The Little Log Cabin in the Hills

One October we rented a beautiful log cabin in the Ozark mountains of Arkansas. This place was in the middle of no where! I'm serious! Don't get me wrong..we were looking for seclusion...and we weren't disappointed. It was winding black top through beautiful forests in the 'hills' till we got to the turn off. I had visions of mountain men guarding their 'stills' hiding in the woods and 'dueling banjo's playing in the background somewhere. We went from a winding red dirt road with the odd old run down shack or log cabin to a well maintained narrow gravel road that wound down to our cabin hidden in the woods. It was beautiful! The people had told us on the phone to just go ahead and make ourselves at home and they'd be around sometime to check on us....wow. I knew from the pictures that this cabin was going to be nice but it was much better than we expected and the surroundings were just beautiful.  There were 2 other cabins but they were hidden in the tree's quite a  distance away where you couldn't see them. The fellow finally came around and told us that there was a trail leading down to the Buffalo River. We had brought our canoe but after driving down there it was obvious that we wouldn't be canoing as the water was too low as it had been a dry summer and fall. We decided to hike down to the trail and see if we could locate the Indian cave the fellow said was near the trail...the Indians would stop there for shelter when they were hunting many moons ago. We found the trail and the cave but the fellow forgot to tell us that it was about a 3 mile hike to the river and we hadn't thought to bring water....duh. It was beautiful down in the 'holler' as the fellow called it but it was so hot and humid and no breeze in the thick forest so we decided to head back to the cabin. Well....we lost the trail and ended up going in circles and at one point my dear hubby decided to stand overlooking a rock cliff with a bit of a ledge before it dropped off. His foot slipped as he turned around to come back up and he started to fall backwards ...with a back pack on!!! I tried to grab him but he was too far away and it happened too fast. I still remember that horrified look on his face as he looked at me when he reached for air. I'm sure my heart skipped a beat. Thank heavens he bent his legs and bent forward in a split second and was able to grab a little ledge before he went back too far! He skinned his fingers and really scraped up his shin but he managed to keep from falling the 15 feet or so onto the rocks below. We finally found our trail again after being gone 4 hours... were we thirsty when we got back to the cabin! The rest of the vacation went without incident and we had a wonderful time. Hopefully one day we'll go back...but this time we'll make sure the river is up and we have penty of water on us and we'll stay away from any cliffs!