Down by the river

A well-kept secret to locals for years, Arkansas, and particularly northwest Arkansas, has become a hotspot for off-airport adventure in the past few years, ranking up there to some pilots with Idaho and Montana in terms of backcountry splendor. From challenging strips on hilltops to beginner-friendly, towered grass airports, Arkansas has something for every skill level. One of the must-visit gems of this area is Byrd’s Adventure Center.

We’re flying with backcountry wizards from Thaden Field (VBT) in Bentonville to Byrd’s, located in Ozark National Forest. Steve Johnson, king of Piper Super Cubs, is flying in his Cessna 185 Skywagon (his Cub is stuck in Montana because of weather); Chip Gibbons, one of the founders of FlyOz, is in his pristine white and blue Super Cub; and instructor and A&P Phillip Sneed and I are in one of FlyOz’s yellow training Super Cubs. For Sneed, this is another normal day. He visits Byrd’s at least a couple times a month; it’s a great milestone training field for tailwheel and backcountry students and is also a place pilots of all aircraft types consistently want to get checked out to fly to.

It takes only moments to escape urban Bentonville and feel like we’re in the wilderness. We’re all flying the best way on Earth, low and slow. The horizon soon becomes green rolling hills, and glimpses of rivers all covered in a dreamy summertime haze made by stifling heat dome conditions. Flying with the door open on any summer morning is a treat, and today it is a necessity.

After weaving through valleys, Sneed tells me Byrd’s is dead ahead. His expert eyes pick it out quickly, but at first, I’m colorblind to the green on green I’m trying to find. Once I see it, though, it becomes obvious. Byrd’s main strip is 2,500 feet long although the nicest part is 1,900 feet, wide enough for the gear, narrower than the wings, and well-manicured and welcoming. Even though it’s longer than many other fields in the area, you still have to earn the landing here, as it’s tucked into the valley with an imposing preferred one-way-in one-way-out approach. Even on this hot day, it’s no problem for the Super Cub, which always feels more at home on grass. A little power back, a little dance on the rudders, and eyes down the strip (with a little bit of a higher heart rate seeing those trees at the end of the runway), and the Super Cub is down and stopped with ease. Tall yellow and purple wildflowers line the mowed strip, the bright green of the runway’s freshly mowed grass directing us to the shaded tree line to park next to a pair of other visiting aircraft.

The breeze carries the woodsy aroma of freshly cut grass mingled with 15 percent Deet bug spray. It’s summer, one of the quieter times at Byrd’s because of the oppressive weather. Spring and fall are their high seasons—a roller-coaster-like undulating pattern of high and low seasons throughout the year based on weather. The heat and humidity aren’t so bad if you accept your fate and avoid the ticks in the tall grass.

Pam and Zen Boulden, as well as Nala, greet us after we land. Nala is the couple’s 110-pound Maremma, an Italian livestock guardian dog. They met her as a puppy on a trip to Alaska and brought her home with them. She is impossible not to love.

Pam is the Byrd of Byrd’s, but, she says, Zen knows the family history at least as well as she does, and maybe better. She grew up on the property and helped start the canoe business in 1982, which they did partly to give land access to the public after rumors of turning the area into a national park. Believe it or not, the movie Deliverance was great for the canoe business. Zen and Pam’s background is in outdoor teaching, and they worked at Outward Bound, National Outdoor Leadership School, and as rafting and climbing guides for years before coming back to help run Byrd’s.

Since those early canoe days, they’ve expanded to include fishing, hiking, kayaking, off-roading, and of course, flying. They also host music festivals, fly-ins, timed landing competitions, and extreme survival training.

“It’s like every time I turn down the driveway, I feel like Alice is dropping down the rabbit hole. Like what does Wonderland have in store today?” says Pam. “We’re rarely bored.”

Aviation joined the list of adventures in the early 1990s, an addition motivated by Zen’s love of flying.

“I knew that I loved aviation as a very little child, but we didn’t have any aviators in the family,” said Zen. Zen started out with hang gliding, first with an old Rogallo that he bought for $150 with lawn-mowing money as a teen, then a Wills Wing Sport that he took with him and Pam all over the country after they met in college in 1991.

“And in the summer of 1994, while we were still dating, I flew my hang glider off of Mount Magazine about 35 miles south of here and landed in the hay field out here. Yes. And I thought that I would really impress my girlfriend and her parents. Landed in August in the tall hay and hiked about a mile to get here. And no one cared. They were all like, ‘Hey, where you been? We need you to go load some canoes. We need you to drive some shuttles.’

“But I did ask her dad, I said, ‘Kenneth, would you mind? Could we ever mow a runway out there to tow hang gliders behind ultralights?’

“And the next thing I knew, he was on his lawnmower and said, ‘Where do you want that runway?’ And that’s how it all started.”

The runway we landed on is essentially in the same spot that Pam’s dad mowed, and the other listed runway (“the restaurant strip”) is 1,000 feet and strictly no go-around, and also conveniently located right in front of the cabin we’ll be staying in later. While those two are the official strips, Zen notes he’s always looking for spots.

“We’ve had as many as 21 runways mowed at once, but there’s actually room for a lot more. Most of those are really, really short for practice purposes. Some of them are 150 feet long. But then we try to position them incrementally so that experienced pilots can gradually work their way into shorter and shorter runways safely with lots of margin. So that if you scratch, there’s no penalty. And if you accidentally roll too long, there’s no penalty other than just getting grass in your prop.”

The runway was initially used just for hang gliding and towing and grew with Zen’s own flying. In 2004 he became a sport pilot, then earned his instructor rating in weight shift in 2007.

“And in April, about 2005, I was able to save up and purchase my first powered hang glider, a weight shift trike from Australia and flew that for about 10 years. And then I finally found the little yellow airplane that I had wanted since I was a little kid. And it wasn’t a J–3 Cub. It was a Kitfox, but just as much fun.” He keeps that little yellow Kitfox in an old barn on the field and tries to fly it a few hours a week at least.

We hop a ride in one of the canoe vans with Zen for lunch. The restaurant overlooks the Mulberry River, made a glacial blue from the area’s limestone deposits, which bends through Byrd’s land. We have a buffet of their best foods to choose from, and I will say everything that I tried (half a burger, half a Reuben, fries, and pie) is worth flying for. Regulars Johnson, Gibbons, and Sneed also give rave reviews to everything, including the pork chop special and salmon, which Pam says is one of their most popular dishes even in landlocked Arkansas.

We stop by the store, where there are fishing essentials and Byrd’s gear, basic provisions, ice cream behind the counter, and a whole handmade shelf devoted to smores, nostalgia for childhood campfires strong enough to bring the charred marshmallow smell to the front of mind.

Pam and Zen are the kind of couple who truly seem like they’re each other’s best friends. They’ve both retained a childlike wonder for the land they feel more like caretakers than owners of. A sincere wish to share it with people, and it’s done with such hope that you’ll find it special, too; it feels like being trusted with something precious and fragile.

While they no longer host ArkanSTOL, the popular landing competition that ran for four years, they still have a couple of invitational fly-ins and timed landing competitions. Zen notes that support from some of the STOL greats like Steve Henry and Hal Stockman, both of whom have competed in timed landing courses at Byrd’s, has meant so much to him.

In the afternoon of our second day, Zen takes us to the petroglyphs, which the archaeology department at the University of Arkansas dated to 4,000 years ago. The petroglyphs appear to be mostly animals and perhaps a beheaded humanoid (not spooky at all in the deep woods of Arkansas). People, some kinds of people, have been coming here for thousands of years. Conveniently adjacent to the petroglyphs is Whoop and Holler rapids and a swimming hole. It’s too enticing to resist, and we hop in clothes and all, the cool, cool river a welcome relief, the current cleanses our salty, sweaty skin.

Bird calls and the whisper of water are the only sounds besides our conversation. Zebra butterflies dance among the pink blooms of a nearby mimosa. The ancient weight of nature’s ineffable continuity is all around us, in this land that has been here long before us, and will be here, a gathering place, long after we die. It’s a comforting reminder that the world is bigger than us, and that even once unfamiliar places can feel like home, even if briefly.

All day the clouds have been threatening to build on us, but instead of a downpour, we get a stunning vibrant sunset, the kind you only get in thunderstorm country; the kind you want to clap for because it is so lovely. Pam and Zen’s friend Kenneth Monger from Game Aerospace shows up in his 1957 Cessna 172 after a day of work at VBT to show us just what a straight tail 172 can do. From the porch of the cabin, a pilot couldn’t ask for a better view. The 1,000-foot restaurant strip is right in front of us, and the sun sets behind the hills beyond the strip. Zen’s day is done, and he takes off again to fly for fun before his sport pilot privileges vanish with the daylight, and Pam and Nala watch from the ground with us. The fireflies come out to play, and the last light fades to beckon the Milky Way, thick above us in this secluded wild land.

Pam and Zen hope to introduce more outdoor education, training, and wellness. No matter what the future brings at Byrd’s, Zen and Pam intend to have aviation be a part of it.

“Byrd’s has always been very excited about all types of aviation. And because of that, everyone has been welcome. And the entire aviation community all through the region has built this place,” says Zen. “I think we’re all excited to share it and pass it along as well and try to get young people excited as well. And that’s just been amazing.”

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Fly in

While Byrd’s isn’t the trickiest backcountry spot out there, it does require some training—and Pam notes that they never want Byrd’s to be someone’s first solo backcountry experience. Check out the folks at FlyOz to book a flight to Byrd’s with an instructor.

FlyOz.com