Find the Bless Your Heart hearts

By Ethan Nahté

A group of local crafters called 2800 CRAFTSY has initiated a community project lovingly called The Bless Your Heart Project.

This group has designed and handmade charming fabric hearts that will be placed around Mena and surrounding communi- tle exercise is good for the heart, so they say. The hearts will be approximately the size of an adult hand. The women plan on placing the hearts where they won’t get blown away. With any luck, they won’t get soaked, but they are washable. ties in various locations to be found and adopted by random strangers. The 150 hearts contain the message “BLESS YOUR HEART” and are intended to simply bless the heart of the finders, The hearts are yours to keep or to place in a location for someone else to find and bless their heart. The choice is yours.

2800 CRAFTSY is a Mena craft group that is free and open to all interested people. The group has a current membership of about 200, although not all 200 show up at the meetings. That number is more of a dedicated dozen or two.

“The group has been around a little over a year. We meet every Tuesday for anyone who would like to come. It’s free. There is no membership. You come and go as you wish. We just ask that you be nice.” They meet at 2800 Jerry Lee Dr.

Jann Stricklin is the founder of 2800 CRAFTSY. She said, “We started this group because there’s really nothing to do in the community a lot of times. We craft, we sew, we do charitable things, we have one of the Green House Cottages we’ve adopted, so when holidays come, we bring them treats and Easter baskets and things like that.

“This is our outreach for the community. We really like the idea of find a rock, but we just want to bless the community. Every one of the hearts says, “Bless Your Heart.”

The project will begin on Tuesday, March 21, so keep your eyes open and happy hunting.

The searching might also get people stirring outdoors after the cold and wet has passed from the winter weather. A lit-

Their meetings are a combination of working on craft projects, events coming up, and maybe a smidgen of gossip. It’s not just sewing. It’s any craft you want to bring along and work on as you socialize. They generally take a lunch break. Sometimes they come back and work after the lunchbreak, but not always. It’s very loose and relaxed. It even includes gardening and canning amongst those who want to crochet or create découpage. The group is open to newcomers, male or female, who are trying to learn a crafting skill. If anyone in the group knows how to do something, they are happy to show beginners how it’s done.

“When you come to the group, the basis of the group is a common interest in crafting, but it’s turned into a sisterhood. It’s very emotional for me to even talk about it.

Look for 2800 CRAFTSY on Facebook Groups for more information. The group asks that if you do find a heart, take a selfie with the heart and where you found it. They’d love to see who finds their creations.

ERNST continued from page 1 the mood strikes me — when I think there are going to be great waterfalls flowing or a great light show or something like that.

“I do also plan to have some camera equipment with me when I travel. I still travel and hike quite a bit around Arkansas and other places. If something really wonderful presents itself, hopefully, I will be able to capture some of it.”

In addition to his breath-taking picture books, Ernst has also produced several guidebooks, covering various Arkansas hiking trails, scenic views for nature lovers, and waterfall guidebooks for the state.

“The ‘Arkansas Waterfalls’ guidebook is actually our best-selling guidebook” Ernst said. “It first came out in 2001, then it was updated with a lot more waterfalls in 2012. We’re going to do a third edition of it, but it may be next year before it comes out. It’s going to have a couple hundred waterfalls in it.

“One of the things that surprises a lot of people is that we have got literally thousands of waterfalls around the state. Very few of them are unnamed or well-known. A lot of them have been documented now because of social media and because of the waterfalls guidebook. People use that as a basis: ‘Which waterfall are we going to go to this weekend?’ ‘How many can we go see?’. It’s been a great excuse to get tween the Appalachian Mountains and the Rocky Mountains, and Rich Mountain is the second-highest peak. Did you know Arkansas also has the highest waterfall between the two ranges?

“Hemmed-In-Hollow Falls on the Buffalo National River up in Newton County is the trail, over there just a few feet off the trail, there’s different kinds of wildflowers and moss-covered rocks that were just really a brilliant green. They kind of stood out, which right now is early March. It’s pretty stark landscape up in the Ozarks — it gets more advanced down here in the Ouachi- know Queen Wilhelmina State Park carries our books. We also have about 14 or 15 different guidebooks. Most of them are about Arkansas. They’re available at state parks, local book stores, visitor centers, gift shops, and of course online at our web page, which is TimErnst.com . There’s a link to all of the books that we carry. If you want to order them by mail order. Our distributor is the University of Arkansas Press. There’s a link to each book on their website to order if you can’t find them locally. We always recommend folks shop local when they can. A lot of people will go into a bookstore and not see our books immediately. Sometimes they get put in other places. If you’re in a bookstore and don’t see them, just ask. They may have their own shelf full of them.”

“Yes, I’m a nature photographer, and by trade… my advocation, I guess, is to share the beauty of Arkansas. That’s really what I love to do. It’s not so we can get millions of more people to come here; it’s as much for the residents to be able to help them appreciate what we’ve got here as well.” tallest waterfall between the Appalachians and the Rocky Mountains, which is basically mid-America. It’s 208 feet tall.” tas — but the green moss right now by itself is really spectacular.

Ernst has a gallery next door to his residence in the Ponca area, where sightseers flock to hopefully catch a glimpse and a photo or two of elk. Visiting the gallery requires making an appointment, which can be done online from the homepage of his website.

Why Arkansas?

Despite his travels to other mountain ranges, national parks and hidden gems across the United States and other countries such as Iceland, Ernst has a love for Arkansas.

“I’ve always found Arkansas to be very photographable. The landscape here is very intimate. It’s something I can go out and if I see something really neat, I can get there without technical climbing equipment or traveling 20 miles on foot, although some of it is way in the back country. I know some other places have some incredible panoramic landscapes, and that’s great, but you can’t reach a lot of them physically.

“I had got down on my hands and knees right off the trail and photographed, not a wildflower, but the leaves of a wildflower that was purple. It’s the underside of the leaves. I was showing my cousin, ‘Look at this incredible thing.’ It’s a liverwort. It’s named because of the color underneath the flower is kind of liver colored. Things like that really fascinate me.

Visitors to his site can also view his online journal about wildlife. Once named Cloudland Cabin Journal, it has since changed to Little Bluff Journal after moving from his property where Cloudland was located on a scenic bluff not too far from Hawksbill Crag.

Legacy

people into the great outdoors and discover that much further into the back country what we have in Arkansas… in some places, maybe right next to the highway, that they don’t know about.”

Several Arkansans may be aware that Mount Magazine is the highest peak be-

“To give you an example, I was hiking with some cousins a couple of days ago. We were going down a trail with a big waterfall at the end of it, which was the main feature. It’s the Lost Valley Trail at Buffalo National River. Along the way, it seems like every 10 or 15 steps, on the left side of the trail, on the right side of the

“Most people will look at it and they see way beyond what’s right in front of them, but I think Arkansas has so much intimate scenery like that, that is literally within our grasp. For a photographer, it’s an easy place for me to take pictures that I can show people. They’ll say, ‘Wow, look at that! That’s incredible,’ instead of the same scenic vista in Colorado or at Yosemite, which is also quite spectacular, of course. Ours is within our reach, I think — a lot more than some other places.”

Tracking them down

Out of Ernst’s 20 coffee-table picture books, 18 are exclusively photos of nature and wildlife within Arkansas.

“Sixteen of those are now out of print. I

It’s understandable that Ernst, 68, is ready to retire on a professional level. It takes a lot of work and time to travel, hike, and shoot thousands of photos to find those perfect images that are awe-inspiring scenes that many may not have known existed. Don’t be surprised if you’re out on a trail, especially in the Ozarks, and see Ernst with a camera in hand, relaxing and doing what he loves best.

Odds are, he has inspired several people to take up nature photography, either as a hobby or as a professional.

Meanwhile, Ernst has left the world a wonderful collection of outdoor images revealing the beauty and splendor of Arkansas more than anything.