Hobbs State Park is once again hosting its annual Living Forest on Saturday, Oct. 25, from 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. This family-friendly, not-scary event is themed around a popular movie involving a wicked witch, flying monkeys, and a pair of red ruby slippers. You guessed it — the park is calling this year’s rendition The Wizard of Hobbs.
Families will follow a yellow brick road through the quarter-mile Ozark Plateau Trail and learn from costumed animals how tornadoes that struck the park in 2024 were destructive but also allowed for a healthier, more diverse forest.
Chris Pistole is a park interpreter at Hobbs, and Trish Redus is an Arkansas Master Naturalist. They both spoke with Ozarks at Large’s Jack Travis over Zoom recently, as Redus helped clear damage from the tornadoes during a seasonal internship at the park. She had an idea for how they could turn this natural disaster into a learning opportunity.
Trish Redus: We were out there actually clearing this very trail. The damage was so incredibly immense — I can’t really put it into words. It was something you just had to experience. Imagine giant, 80-foot-tall, 60-year-old pine trees being lifted up in clumps and then thrown together, and you’re kind of sawing through that.
And it just kind of came to me that while there’s a lot of damage that we’re dealing with right now, I know that ultimately nature’s going to have a way of dealing with this that will result in some positive impacts to the habitat as a whole. And so, it didn’t take too far of a jump to go from a windthrow — a.k.a. tornado — event to imagine the very familiar pop culture reference to The Wizard of Oz.
And I was kind of kicking the idea around for Living Forest, and it just was kind of serendipitous that at the same time The Wizard of Oz in general had experienced a resurgence with Wicked, and so I thought it would be a really great way, when the timing was right, to connect people to the hope that would be brought about as nature began to heal.
So that’s really kind of how it all came about. It was out there, sweaty, sawdust, and ever looking for a way to see the positive and to help the general public come to the knowledge of the way that the forest works and begin to love the things that we love.
Travis: What is a Living Forest, just in case someone might not be familiar with this kind of program?
Pistole: So the Living Forest is a special event. It’s our largest special event that we do here at Hobbs State Park Conservation Area. And I actually don’t know the exact year that it was started, but it’s been ongoing for many, many years.
And the idea has evolved from, in the early years, they had costumed characters — mostly animals that represent species you’d find here in the forest at Hobbs. So the idea was basically, you know what, if the forest — of course it is alive — but what if the plants and the animals could actually communicate with humans to share their stories so that we could learn more about them, their trials, their tribulations, what they need to survive, and how we can play a role in helping them.
So it’s taken various forms over the years, but yeah, we’re excited about offering something different. And we have a lot of people that come out and bring their kids, and some of them now actually remember coming when they were kids, and now they’re bringing their children, which is cool to see.
Travis: What’s different about the programming this year? You’re incorporating all of this — the damage from the tornado and how the forest is rebuilding itself. You mentioned it might be perhaps beneficial for the forest that some of this clearing happened.
Trish, could you maybe talk about how you’re incorporating this into the programming, into the education?
Redus: In keeping with the tradition of Living Forest, it is some kind of really heady scientific stuff that’s being presented in a fun way. There are still costumed characters — some of which are animals, some are plants, some are humans.
And as the participants experience this trail, as they journey through the Living Forest, they are going to see the results and the impacts of disturbance such as tornadoes and windthrow from the point of view of the animals. They’re going to hear how it affected the most obvious characters, which are the trees. They’re going to hear how it affected some of the birds and some of the smaller inhabitants clear up to the king of the forest himself.
And then they’re also going to get, along their journey, an understanding of the role that we as humans also must play in this part. One of the things that sometimes people don’t realize is that these natural areas have, for many, many years — and by many years, I mean hundreds of years — had human fingerprints upon them.
And so while nature can kind of guide itself into its own recovery, if you will, there are things that we need to do to help make sure that that occurs. And so they’re going to learn and even get opportunities to, in a fun way, participate in what it takes to really, as they walk through this forest and see the devastation that happened on this particular trail, how they can help play a role in helping to guide that forest back to health and making it their own to enjoy day in, day out, and generation after generation.
Our hope is as they watch the animals and the plants talk about what it’s like to be a part of the forest, when our participants walk off, they realize that they too are a part of nature and that this park is their park.
And public lands — there’s a line in there that says, “Public lands thrive when the public gets involved.” And we’re really hoping that that’s what happens, and people will find their way to serve the park and public lands and places that they love.
And if nothing else, even if they don’t walk away with that, they’ll walk away with an understanding that with a little care and a little magic, nature does have a way of healing after something as catastrophic as the May 2024 storms.
Travis: Education and inspiration. Chris, something caught my eye in the press release — there will also be craft booths at the visitor center. Can you tell me a little bit more about that?
Pistole: Yes, we were just working on nailing that down earlier today. So people will come to this event and they’ll come to the visitor center first, and that’s where they need to register — get their family’s name and the number of people put in at the front desk or the front booth. They’ll get a time assigned for their turn to go on the trail.
The trail will take about an hour for them to do that portion of it. But while they’re waiting here at the visitor center, they’ll be able to go and visit, at their convenience, various booths.
We’re going to have one about bats and another one about owls. Of course, around Halloween time, those are great animals to focus on and maybe dispel some of the myths that people have about these so-called spooky creatures. There will be crafts that the kids can do there at those booths. It’ll be a lot of fun and a good way of passing the time till they’re ready to go out on the trail with their group.
There will be groups of up to 25 who will depart every 15 minutes from the visitor center. We anticipate that we can cycle through this event with probably around 600 people. And yeah, it’s a lot of fun.
Then at the end, after they’ve been on the trail, they’ll come to our large pavilion, which is a picnic area, and there they can make s’mores, enjoy some hot chocolate, some hot tea, and visit with me and maybe some other staff about opportunities to volunteer at Hobbs and maybe get a little more in-depth information about our restoration plans for Hobbs and recovering from the tornado.
Travis: Where can people go for more information?
Pistole: There’s the Arkansas State Parks website that will have information about the event. They just have to go to Hobbs State Park, that section, and under “Events,” this event will be listed there. Also, we have a very active friends group called the Friends of Hobbs. They have a Facebook page and a website, so information about the event will also be located there.
That was Hobbs State Park’s Chris Pistole and NWA Master Naturalist Trish Redus speaking with Ozarks at Large’s Jack Travis about The Wizard of Hobbs Living Forest. Once more, the event takes place Saturday, Oct. 25, from 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.
