spots around the state. But, as Katie Jenkins, program coordinator and certified therapeutic recreation specialist, said, things are changing.

“I’ve seen tremendous progress, just since I’ve graduated from college in 2016,” she said. “I think [Arkansas] State Parks are on the right path. Lake Catherine State Park, for example, is one of my favorite state parks in Arkansas, they have a beautiful paved trail in a wooded area that is accessible. Bath houses and whatnot have also come a long way. Nothing hurts my heart more than walking into a state park and seeing bathroom stall doors and fixtures that are not up to ADA code.”

Jenkins said there’s still a long way to go to make public outdoor spaces accessible to people with physical challenges, but that much of it can be addressed by adopting universal design concepts that makes a room accessible to all levels of ability.

“We know, realistically speaking, that not every trail can be paved and is going to be fully accessible, but I strongly believe that we should build cabins and other lodging in state parks with the concept of universal design in mind,” she said. “That way, they’re all built to the same standard instead of just one or two cabins or rooms.

“They’re on the right trajectory, but there’s still a lot of progress that needs to be made. The American Disabilities Act passed into law in 1990, so there’s really no excuse for these barriers to still be there. Hopefully, we’ll get there one day.”

Camping Kids

Preparing the Next Outdoor Generation

Children and youth have a wide range of camping experiences at their disposal through Arkansas 4-H. Creenna Bocksnick, camping coordinator at the organization’s Vines Center, said the programs help turn kids on to camping at a young age.

“I think some of the kids are getting more into some of the outdoor activities,” she said. “I know this is really going to be counterintuitive, but some of the gaming systems that are hunting-based are having a positive impact on that.

“Even exercise programs where they’re on a treadmill watching scenery that takes them through mountains or different places around the world, I think some of that stuff is piquing kids’ interest. They get to the point where they want to experience these things other than virtually.”

Pre-covid, The Vines Center hosted up to 500 children a year in their camping programs, some as young as 5 years old. Scholarship applications are up, Bocksnick said, suggesting more underserved and low-income communities are discovering camping. She also noted that broadening the focus of camps has helped with both numbers and diversity.

“Our general camps, depending on the session, are 50/50 as far as boys versus girls,” she said. “A couple years ago we offered a STEM camp and it was almost exclusively boys. I offer an artisan camp, and it’s almost exclusively girls.

“We want them to learn how to canoe or fish or archery or whatever the activity is, but we are also focusing on communication, leadership, goal-setting and dealing with their fellow campers, then taking those skills and applying them to other things above and beyond those activities they’re doing at camp.”

Brocksnick said one thing that would enhance many families’ experiences in the state parks is better communication of family-friendly areas.

“One thing I’d suggest is making sure there’s signage everybody can understand, whether in words or in pictures,” she said. “Note where a trail that is suitable for this type of skill or these types of needs or abilities or even pointing out stuff you’ll find along this trail, like waterfalls or overlooks, that’s super easy and almost infographic. Something that they could look and know here’s where I’m headed.

“Also, I’d like to see more reminders about Leave No Trace that are easy to understand, easy to see and easy to remember, placed around where needed. That’s the kind of thing some of your beginners may not know or may not remember.”

Queens of the Forest

BOW Teaches Outdoor Skills

Lyana Snow grew up with a father who loved to fish, and while the experience bonded her to the outdoors, it didn’t make her an expert angler. It was an anomaly she took with her into adulthood.

“My husband wanted to go fishing with me, because he knew that I’d been fishing most of my life. He was like, ‘You must know everything,’” she said “No, I only knew how to do what my dad told me to do. That didn’t necessarily translate very well into complete confidence to be able to do things on my own.”

Snow’s husband was a hunter, but tending young kids at home meant she could only recently dabble in the sport, just enough to know she wanted to know more. Two years ago, she enrolled in a class through the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission’s Becoming an Outdoors-Woman (BOW), a program that helps women perfect their outdoor skills across a range of activities. She was immediately hooked.

“I loved the dynamic of learning things with a large group of women who are also learning,” she said. “It really removes the ‘Oh, you’re just a girl. You don’t know what you’re talking about’ stereotype.”

BOW programs have afforded Snow the chance to participate in group duck hunts, bass fishing trips and numerous individual classes, such as outdoor photography and Leave No Trace camping. More than that, she’s found a group with whom to share her adventures.

“Myself and two other ladies are now really good friends. We actually just went shooting two days ago to get better for the next waterfowl season,” she said. “And they’re both younger, in their 20s. Two other women who went on the duck hunt with us are older, both grandmothers. So, we’ve got younger women and older women and we’re all learning how to do the same thing. I really love that.”

Snow, 41, said she’s seen a lot of progress in companies designing outdoor apparel and equipment specifically for females, something that speaks to the appetite women have to be outside. Through BOW, she and her classmates can indulge that passion with confidence.

“The BOW program has brought me a lot of really great new experiences that I never thought I would be able to do by myself,” she said. “I’ve met so many women, I’ve made so many friends, and it’s really opened a whole new area of my life.”

Leading the Pack

Katherine Andrews : Director, Office of Outdoor Recreation

Katherine Andrews isn’t the only new face at the Office of Outdoor Recreation, she’s joined by 10 brand-new Arkansas Outdoor Recreation Advisory Board members. That’s because she and the board are the first to serve in their roles for the new office, tasked with leading the state’s efforts to grow Arkansas’s outdoor recreation economy. Taking office in November, Andrews came to the role after five years with the Arkansas Economic Development Commission.

WILD: How does this new entity fit into the range of offices and agencies already in place related to the outdoors?

KATHERINE ANDREWS: We are in no way going to be taking the place of anybody. We are the great connector, a resource provider and collaborator. We’ll work with all of these agencies on their efforts just to make sure that the lens of outdoor recreation is represented in all of those conversations and decision-making.

WILD: As an entity, what will be the most important elements of your success in this regard?

ANDREWS: One of the things that is going to be hugely important and hugely critical to the success of this office is the networking, the collaboration and the relationship-building through interagency relationships.

From there, we can look at creating those public/private partnerships for potential funding and just for basic communication. Instead of working in silos, I want this office to create a cohesiveness, that one central voice. I think getting all of our voices together is going to be the biggest impact that we will make in this first year.

WILD: What interested you in this opportunity in the first place?

ANDREWS: The biggest reason was my love of the outdoors. When I am not in the office, I am doing something outside, whether that’s running, kayaking, hiking, hunting, fishing, camping, all those things. And, being from Arkansas, I have a great love of the land and environment. Getting to incorporate that into what I do professionally is like a dream for me.

WILD: Being a younger outdoors consumer yourself, when you look at our state right now is there something you wish we had or was done differently to pull more people of your generation into the outdoors?

ANDREWS: I think the biggest area of improvement that we can work on is getting the word out about other areas of the state. You see things going on in Northwest Arkansas, you see things going on in Central Arkansas, but that’s just two small areas of the state. Everything else is also open and people have been recreating outside there forever. That has the potential to get people into rural areas to spend their money and build those rural areas up.

Therefore, I think the promotion of those areas is going to be huge, and the way that we could do that is by working with all of these agencies on asset map building, whether that’s through a website, social media, some kind of GIS mapping tool. We can be showing people, “If you go over here, there are all these great trails. Here’s the mountain biking opportunities that you have. Here are the kayaking opportunities.”

WILD: As part of that promotion, how will your office address the issue of kids getting turned on to the outdoors, thereby creating the next generation of consumers?

ANDREWS: A lot of the other states that have created this office have done some kind of outreach toward the younger generation, whether that’s through creating programs in K-12 schools, working with workforce development centers, colleges and universities. I’m not sure what that looks like just yet for us, but I would love to see it emulated from some of these other states who have done it really well.

I think a lot of people get the notion that to be outside is a lot of work. But it’s really as easy as just walking down a trail or visiting a lake nearby. That’s one of my goals, to educate the younger generation that the outdoors is not scary, it’s fun.

Wide-Open Spaces

Shea Lewis : Director, Arkansas State Parks

As the new chief for Arkansas’s 52 state parks, the roughly 1,000 full-time and seasonal employees who work there, and the nearly 10 million guests who visited one last year, Shea Lewis inherits one of the state’s largest economic engines, generating about $2 billion in revenues. Lewis, who has 24 years of work experience with Arkansas State Parks, moved into the director’s role Jan. 3 from the position of deputy director.

WILD: How has the concept of a state park evolved over the years and does that present an opportunity for Arkansas moving forward?

Shea Lewis: The original concept of a state park system was to fill a gap between what the National Park Service was doing and what local community or city parks were doing. Another concept about state parks that was really important is that they were in closer proximity to residents. Our original concept was to have a state park within 60 miles of every citizen of Arkansas.

That said, state parks are changing. We are in an experience-driven economy. The younger folks are looking for those unique experiences and opportunities to share those experiences on Instagram or through social media. They want to share what they’re doing with others and we provide those opportunities.

The pandemic has impacted us greatly. We’ve seen a huge influx of visits and first-time visitors. I talk to some of our park rangers who have had to help many of our guests set up a tent because they’ve never camped before. They’re new to this experience and it’s absolutely awesome that we can be an essential service during such a time in the history of the world.

WILD: How does an entity like State Parks continue to expand amenities visitors want without posing undue competition to neighboring communities?

LEWIS: State Parks is a partner with communities. I can’t even think of an example where it’s the opposite of that. There are more communities that would love to have a state park than what we can actually provide. We try to find balance with our fee structures, doing comparable rate studies, and we work with our partners. The goal of the state is to provide a service but not out-compete private business. We do view ourselves as an economic driver, but we also take seriously that we are part of a community.

WILD: What are some of your immediate goals as director?

LEWIS: One of my goals would be what we can do to retain the guests who found us during the pandemic. Building that connection to early experiences is very, very important. My goal is to honor the tradition of what a state park system is, but be innovative at the same time, looking to the future.

In doing that, we’ve done some pretty unique things. We have a new set of trails called the Monument Trails, optimized for hiking, running or mountain biking, developed in partnership with the Arkansas Parks and Recreation Foundation. We’re seeing new guests find us because of those trails at Pinnacle Mountain, Mount Nebo, Devil’s Den and Hobbs State Park Conservation Area. They’ve really brought in a new generation of park guests to us.

We’re also working towards the completion of Delta Heritage Trail State Park in eastern Arkansas. Grants from the Walton Family Foundation as well as through the Department of Transportation are going to help us see that through to completion. That’s going to be an entirely unique experience of riding a bike or hiking or running through lands that have been seen by very few people over a very long period of time.

Mission Critical

Austin Booth : Director, Arkansas Game and Fish Commission

When Booth took over last summer as just the 19th director in the AGFC’s 107-year history, he was a rarity both for his age (then 34) and for having been hired into the role from outside the agency. The Little Rock native and Marine Corps vet came to the job after serving as chief of staff and chief financial officer for the Arkansas Department of Veterans Affairs. But change is good, and a director who reflects the needs and requirements of younger outdoors enthusiasts feels particularly well-timed.

WILD: Outdoors resources don’t change, but usage does. What is Game and Fish’s responsibility in meeting this new usage of heritage resources?

AUSTIN BOOTH: I’ll split hairs with you for a second: I would disagree we are not creating new opportunities. If you look at our reintroduction of the black bear, that wasn’t here 100 years ago. If you look at our reintroduction of the elk, or some of our forestry initiatives where we’re trying to make our forests healthier, our streams healthier, or manage all of these habitats to their original condition to make it healthier, that wasn’t here 100 years ago.

Is it completely new from black to white? No, but if you look at how we’re trying to approach the Arkansas habitat from a landscape basis, then yeah, this is new.

WILD: Fair point. But many outdoor consumers today are looking for much different experiences than their parents and grandparents. How do you accommodate that?

BOOTH: You can boil it down to this: The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission conserves fish, wildlife and their habitat, but what we’re truly conserving is the outdoor character of who Arkansans are. You take away duck hunting or deer hunting or trout fishing, we don’t just lose economic staples of the state, we lose our identity as Arkansans. What it means to be an Arkansan is directly connected to the outdoors and that’s what we’re here to conserve.

That doesn’t mean you only have identity as an Arkansan if you hunt or fish. We have to build a broader tent to ensure people understand conservation isn’t just about harvest, it’s about sustainability of natural resources. It’s about providing public land and water access to people who want to fish or paddle or hike or hunt. Again, we’re not taking a “put the hook-and-bullet crowd on a back burner” approach, we’re taking an “and” approach.

WILD: Regardless of how they use the outdoors, the facts are children and youth are not getting into the wilds as they once did. How can we begin to turn the tide on this?

BOOTH: I think we have to be real with ourselves about the complex and numerous cultural challenges that are very real barriers to getting people outside. There are fewer married households. As the baby boomers continue to age out, there will be fewer older Americans to teach the next generation.

People like to beat up on video games exclusively, but I made a very prominent leader in the state upset when I said, “We’re telling kids to play soccer or baseball or basketball year-around and we wonder why kids aren’t participating in the outdoors.” I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with athletics, but there is more to peel back about this problem than just video games.

When you drink in the number of causes behind that, it becomes very clear the only way for us to meaningfully combat this is through existing relationships. We have to empower and promote people already established throughout the state to highlight their passion for the outdoors in their own communities.

WILD: Several surrounding states outspend us tremendously. Do you see a necessity in the near future of revisiting the sales tax percentage or charging people to use some outdoor spaces that they can currently use for free?

BOOTH: Arkansas is richly blessed by a conservation sales tax, and I am grateful we had a governor and a legislature around in 1996 who shepherded that through. It would be a mistake to make the Arkansas Game and Fish portion of the conservation sales tax larger at the expense of other agencies. They are too important as partners.

Whether Arkansas Game and Fish is going to need additional revenue in some other way, I’m not there yet. I made a commitment to lots of people that I was going to get to know this budget from the inside out in order to articulate a real vision for the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission. If we need more revenue to execute that vision, then that’s what we’ll do. But I have not entered this job with an assumption or a foregone conclusion that we need more money.