The Zig Zag Mountains are located in Garland County, Arkansas and are home to the thermal springs of Hot Springs National Park.

These mountains are so named because of their unique chevron shape when viewed from above, the result of plunging anticlines and synclines.

Neither are these mountains very tall, but they do rise to heights over fourteen hundred feet in elevation.

The famous Hot Springs national park resort and spa city in central Arkansas, is just north of the Ouachita river and in the eastern area of the Ouachita mountains and national forest. The national park is intertwined with the city of the same name. The area is noted for several thermal hot springs which were first used by the indigenous people, then visited by the Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto in 1541, next the French fur trappers and traders from the late 1600′s, then mapped in 1804 by the Americans Dunbar and Hunter and then from 1807, permanent settlements sites were established.

The Hot Springs national park originated in 1832 as Hot Springs Reservation on land claimed by the Federal government and later enlarged. In 1921, it became a national park and today covers nine square miles including Bathhouse row located on the southwest slope of Hot Springs Mountain.

The surrounding Mountains that make up the park area beyond Bathhouse Row are heavily forested in dogwood, oak, hickory, and pine, redbud, and other flowering species. Wildlife is abundant and consists primarily of small mammals and numerous species of birds.

Music Mountain, 1450 feet

West Mountain, 1411 feet

North Mountain, 1120 feet

Sugarloaf Mountain, 1209 feet

Hot Springs Mountain,

Awake to another cold morning, rise to turn on the jammer engine and notice that the dark orange sunglow is just rising from the horizon. I return to my under cover position to await for the heater to warm the jammer interior. Once it is warm enough, I rise again, dress in my fall blues, drive to the w-mart, grab my computer and go inside to get online.

However, the network is down in the w-mart and I have to resort to using my own hot spot. Methinks, it is a very bad thing when I come into Starbucks for the WiFi and have to resort to using my own hot spot.

Then at nine this morning, I leave the w-mart, drive into town, park in the free high rise parking lot, grab my day pack which has a change of clothes, walk to the Quapaw bath house and pay the twenty dollars to enter the hot pools (I do get ten percent off my price because I am a veteran).

Once in the pool room, I spend most all of my time in the hot pool, which is 104 degrees, while other pools are cooler by several degrees. Too, I endeavor to start conversations with many of the people who are in the pools, hoping to direct the discussion to spiritual topics.

Arkansas Novaculite is a rock that has been used by residents of Arkansas dating back to the indigenous people. Like other cherts and flints, novaculite is primarily composed of silica and is a microcrystalline sedimentary rock.

Novaculite is a unique rock found only in the Ouachita Mountains of Arkansas and Oklahoma. For American Indians living in this region in the past, novaculite was an essential raw material for manufacturing sharp-edged durable tools. Novaculite was quarried from outcrops on mountain ridges. The large pits and piles of debris left behind by that quarrying created some of the largest archeological sites in Arkansas and across the United States.

Novaculite varies in color but light colors are most common. Colors include: white, light to dark gray, pink, red, tan, and black. It is characteristically translucent, so light can be seen through thin edges of a piece of the stone. Fossils are rare in novaculite, although some geologists report conodonts, sponge spicules, radiolaria, and spores.

Although it is typically described as having a grittier texture than chert, novaculite is variable in texture, from the fine-grained “Arkansas stone” to the coarse-grained and more porous “Ouachita stone.” There is also variation in hardness and density of the stone, important for its use as whetstones. Luster varies from waxy to dull with more glossy luster artificially produced by heat treatment.

Each year for several years, I have been coming in the fall and have been able to enjoy the colorful foliage that are common to the many types of hardwoods in these mountain. This year is no different, but especially when I drive to the top of West Mountain.

At the summit of the auto drive, there is a small parking area where I park, grab my camera, get out of the jammer and take a short walk to get some photos of this summit.

Too, since there is a garbage receptacle, I empty my small amount of trash into the receptacle.

After climbing to the top of the novaclite, i return to the jammer and then begin my drive off of West mountain and back into town.