The swimming hole is the coolest of summer's timeless delights.
No membership required, the swimming hole endures from a time when summer was made of small excitements. The taste of a fresh-picked tomato. The first glimpse of a firefly. The knowing where to find the best swimming hole.
Arkansas' rivers and lakes provide countless swimming holes -- shaded nooks and sun-beamed coves and bends in the stream, where the water is just right to jump in.
The whereabouts: generally a secret, although sometimes a common secret. The way to make the best of a swimming hole is to sneak off.
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette photographer Benjamin Krain captured these scenes along the Saline River just off Arkansas 5 and under the Interstate 30 bridge in Benton.
The free-flowing Saline River is naturally made for a dip, a mountain stream born in the Ouachita Mountains north of Benton. Once called the Merry (or Marais) Saline, it wanders about 200 miles south to join the Ouachita River at the convergence of Ashley, Bradley and Union counties.
The name, Saline, might have come from a 19th-century salt works near Benton. The old river had pearl fishing and steamboat commerce, too, but today's river is free as a minnow.
Any clean river can be a stretch of fun these summer days, for those who know where to look -- and better yet, where to leap.
Style on 08/04/2015