This is the Padua Podcast Network. Running Fever episode 452, Tsa-la-gi Trail. Welcome to Running Fever. My name is Michael Davis, and this is a show about fitness, diet, and medicine.

My goal is to live a long, healthy, happy, active life right up to the very end. It’s about living long and loving life. This is called Walker Park. The idea was to go to the Tsa-La-Gi Trail, Walker Park in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

It’s like I don’t know, 5:45 in the morning, something like that, still pretty dark, a little partial moon up there, so we’re gonna go along the frisco frisco trail, and that is gonna T at the Tsa-La-Gi Trail, and then it goes somewhere else on the other side. We’re going to go left when we get there. Tsa-La-Gi Trail, of course, is part of the Trail of Tears that I talked about in a previous episode. Something I’ve been thinking about for a long time, you know, every time I’m driving along, because sometimes it’s actually on the roads, you know, the trails become roads and such.

So I see those signs for the Trail of Tears and think, yeah, you know, that’s interesting. I should find out more about that. So as you heard, I dug deep into it. And then I looked into how I can actually walk these trails in the area, and there are at least two that I’m going to take you on.

This one and there’s another one. Probably the very next episode. You know, fitness department, fitness happiness department. I went to Devil’s Den State Park last Saturday, I guess, and with a new friend, someone I’d never hiked with.

We went up to Yellow Rock. It’s been a long time since I’ve been up Yellow Rock, and I always like to go up there. It’s beautiful at the top. Got a nice outcropping overlook.

Everybody gets pictures there. I always get a picture there. It’s just cool. And you know I had talked about going places where cyclists’ bikes can’t go, and that’s one of them. At least I didn’t see any, and I doubt there were any, but you know, I’m kind of repenting of my anti-bike ways.

I have come up with a series on cycling in northwest Arkansas. This area, Bentonville in particular, I don’t know what I call the mecca of cycling. It’s the mountain biking capital of the world, Bentonville, Arkansas, believe it or not. It was an intentional thing.

I mean, some people just kind of made it happen. It’s amazing. Anyway, I’ll talk more about that in a future series. I believe it’s going to be a seven-part series if I get all the interviews I want to.

All right. Tsa-la-gi Trail, 0.3 miles. Walker Park Trail goes the other way. Well, this bridge looks familiar.

It’s like a lot of the others we’ve seen on the Razorback Greenway. Ah, Tsa-La-Gi Trail. So, yeah, so I said, you know, I keep seeing these signs. I want to go on it.

I’m not sure which original route, because two of the routes came straight through Fayetteville. There must not have been much of Fayetteville back then. I mean, we’re talking 1830s.

Now it’s approaching 100,000 people, but back then, it was probably just a handful. Maybe just a wide spot in the road, as they say. So, anyway, this doesn’t appear to be a nature trail exactly, even though part of it’s in the park. I haven’t even gotten to the Tsa-La-Gi Trail yet, but we’re in a city.

I think the trail goes through a housing development. I don’t know, but it’s an adventure. Another adventure on Running a Fever. Yeah, like I said, so there were two trails, I think the Benge Trail, and these were usually named after the Cherokee or Indian leaders who led them.

Now the Tsa-La-Gi Trail is only supposed to be less than a mile and a half. Maybe 1.6. I don’t know. Maybe two miles out and two miles back.

Assuming I don’t get lost. Benge Trail and the Northern Trail. Northern Trail probably was not named after an Indian leader, but probably just because it’s the farthest north, and that one I believe was the longest as I look at the map. Yeah, so we’re almost there, I think. Playing hurt today.

It’s not too bad, but as I said, we went to Yellow Rock, and I’m wearing my Doc Marten work boots, which, as you know, if you’ve listened before, I’ve taken them on some pretty long hikes before, never had any trouble. But they are only available in whole sizes. So my right foot’s bigger than my left. It’s half a size bigger for my right foot.

And so it’s a whole size bigger for my left foot, which would normally be 10. wearing an 11 boot so I really need a thick sock which I have but I was not wearing last Saturday so I had some chafing on my heel broke the skin and hasn’t been very much fun waiting for it to heal. So I’m wearing different shoes today instead of my Abeo walking shoes. I’ve got on the Stan Smith Adidas, which are easier on the heel, not necessarily a better walking shoe, though.

All right, well, hopefully this is Tsa-La-Gi Trail. And that’s what the sign says, Tsa-La-Gi Trail. Okay, folks, we’re stepping into history. Stepping into history right now.

When you go through a town, you’re probably going through an established trail. You know, there’s a main road through the town. That’s probably where you go, right? If you’ve got 16,000 people to march.

So I imagine this is both the Northern Trail and the Benge Trail. You know, so we’re probably on both of those trails, people. following different routes, all from probably pretty much the same place, an internment camp near Charleston, Tennessee. It’s in the far southeast of Tennessee.

Fort Cass. And so they just rounded them all up, put them in this internment camp, and those are never nice. Never nice. I don’t know if I had an episode of the Japanese internment camps when I went there.

Maybe I didn’t think that related to fitness, but there were no real trails. In fact, there were no more camps. There was just a graveyard. On that trip, I learned about how bad conditions were at these camps.

And honestly, they weren’t that bad. They were just confined. They had schools, churches, so forth. I don’t think that’s how they were, how the Indians were treated at Fort Gass and other places.

There was another camp in Memphis. I don’t think they were treated that well, but I think you know, I went to the Sultana Museum. The Sultana was a riverboat, and it’s the largest maritime disaster in American history. Riverboat killed over 1,000 people.

And they were Union soldiers who had been kept in camps in the South, and they were being transported back home after the war. But I kind of learned about how those prisoners, who were prisoners of war, were treated in the camps. And I kind of imagined that it was similar. Not very good, lots of disease, just people are too close together.

Probably not enough water, clean water. Might not have been any clean water, I don’t know. You know, what’s amazing is not that people died. It’s amazing that people survived.

And so while we’re taking a leisurely stroll through the apartment complexes of Northwest Arkansas, this would not have been leisurely for the Cherokees and other tribes that were walking, being forced into Indian territory from southeast United States. I know that the journey took months. It was a thousand miles of walking. So, I mean, imagine how long it takes.

And they were held up by things like, you know, river crossings that they were actually charged money to cross several times what a white person would have been charged. and just weather, probably. Things like that that would hold you up. But it took months.

And so the beginning was in the wintertime, I believe, the winter of, I don’t know, 1835 or something. I have to refer back to that previous episode. And so they were exposed. to freezing temperatures.

You know, that northern trail, they went through Kentucky, and I mean, you know, even here it’s too cold to be outside with no shoes on during the winter. That’s the trail we’re walking right now. I can try to imagine and try to sort of feel what they might have felt, but I will never be able to. It’s just beyond my understanding.

Someone has written lots of little messages on the trail with chalk. You know, when I search for this type of thing on Copilot, which is, as you know, a generative AI chat program, it sort of just subtly, you know, in its answers, it changes Indian to Native American, which is no doubt the politically correct term. It’s not a derogatory term. I don’t know why.

It’s just people, I don’t know, people like their political correctness. So, whatever. Tony Hillerman, one of my favorite authors, spent a lot of time with the Navajo Indians in the southwestern United States. And his books are wonderful, and you should read them.

Sadly, he’s passed away, but his daughter is actually still writing on the same series. I read something by him who said, you know, he was at a panel discussion, and you know, the Indians there said, you know, we’re Indians. You know, we don’t necessarily need to be called Native Americans or whatever. Fun example.

I’m not going to pass; I’m not going to cross Razorback Road, even though I understand there’s some construction on the trail and that it’s eventually going to be a five-mile loop right now. stops at Razorback Road, even though the map shows it going beyond that. I will probably come back here again, although, really, environmentally, it’s not a very, you know, peaceful or enjoyable trail. As you can see, you know, there’s a semi parked on the trail in front of me.

Walking by houses and parking lots. This is the back of a shopping mall of some kind. Yeah, just, you know, city stuff and not, you know, like super pretty city stuff either. So anyway, I guess, I don’t know if I could, I should say that’s sad.

I mean, you know, we need back lots of shopping centers, don’t we? I mean, we gotta have some place for these semis to pull in and unload their stuff so we can buy it. But putting a trail, walking through here, I don’t know, but it doesn’t matter where we want to put the trail. In this case, this is where the trail is, because they walked it almost 200 years ago.

So, yeah, if you’re on YouTube, comment, tell me your name, and where you’re from. Just kidding, you can do that, that would be great. What do you think of the episode, so forth? Why do you think I’m wrong by saying Indian instead of Native American?

That’s okay, you can tell me. And don’t forget to like and subscribe, so forth. So this is where the Tsa-la-gi Trail is, and there’s no changing that to some beautiful place. Although, you know, you could tear all this down, put up trees, plant trees, why not?

Wouldn’t bother me. Tsa-la-gi Trail South Loop. Go left, it says. So I’m going left, sticking with what the signs say.

This looks a little better. Nice park-like area here. Diet department, been gaining a little weight lately. And when I say a little, I mean more than normal in the past few months, broken out of that range that I’ve been in for many months.

210 to 220. Yesterday I was 225. So it’s a little alarming. I’ve got to do something.

I’ve got to make adjustments. Still pretty much sticking to my plan. But, you know, I have two protein shakes a day and then a regular meal at night. Well, I guess it’s not quite as regular.

It’s probably more like a little heavy. and maybe some snacks here and there. Squirrels are still active. I don’t think squirrels hibernate for the winter.

I mean, if they did, they wouldn’t need to gather all these nuts, right? Because they won’t be eating if they’re asleep. This is going to be a long trek. I really didn’t imagine that it would be.

I thought, well, you know, just scoot up to the trail. It’s a mile. Scoot back two miles and some change. Scooter kids heading for school, I guess.

Well, I’m going to assume this is Razorback Road. I’m not going to go any further. In any event, I feel like I’ve had enough for half of a workout today, so I’m going to head back the other way and maybe might steal a parking spot there in the future and go on the other side of you know they said south loop um at at that corner back there that we turned it’s supposed to be a loop they’re supposed to be construction, extending the trail, and then it’s going to be a five and change mile loop.

I look forward to… I don’t know how much I’ll be walking this trail, it’s not really my scene. It’s a little too urban for my tastes, but I am glad we came because, you know, it’s important. This is a historically significant place.

There’s something about places that hold a little, you know, last Sunday at church, we were celebrating the Feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica in Rome. That is a sacred place, and the preacher talked about sacred places. And then he talked about our church and the one that we’re trying to build, the new one. This is kind of a sacred place, though it’s not a happy, uplifting one; just the fact that you know, I suppose you could say, we’ve come a long way in our treatment of each other as humans.

I certainly hope so, but I hope we won’t stop there, and I hope we’ll continue to improve, and someday war will be a distant memory, and we’ll all just kind of get along. Naive? Perhaps. But you’ve got to shoot for something, right?

I mean, you’ve got to have a goal. If you don’t, then what’s the point? What’s the point? It’s getting pretty light out here now.

When I started, it was jet dark. Now it’s not so much. Tennessee to Arkansas doesn’t sound like much of a distance today, but 200 years ago, it was a long way. And they went from the far east side of Tennessee to the far west side of Arkansas, and then on into Indian Territory, which is now called Oklahoma.

Took the day off. Normally, I’d be already at work by now. Well, this time of day, the walkers of the Trail of Tears would have been either grateful that the winter night was coming to a close or not if the summer sun was coming up. I had a feeling they experienced both.

Not sure exactly which one. At this point in their journey, they’re most of the way through. It’s not that far, relatively speaking, to Oklahoma. Stillwell, I believe, is a destination for quite a bit, quite a few of them.

You know, if you want to stay fit, if you want to walk or run or ride your bicycle for exercise and also, you know, have some added dimension to it other than just putting one foot in front of the other. Consider a historical trail. I think I’ve been on some of those that are kind of historical in the state parks. There’s actually a long history there.

going back almost 100 years. Davidsonville, that was history for sure, and a nice walk, even though it was more history than walking, if you saw that episode or watched it or listened to it. But yeah, there’s something, especially in a place like this, where people actually walk, and you know, it’s strange, but my right foot is kind of more sore than my left right now. The left foot’s the one that got injured during the hike up Yellow Rock, but you know, having an injury and walking along here kind of gives me that, you know, small portion of the kind of perspective that they had, of the original trail, you know,

because they had to be hurting. They had to be hurting after 800 miles or whatever. Again, it’s just amazing that people survived, not that people died. Anyway, my right foot’s probably.

The problem is probably the shoes. Walker Park, 0.3 miles. So folks, we’re coming to the end of this part of the Tsa-La-Gi trail. And we’re heading on the Frisco trail.

Number four. I see four people. There are all of them on the way back. None of them is on the way out.

It’s probably still between six and seven, I’m thinking. I do have my phone. So it’s almost seven. A little more than an hour since we’ve been going here.

Thanks for listening. If you’ve got the fever, keep it. If you don’t, catch the fever. And I will talk to you next time on Running: A Fever.