I have been contacted by several readers about the Buffalo River float trip I am going to conduct on Saturday, Oct. 28. It is going to be an all day interpretive trip on the river celebrating the 50-year anniversary of the first such float trip I took there. Actually, I worked as a naturalist at the place known as Buffalo River State Park in 1971. That is when I was chief naturalist for the Arkansas State Park system. I was only 23 years old. I hired some young men from and we chose a site for an amphitheatre and laid out miles of nature trails.

We built the amphitheatre benches out of split oak logs that were from trees downed at another state park by a windstorm. The National Park Service still uses that same amphitheatre but they replaced the benches. The trails we built back then are still used, but I doubt there are naturalists today who conduct daily hikes the way we did.

The naturalists who I hired in 1971 were only 18 year-old college students majoring in natural history subjects. They were; Michael Widner, John Michael Green, Randy Johnson and Dennis Whiteside, then, and later, Jim Killer and Carl Jones, two I did not hire. All those men were Ozark country boys, and on the river or the trails, they had a real knowledge of the plants, birds, fish, etc. They had grown up around there, and also knew Ozark history and people.

The National Park Service does not hire naturalists as such today; they call them ‘interpretive specialists’ now. In general those are full-time employees born and raised who knows where… California, Chicago, a foreign country even. I have written about what I saw there when the National Park Service took over and the Buffalo and I began working for them. They don’t like it, but it was all true.

You can read the whole story about my time there working for the NPS in the magazine I publish about the Ozarks and the outdoors. It will be out in September and will hopefully include an interview with the overall Park Director today working out of Harrison Arkansas. The Buffalo today is a mess and they know it. I will tell about the good and bad things I saw back then, one of the best park rangers you could ever imagine, second in command at Buffalo Point by the name of Chuck Brooks and an old CCC worker who was still there.

I will also tell about a Hispanic employee out of the front office who would likely have served many years in prison if the sheriff had ever broken in on one of his weekend drug and alcohol parties there in Buffalo Point cabins where Marion county minors often were found.

But as for now, I’ll just count on making that Oct. 28 float trip something special. I will limit it to 24 people and there will be no charge. I will even pay for the dinner, which will be a fish fry on a gravel bar. If we have more than 24 people wanting to go, I will schedule another trip in November.

I have already received a phone call from the Park Service. The NPS has made a rule that if you guide on the Buffalo you have to pay them money for a special guide’s permit. It is expensive.

In the’70’s, my Uncle Norten and I guided float fishermen on several Ozark streams, the Kings, War Eagle, Illinois, Crooked Creek and occasionally the Buffalo. Back then it was legal to do that on the Buffalo. The Park Service didn’t like that… I don’t know why. But they can’t stop us from organizing interpretive float trips on the river in this way as long as I am not making money from it.

I have conducted interpretive float trips on other Ozark streams, most recently the Niangua. We seine fish, show folks the variety of plants and trees, talk about the history and people of the river. We also teach them how to fish a river, and urge them to release smallmouth and rock bass, stressing river conservation practices. Folks learn how to paddle a boat or canoe from one side. The one o’clock fish fry is a big hit, of course; baked beans, potato salad and brownies for dessert.

If you live too far from Arkansas to go on our Buffalo trip, I will do the same thing this fall on the Big Piney, where I grew up.

I guided float fishermen in wooden johnboat on the Piney when I was only 11 or 12 years old, making 50 cents an hour. If you go on that Big Piney trip with me this fall you can go free! That’s what inflation has done!

If you want to go down the Buffalo or Big Piney with me this fall, just let me know. My office phone is 417-777-5227. The email address is lightninridge47@gmail.com

If you are old-fashioned like me just use the post office. Send me a letter at Box 22, Bolivar, Mo. 65613. I don’t live there but once a week I go to the post office, ten miles away, providing I can get across the creek! See all my columns and photos on the internet at larrydablemontoutdoors, and see my books and magazines at larrydablemont.com