Ozark Life

A photo essay of the intimate beauty of daily life in rural Arkansas.

Words & Photos by Terra Fondriest

March 31, 2020

Motor down just one dirt road, and you’ll begin to collect moments that are unique to this part of the South we call the Ozark Hills. Up and down hills and across creeks, maybe stopping in the middle to listen to the water flow and then heading back up, you’ll pass vistas of seemingly endless peaks dotted with cattle pastures. You’ll see wild turkeys dash across the road in front of you on their way to the acorns and hickory nuts in the forest on the other side. If your windows are open, you might hear waterfalls cascading down the drainage ways after a hard rain, or the interior might fill with dust and the smell of oak leaves burning during a dry spell. You might meet a truck coming at you on the narrow road and see how it pulls off near the edge of the woods to let you pass. 

And if it so happens you decide to put roots down and call these hills home, you might start to develop relationships with certain parts of the creek or different bends in the road. You might start to become familiar with the people nestled in the hills who have been here for generations and those who arrived recently, just like you. You will slowly become part of the cadence of everyday Ozark life.

Young Ozark Love, October 14, 2017. Taylor and Trey, ages 20 and 21, got married on land that’s been in the family for three generations, a pasture that belonged to the groom's grandfather. They'd dated most of high school and had been planning this day for over a year.  The ceremony was in the afternoon, followed by a potluck under a nearby oak tree.  It was after that when the younger crowd moved to where the trucks were parked to start their after-party.

I grew up in the far Chicago suburb of Joliet, Illinois, but always felt drawn to life outside the city limits. Whether it was spending my weekends at the horse barn on the outskirts of town, feeding and watering so I could get to ride for free, cranking up George Jones as I drove my grandparent’s old Buick LeSabre down the subdivision streets, or being the only girl in my high school to click down the halls in cowboy boots, I knew my heart did not belong in the city. I was an introvert who did what I was told, but knew that when graduation came I was leaving to seek my right place in life. 

I majored in fish and wildlife conservation at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, graduated in December 2004. The next month, I took an internship where I got certified in wildland firefighting and soon after got a job as a hotshot firefighter. After several years spent traveling the country while in the peak shape of my life, sweating my butt off as the only female on a crew with 19 men, putting out fires in remote parts of the U.S., life landed me in rural Minnesota. There, I took a job as a horseback riding instructor, which led to a job working as a wrangler for an outfitter in the Bob Marshall Wilderness of Montana for a couple seasons. At some point in there, I got married, and then, in 2009, my husband’s job brought us to the rural Ozarks of Arkansas.

Marking Territory, October 1, 2019.  We live with a minimum of three dogs, more if the neighbors’ animals are over visiting.  So, the kids see dogs marking their territory all the time.  While on a walk down the road, I caught my daughter pretending to be one of the dogs.  I thought she had pretty good form.

One thing has always seemed to lead to another in my life, and I love that, because it makes each day feel like an adventure. These days, my life is still like that; it’s just that home base is a forested mountaintop and the stories-to-be lie in the everyday interactions between us, the land, and its people. We have two kids now. No two days are ever the same, and, in a very profound way, I have them to thank for opening my eyes to finding adventures in the everyday. 

This Ozark Life project is a lot of things for me: a way to get to know the people around us, a way to record this time and place from my perspective for the history books, and a way to pursue a personal challenge. But, perhaps the reason that motivates me the most is connecting the Ozark culture to the life I used to live in the Chicago suburbs. By seeing moments that are totally normal in the Ozarks, moments that make me smile, and realizing how quirky those would look to a person living outside this area, I can relate our mountain world to other people.

Often these are snippets in my own family’s everyday life, but lately I am spending time photographing others in my community. I am drawn to documenting people who work using their hands and ingenuity to make a living. Those who are following their passion and those who are making a living off of the land here. I love spending time with other families similar to my own, who are navigating life here, each with its own twist. 

I am still the same introverted girl who grew up in the suburbs. Getting to know new people makes me more nervous photographing for this project. It’s a challenge that is daunting on most days, but the camaraderie built by pushing through that with my subjects yields the intimacy I strive for in my storytelling. Some of the folks I photograph are friends and neighbors, but others are people I meet through circumstance, whose everyday story I find interesting and a good piece for my Ozark Life story quilt. But I approach them. I might talk to them right away about my project, or I might let it simmer a bit and get to know them over days, months, even years before I bring up my project and my request to photograph them. Building a relationship is important, because it makes the pictures secondary.

The Pizza Buffet,  June 1, 2018. After a hot morning of photographing dogs at the Ozark Humane Society, the kids and I stopped for lunch at the Pizza Pro buffet in town.  The building used to be a KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken), but since has been decorated in the new owner’s style.  Well, it’s kind of a mix.

Porch Snow, November 12, 2018. Since snow is a rarity here, the kids go nutty when it starts coming down.  My sensible daughter took the time to get her boots and jacket on, but my son just went with his gut as they held a dance party on the porch.

Gaming in the Ozarks, August 19, 2018. Fortnite. It's a video game that came out in 2017 and is on its way to becoming the most popular ever, with over 250 million people now playing it. This is one of the children in a family of five that lives here in the Ozarks. Everyone had finished eating dinner, so he headed down to the “man cave” to play Fortnite with a friend via Wi-Fi, so had his headphones on communicating as they worked through the game. Trophies of animals they’ve hunted on their land hang on the wall.

Just outside the little town of Oxley, Clair Gorton and his daughter Althea wake up every morning at 1:15am, in separate houses not more than one-quarter mile apart. Althea gets dressed, eats a banana at her kitchen table under the glow of her flashlight, puts on her compression socks, muck boots, and jacket, and gets in her vehicle to drive down the road to her dad’s. He’s already out under the stars, walking through the lush green pasture to a chorus of bugs and frogs, gathering mama cows with a mix of sweet talk and hand movements. Before that, he’d been to the milking barn to open the doors, turn the lights on, and prepare food bins for his organic dairy cows milk producers. When Althea arrives, she’ll turn the radio onto their favorite local station and then, when the cows enter, get them locked into their milking stations and start wiping their udders down with a mixture of warm water and dish soap that Clair had prepared in a big Thermos. They’ll go through the whole process of milking, every day, twice a day. When Althea’s all done at the barn around 4 a.m., she heads back to her house, where her husband has already been up to make breakfast for her. They visit, he feeds the pigs and then heads into work as an electrician while she naps for a bit. 

At the Ozark Timber mill, Jamie clocks in to work before the sun rises just like he’s done every weekday for the past 16 years. He pokes his head into the office to double check what piece of equipment they want him to run that day; he’s versed in all of them since he’s been there for years. It’s the first day for a few guys there: They’ll have to stack lumber by hand. Chances are, they won’t last, “No one wants to work anymore,” says Eddie Martin, chief of operations. 

Up the highway and down a dirt road, Kaytie lies in bed next to her baby, who has slept well because she’s nursed her all night long. Kaytie wonders if she herself slept more than four hours and whether she’ll have the energy and demeanor to be the person she wants to be for her three other kids. The day hasn’t begun, and she’s exhausted.

Talking to Dad, May 6, 2019. Dad is away on two-week wildfire assignment, so he’d made his evening call home to talk with the kids, while they happened to be playing on the porch with some baby blue jays we’d found abandoned earlier in the day.  My husband frequently travels for prescribed burning or wildfire assignments, and the kids and I hold down the fort and seem to acquire animals while he’s gone.

Time moves, everyone in their own rhythms and situations, yet it’s a cadence we all relate to. The difference between the Ozarks and the suburbs where I grew up are the ties people have to the land, which grow deeper with every generation. Will Norton can point to the soil under his feet and say his granddad’s dad farmed the same soil where he now raises both cattle and his family. There’s a respect and connection to these hills that’s hard to put into words; it’s almost like a heartbeat that the land infuses in you. 

Even for the newer arrivals like us (we’ve lived here 11 years now), we begin to mark time by seasons. It’s time to hunt for morel mushrooms when youth turkey season arrives. Around that same time, the meat chickens should be close to butchering size, but it’s also prescribed burn season, so I’ll have to do them myself because my husband will be out working fires. Hopefully the kids can keep themselves busy on butchering day or - God forbid, - help. The mud puddles are full from the spring rains, so they can go check them for tadpole eggs. The cycles roll on through the year. The seasons dictate changes in everyday life that become a comfort over the years. 

I am drawn to this cadence of life, the beauty of the moments that pass each day. 

I live in the Ozarks, where my heart feels comfort when another deer season rolls around because it means we’ve made it through the hot summer months. That’s when we appreciate the days we spent swimming in the river and think about the walks we’ll soon take through the woods when the leaves fall. Whether it’s in moments of intense sadness or happiness or in everyday routines, there is a comfort in feeling the heartbeat of these hills, that the rhythm of everyday life moves on.

Feeding the Pigs, March 31, 2018

The neighbor kids were doing their morning chores which includes feeding their meat pigs. They pour milk on top of the feed in order to provide more vitamins, minerals and calcium, and to sweeten the meat.

Ice Pigs, February 20, 2019

Ice had fallen all over the Ozarks during the night, so the next morning it looked like a wonderland. I visited the neighbor's meat pigs and was able to snap this photo quick before they started eating all the ice off! Apparently, humans aren't the only ones who like to munch on ice.

Caught Him, May 11, 2019

The night before sheep shearing day, Mary put all of her flock into a small pen because she knew it was going to rain and the shearer would be there in the morning.  She managed to get all the sheep in the pen except Philbo.  All morning, her flock stayed dry under cover as it poured rain and they got sheared, but Philbo was still evading capture and getting soaking wet.  It was a moment of triumph when he was finally caught, and it took Mary, her husband, and their friend to drag Philbo over to the barn with the shearer holding the gate open.  Mary raises Merino-Romney sheep. She makes and sells products from their wool.

A Hug for Miss Piggy, March 31, 2018

On our dirt road, our neighbors are like family. We wave, we stop and chat, we invite each other over for dinner, we bicker, and we help each other out. These particular neighbors have been on our road the longest, and they have a shop where Chuck fixes vehicles in his spare time. My daughter always tries to steal Chuck's hat (what's happening here). Right now, they have a handful of meat pigs they are raising, but this particular one has become like a pet and her name is Miss Piggy.

Sorghum Day, November 2, 2019

The Farmer family has grown and made sorghum molasses for several generations now.  Every fall, they gather at their sorghum shack to press the cane they’ve grown at their land up on Gaither Mountain (where they swear the cane grows sweeter) and cook it down.  Extended relatives come too, all munching on the cane as they work, in anticipation of tasting the thick brown syrup whose smell has filled the air.

Uncle Rod, October 14, 2017

As all the girls were getting ready for the wedding of Taylor and Trey, Uncle Rod walked in letting them know, “If any of y’all think you need make up to make you look beautiful, you’re wrong.  And if any guy ever tells you different, I will personally handle them.”

Skimming the Sorghum, November 2, 2019

Tina Farmer works on skimming the foam off the sorghum liquid as it cooks into molasses.  Her family has grown and cooked sorghum for as long as she can remember, and skimming it is one of the constant jobs as it bubbles and thickens.  By day, she is the genealogist at the Boone County library.

Summer Feet, August 11, 2018

After an evening of playing with the neighbor kids down the road, my kids’ feet looked like this on the car ride back to our house.  All summer long, these two don't wear shoes. They have one pair of sandals for when we go to town.

Ozark Beekeepers, July 26, 2018

The Usrey sons learned beekeeping from their father. He’s kept bees most of their lives, but his health can’t keep up with it anymore, so his sons and grandsons do the hive work now. On this day, it was time to rob the honey from their hives that are scattered about the family property. This particular hive was very productive, so they were shifting around “supers,” which are the smaller upper boxes, so they can bring some honey back home and leave some as food for the bees.

Washing in the Creek, September 21, 2019

The Knapp family had a well drilled for their new home before they built it, but it collapsed shortly after.  So, their family heads to a spring fed creek once a week to fill large containers of water that they haul back home for the week ahead.  While they are at the creek, baby Karoline, the youngest of four kids, gets washed by mom and plays in the water.

Fixing the Flat, December 4, 2016

Flat tires are a part of life here in the Ozarks when you live down a gravel road.  The roads are natural rock and rough.  After getting a flat, my daughter told me that she wanted to change it.  So, we went through the process together, starting by loosening the lugnuts.