LITTLE ROCK — Trails of Little Rock: A Guide to Little Rock's Land and Water Trails, by Johnnie Chamberlin (Parkhurst Brothers paperback, April), 80 pages, $12
Arkansas' capital city has several popular hiking trails and, in many cases, those seeking a nice outdoor trek need only follow a city or state map to the nearest park.
In his newly published book, Trails of Little Rock, Johnnie Chamberlin covers all the area's popular "ant trails," favorite routes that hikers traverse again and again, but he also introduces readers to many unknown and overlooked trails hidden in our urban jungle.
Trails of Little Rock is an amphibious trail guide designed for those hikers, mountain bikers and floating enthusiasts who have always wanted to explore that hollow near the Interstate 430 bridge or that nice, riffling creek that runs under Colonel Glenn Road near the feed store. Or perhaps the reader has seen that nice-looking stream that emerges from the trees near the intersection of Markham Street and Bowman Road, and said to himself, "I wonder what's upstream."
Chamberlin, who grew up in Little Rock, is assistant director of conservation for Audubon Arkansas. As part of his job, he walked along the metropolitan area's major creeks. That experience, and jogging the trails of Boyle Park, inspired him to write this 80-page guide.
Besides the table of contents, Chamberlin helpfully includes an index of trails categorized by difficulty, by city region and his top 10 picks of scenic trails, trails for children and trails for solitude.
Each map entry includes a trail description, a detailed color map with elevation contours, Global Positioning System (GPS) coordinates of starting and ending points, the trail's length, difficulty and trail surface and a five-star scenery rating.
Practically all of the trails are in public parks or along public waterways, but Chamberlin includes appropriate warnings that "some of the trails are in isolated parts of the city" and acknowledges uncertainty about land ownership on some stretches. He also mentions unsettling landmarks like a bullet-riddled car in one location off Colonel Glenn Road, a "fairly aggressive, unchained dog" roaming a trailer park near Kanis Road and the possibility of sharing the lower stretch of Fourche Creek with motorboats and personal watercraft (albeit with ancient, seven-foot cypress knees nearby).
Perhaps the most distinctive element of Chamberlin's guide is the "Water Trails" chapter, which charts the navigation of two streams, the Little Maumelle River from Pinnacle Mountain to the Arkansas River and Fourche Creek from the Otter Creek area to the Arkansas River. The float on Fourche Creek, which runs through the heart of the city, is highly detailed and is broken into three sections.
The author also spends a good bit of ink on Boyle Park, not because it's his jogging haven, but because the park has so many good trails, more than 10 miles of them, all webbed together in the hills and lowlands along Rock Creek. Ever heard of the Nun Trail? It's here (and there is a convent nearby).
Likewise, the already popular trails at Allsopp Park, Two Rivers Park and Pinnacle Mountain State Park get pretty good coverage.
Off Colonel Glenn Road, a bit of an unknown trail runs along Brodie Creek, a pretty stream that Chamberlin describes as a "hidden gem." There is another set of trails downstream a ways, between Brodie Creek Park, just east of Stagecoach Road, and Hindman Park.
The guide describes hikes at Gillam Park/Audubon Arkansas Nature Center, a 400-acre natural area that is "home to a wide variety of habitats including: a cypress oxbow, willow oak flats, bottomland hardwood forest, oak savanna, upland pine/white oak forest and rare nepheline syenite glades."
An overview map of the metropolitan area pinpointing the locations described would have been nice, but it's not a crucial omission.
The title of the book can be taken at face value. The guide focuses solely on trails that run on the Little Rock side of the river. Only the River Trail Loop entry, by necessity, ventures over to North Little Rock.
Chamberlin also describes "Potential/Upcoming" trails, with maps, at Gillam Park and Two Rivers Park and along Coleman Creek downstream from War Memorial Park past the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and along Rose Creek near the state Capitol.
Trails of Little Rock offers the key to outdoor adventures near downtown, subdivisions, malls and busy streets, places where nature enfolds the trail or stream and you're suddenly outside the scope of human influence - unless you happened to bring your cell phone.
ActiveStyle, Pages 23, 28 on 05/04/2009