Cabin Fever, Oklahoma

Hiking and hot-tubbing in the Kiamichi Mountains

The leaves are crunching underfoot and the ice isn't about to thaw out any time soon. It's cold. Very cold. Or perhaps it's just colder than I expected one of America's southern states to be in January. Still, despite the weather, it is beautiful.

I'm currently half way up a huge pine-and-hickory strewn hill in the middle of the Ouachita National Forest in McCurtain County, southeast Oklahoma. I've come here, along with my wife, my sister-in-law and her fiance, to hole up in a remote cabin for a few days and to do some hiking. It's fair to say we're off the beaten track here. Although the nearest town, Broken Bow, has a population of around 4,000, there isn't really much there - a couple of fast food joints and seemingly endless shops selling fishing tackle and bait. This is the America of huntin', shootin', fishin' and acres and acres of beautiful forested hills.

The Ouachita National Forest (pronounced wash-i-tah, the French appropriation of a Native American word meaning 'good hunting ground') is the oldest and largest in the southern U.S. and covers nearly 1.8 million acres. You can still find arrowheads scattered in the soil today and Native Americans make up almost 20% of the local population. Of course, the story of how they got here in the first place is tragic. The Choctaw Tribe were 'relocated' from their ancient Mississippi homeland to Indian Territory in the 1830 Trail of Tears. Many suffered from exposure, disease, and starvation en route, and many died. Most of the Choctaws settled on a 6.8 million acre estate which they called the Choctaw Nation in Arkansas, while some settled in the rural hilly Kiamichi Mountains here, where they started farms. 

Today, neighbouring Arkansas has by far the larger share of the Ouachita Forest, but the portion in Oklahoma is incredible and will satisfy even the most ardent outdoor enthusiast. There's fly fishing, kayaking, horseriding, endless mountain biking trails, boating, the gorgeous Kiamichi Mountains, the splendour of the 22-mile-long Broken Bow lake and Beavers Bend State Park. And there's that cabin we're staying in and where we're going to get some serious R&R later today.

We plough on up the trail and it seems that aside from two fly fisherman we'd seen as we drove into the park, knee-deep in the river and hoping for trout, we're the only people here. Of course it's a different story in the summer - this place is popular with locals from all over neighbouring Texas and Oklahoma, but it's a bit of a secret for tourists from further afield seeking a back-to-nature experience in the heartland of the U.S.

The trail winds up into the hills and the view from the top, over the forest canopy and down to the lake below, is breathtaking (literally - but largely due to the below-freezing wind that's whistling through the pines). If you're patient enough, you can see deer, beaver and muskrat here. Coyotes too, but this morning it seems they're hiding - likely keeping warm.

Which is probably something we should be doing. After a long hike, we eventually return to our cabin. I feel a little like Henry David Thoreau, whose classic American novel Walden chronicled his two-year stay in a cabin in order to isolate himself from society - self-reliance and simple living were his goals. "I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude," he wrote.

I'd like to say we too stayed in a tiny wooden structure, miles from anywhere, with just a log fire for company. That'd sound impressive. The truth is, Pine Meadow Cabins are a far cry from Walden's single-storey shed. Not that I'm complaining. In fact, the cabin we're in is more luxurious than my own home. Sure, it's fairly remote and surrounded by towering pines - there are animal skin rugs on the concrete floor (this is the South, after all, where hunting is a way of life); Native American dream catchers and bows and arrows on the wall; a painting of a buffalo; every piece of furniture is carved from rustic wood - from the kitchen units to the chairs, tables, beds, clocks, even the free-standing lamp at the side of the room. But the flat screen TVs in all the rooms, hot tub outside and pool table upstairs make me feel a bit of a fraud. It is rather nice though, particularly after our own lengthy walk in the woods.

Outside the cabin, in addition to the hot tub, there are rocking chairs scattered around the wrap-around porch and firepits surrounded by a carpet of pine needles on the frozen ground.

And so, as the sun goes down, the four of us sip wine in the hot tub, looking out over the forest. I think I could have been a settler; a pioneer discovering the New World. But only if I had a cabin like this to come home to.

McCurtain County is a few hours' drive from Dallas, Fort Worth, Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Little Rock, or Shreveport. For more information, visit: www.mccurtaincountygetaways.com or call 1-800-528-7337. WideWorld stayed at Pine Meadow Cabins: www.pinemeadowcabins.com