One of the many things I love about Arkansas is its geographic diversity.

There are mountains in the west and the north — the Ouachitas and the Ozarks.

There’s the Arkansas River Valley cutting across the state.

There are the pine woods of the Gulf Coastal Plain in the south.

There are the vast flatlands of the Delta and the Grand Prairie in the east.

Meanwhile, Crowley’s Ridge bisects that flat Delta land, providing hills and a habitat for plants that more resemble what might be found in the Appalachians.

A unique part of Arkansas — and one that few people ever hear about — is the blackland prairie area in the southwest section of the state.

Here’s how the Nature Conservancy describes these prairies: “The blacklands of southwestern Arkansas, a landscape dominated by tall native grasses and vibrant wildflowers, had a watery beginning. Millions of years ago, the Gulf of Mexico covered the region. As the gulf receded, it left behind deposits of shellfish that formed a chalky layer underneath a deep mantle of rich, black soil.

“It’s from this dark soil that the blacklands got their name. The state’s blackland prairies and associated woodlands harbor more than 600 types of plants, including 21 globally imperiled plant communities. Some 315 animal species are found at blackland sites, including rare birds like Bachman’s sparrow, Henslow’s sparrow, painted bunting and Harlan’s hawk.

“Originally about 12 million acres of blackland prairies and woodlands covered parts of Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. Today only some 10,000 acres remain in scattered patches. Most of the original blackland landscape disappeared in the past 150 years, and high-quality remnants are increasingly rare. The open terrain and rich soils were appealing for agricultural fields, pastures and tree plantations. Today remaining blackland sites are losing ground to suburban development.”

Beginning in the 1980s, the Nature Conservancy partnered with the Arkansas Natural Heritage Commission to identify the least disturbed blackland sites in the state.

In 1991, the conservancy teamed up with the commission to acquire the Terre Noire Natural Area in Clark County. That preserve now covers 490 acres.

In 1997, the Arkansas Game & Fish Commission acquired what’s now the Rick Evans Grandview Prairie Wildlife Management Area. It covers 4,885 acres, making it the largest blackland conservation site in the country.

That marvelous acquisition wasn’t the end of the blackland conservation efforts.

Almost 120 acres were acquired in Hempstead County between 1998 and 2001 to create the Columbus Prairie Preserve. Following controlled burns at the site, one of the state’s rarest plants — the eared false foxglove — began to thrive there.

The Nature Conservancy transferred 66 acres in Howard County to the Arkansas Natural Heritage Commission in 2004 to create the Saratoga Blackland Prairie Natural Area.

Three years ago, the conservancy, the Arkansas Natural Heritage Commission and the Arkansas Game & Fish Commission entered into a partnership to conserve the 1,018-acre Oak Ridge Ravines Preserve in Hempstead County.

A visit to these blackland locations can make for a great spring outing.

If you’re coming from central Arkansas, start your trip by getting off Interstate 30 at the second Arkadelphia exit as you head west. The Terre Noire Natural Area can be found by taking Arkansas Highway 51 for about eight miles toward the west.

The wildflowers there, which bloom from early spring until the fall, include blazing star, pale purple coneflower, compass plant, gum plant, wild petunia and ironweed.

“The blackland region of Arkansas has been badly degraded,” the Nature Conservancy website states. “Because of its high- and medium-quality native prairies and woodlands, Terre Noire was identified as critically important to conserving the blackland ecosystem. With its close proximity to the city of Arkadelphia, the site required immediate protection from urbanization. … Stewardship at Terre Noire includes restoring the mosaic of prairie openings within oak/pine forest and maintaining the assemblage of naturally occurring blackland prairie species.

“Prescribed burning, cedar cutting, prairie seeding and erosion control by staff and volunteers have ridded the prairie of much woody vegetation and have boosted populations of native prairie plants. The conservancy will continue to conduct burns, closely mimicking a natural fire regime, to promote natural species diversity.”

After visiting Terre Noire, get back onto Interstate 30 and head west toward Hope. Follow U.S. Highway 278 for two miles west after exiting the interstate and then turn left onto Arkansas Highway 73. Go 14 miles to Columbus and then turn north onto Hempstead County Road 35. It’s two miles from there to the front gate of one of Arkansas’ hidden jewels — Grandview.

The Grandview Plantation had a reputation dating back to the 1800s for producing valuable crops. The area later was managed as a cattle ranch and as a prestigous private hunting club. Cattle ranching, however, led to the introduction of nonnative vegetation. Overgrazing was common.

The Arkansas Game & Fish Commission has worked hard during the past 14 years to restore the natural prairie at Grandview. The site also has an education center, two small lakes, a nature trail, a shooting range that’s open by appointment and two lodges that can be rented by groups.

You can move on from Grandview to the Columbus Prairie, which is managed as a nature preserve with regular prescribed burns and constant cedar removal. In 1998, just one eared false floxglove plant was recorded at Columbus Prairie. More than 50 were recorded the following year following a prescribed burn.

Columbus Prairie is almost adjacent to Grandview. You go about a mile on Hempstead County Road 35 until spotting the Columbus Prairie sign on the left.

To reach the Saratoga Blackland Prairie Natural Area, get back on Arkansas Highway 73 and continue west to Saratoga. Turn north at Saratoga onto Arkansas Highway 355. You’ll quickly merge onto Arkansas Highway 32. Continue to Chapel Hill Road and turn right. The natural area is at the end of Chapel Hill Road.

“The ocean bottom material left by the Gulf of Mexico usually formed the rolling hills and sandy, acidic soil typical in the Gulf Coastal Plain natural division,” according to the Arkansas Natural Heritage Commission website. “The blackland prairie region of Arkansas is located within the Gulf Coastal Plain, but it is atypical. Confined to the southwestern corner of the state, the region consists of several distinct areas of alkaline soil characterized by chalk outcrops, black soil and cuestas — long, low ridges with a relatively steep face on one side and a long, gentle slope on the other. It is on the steep sides of these cuestas that we find the blackland prairie communities. … Historically, fire played a major role in controlling woody vegetation and in maintaining the open, grass-dominated understory characteristic of these natural communities. This unique mosaic of landscapes in southwestern Arkansas supports a wide variety of plants and animals that specifically require an open, fire-maintained habitat.”

By bringing back fire, numerous plant and animal species are returning to the remaining remnants of the blackland prairie.

It’s a piece of our state that’s well worth a road trip on a spring day.

There are certain things every Arkansan should do at least once.

— Eating an entire hubcap cheeseburger at the original Cotham’s in Scott.

— Riding in a canoe down the Buffalo River.

— Calling the Hogs at football games in both Fayetteville and Little Rock.

— Searching for the Gurdon Light late at night.

— Having a catfish dinner at the Georgetown One Stop.

— Fishing for trout early in the morning on the White River.

— Watching the sun rise from a duck blind on the Grand Prairie.

— Spending a night at the Arlington Hotel in Hot Springs and the Crescent Hotel in Eureka Springs.

— Attending a Battle of the Ravine.

Yes, there are some things you simply must do in order to earn your Arkansas bonafides.

Digging for diamonds at the Crater of Diamonds State Park near Murfreesboro is one of those things.

I know you’ve talked about it. But how many of you native Arkansans have “played tourist” for a day and actually gone and done it?

I have.

It’s unlikely you’ll come home with a diamond, but you’ll have fun. The state Department of Parks and Tourism has made massive improvements to the park during the past dozen years. It’s well worth the drive to southwest Arkansas.

You’ll search for diamonds in a 37-acre plowed field. For history buffs, though, the park’s Diamond Discovery Center might prove more interesting than digging in the dirt. The interpretive center outlines the various methods used through the years to find diamonds and is home to a diamond hunters’ hall of fame.

Using proceeds from Amendment 75 to the Arkansas Constitution, the Parks and Tourism Department also constructed the Diamond Springs Water Park, which covers 14,700 square feet. It features a wading pool with spray geysers, water jets, animated waterspouts, cascades, two water slides and waterfall hideaways. It’s open during the summer and is a good place to cool off after being in that plowed field with no shade.

There’s also a restaurant that’s open from 8 a.m. until 4 p.m. from Memorial Day weekend through Labor Day.

Here’s how the Arkansas State Parks website describes the history of the mine: “For years, locals wondered about the unusual green dirt about two miles south of the small farming community of Murfreesboro. Geologists examined the soil in the late 1800s and found it to be similar to diamond-bearing volcanic material elsewhere in the world, but they failed to uncover any of the precious stones at the time.

“Early in the 20th century, a local farmer named John Wesley Huddleston purchased land near Murfreesboro that included part of this volcanic material. In August 1906, he discovered the first diamonds on his property. Known as Arkansas’ Diamond King, Huddleston soon sold his land to a commercial mining company for $36,000.

“A diamond rush developed as soon as word of the find got out. In fact, the Conway Hotel in Murfreesboro is said to have turned away more than 10,000 people in just one year who could not be accommodated in the hostelry. The tent city of Kimberly was established between Murfreesboro and the diamond mine, but nothing remains of it today.”

The Arkansas Diamond Co. began commercial mining operations on land purchased from Huddleston. An adjoining landowner named M.M. Mauney refused to sell his land. Later, however, Mauney sold an interest in the property to Horace Bemis, who died soon after forming the Ozark Diamond Corp.

Bemis’ heirs sold his interest in the property to Austin and Howard Millar, whose commercial operation was destroyed by a January 1919 fire.

In 1951, land leased from the Millar family was turned into a tourist attraction and opened under the name Diamond Preserve of the United States. The name later was changed to Crater of Diamonds.

Ethel Wilkinson of Logansport, Ind., owned adjoining property and opened a competing attraction known as The Big Mine.

The two attractions had billboards across southwest Arkansas.

In 1969, General Earth Minerals of Dallas purchased both attractions. Extensive studies were done, but it was determined that commercial mining was unfeasible.

Gov. Dale Bumpers made expansion of the state parks system one of the cornerstones of his administration, and the state purchased the land from General Earth Minerals for $750,000 in 1972.

For students of Arkansas history, it seems fitting that the diamond mine ended up in state hands. That’s because a state geologist named John Branner had been the first person to say the land might contain diamonds. Diamonds were being found in the peridotite soil of South Africa, and Branner knew there was a similar area of soil near Murfreesboro. He searched the property in 1889 but found no diamonds.

When Huddleston made those first discoveries in 1906, he sent the stones to Little Rock jeweler Charles Stifft, who confirmed that they were diamonds. Stifft, in turn, sent them on to New York, where they were pronounced to be of fine grade.

In a later interview with the Arkansas Gazette, Huddleston recalled finding the first diamonds: “I was crawling on my hands and knees when my eyes fell on another glittering pebble. … I knew it was different from any I had ever seen before. It had a fiery eye that blazed up at me every way I turned it. I hurried to the house with the pebble, saddled my mule and started for Murfreesboro. … Riding through the lane, my eye caught another glitter, and I dismounted and picked it up out of the dust.”

There’s a historic marker to designate the approximate spot where Huddleston made his find.

The Strawn-Wagner Diamond, found at the state park in 1990 by Shirley Strawn of Murfreesboro, is the most perfect diamond the American Gem Society has ever certified.

The diamond weighed 3.03 carats in the rough. Following the recommendation of certified gemologist Bill Underwood, the diamond was sent to Lazare Kaplan International of New York in 1997 for cutting. The gem was cut into a round diamond of 1.09 carats. The cut allowed the maximum amount of light to be reflected.

Among the other famous discoveries at Crater of Diamonds is the Uncle Sam Diamond. At 40.23 carats, the white diamond is the largest diamond ever found in North America. It has been cut twice. The second cutting resulted in a 12.42-carat diamond.

The 4.25-carat Kahn Canary Diamond was worn by first lady Hillary Clinton at presidential inaugural galas in 1993 and 1997. It was loaned to her by owner Stan Kahn of Pine Bluff. George Stepp, a logger from Carthage, had found the diamond at the state park in 1977. Kahn later purchased it from him.

Since Crater of Diamonds became a state park, the largest find has been the 16.37-carat Amarillo Starlight Diamond. W.W. Johnson of Amarillo, Texas, found the diamond in 1975 while vacationing in Arkansas with his family.

The weather has warmed. Before it gets too hot, you should make a trek to Murfreesboro and live Arkansas history by sifting the soil at Crater of Diamonds State Park.

It’s a must-do on the Natural State Bucket List.

William Faulkner was among those who wrote about the majestic Big Woods of the Mississippi River Delta.

The Big Woods once stretched down both sides of the Mississippi River in parts of Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois and Missouri.

When DeSoto arrived in the region in the 1500s, the Big Woods made up the largest expanse of forested wetlands in North America.

There were 24 million forested acres in the Big Woods in the 1500s.

Today there are fewer than 5 million acres remaining. During the past 200 years, the vast majority of that land has been drained, cleared of trees and converted to row-crop agriculture.

Since the 1930s, meanwhile, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has eliminated 16 curves in the Mississippi River, shortening the stream by 150 miles.

There are locks and dams on all of the river’s major tributaries. Those tributaries also have been straightened and channelized.

There are dikes. There are levees. There are giant pumps and diversion canals.

Of the remaining 5 million acres of forested Delta land, almost 1 million of those acres are in Arkansas.

The Big Woods of Arkansas is a national treasure — an international treasure, in fact, since in 1989 these remaining bottomland forests in east Arkansas were recognized by the 49 countries of the U.N.’s Ramsar Convention as a “Wetland of International Importance.”

A stretch of about 550,000 forested acres in east Arkansas is the largest corridor of bottomland hardwood forest remaining in the Delta north of the Atchafalaya River in south Louisiana.

The Nature Conservancy sums up the situation this way on its website (www.nature.org): “As forests continue to be broken into smaller fragments by roads, ditches, urban development and gravel mines, the number of plants and animals that can survive in those patches decreases. Water quality also is declining as sediments, fertilizers and pesticides wash off cultivated fields with no streamside forest to trap and filter them.

“The rivers of the Mississippi River Delta and the Big Woods are vital to the health of their surrounding bottomland hardwood forests. Without naturally functioning rivers, the ecosystem changes dramatically. The forests are no longer wetlands.

“Dams, levees and irrigation projects along the Mississippi River have virtually eliminated flooding along the river’s main stem, and tributary flooding has been reduced by 90 percent. Unable to disperse among the forests, water runs faster and stronger in straightened river channels, thus accelerating erosion. As riverbanks erode, forest vegetation loses its foothold and is swallowed by the river.

“Ultimately, the forest is cut off from the river entirely by steep riverbanks, and the risk of devastating floods downstream increases. Additionally, steeper riverbanks and structures such as levees isolate trees from the life-giving power of the rivers.”

I ate fried catfish for lunch yesterday at Gene’s in Brinkley on my way home from Memphis, and I noticed that the large poster of the ivory-billed woodpecker is still on the wall of the main dining room there. While many people now seriously doubt that it was an ivory-billed woodpecker that was spotted near the Cache River, the national excitement generated by the search did open a lot of eyes to the birding opportunities in the Big Woods of Arkansas.

The Nature Conservancy joined forces with Audubon Arkansas, the Arkansas Game & Fish Commission, the Arkansas Natural Heritage Commission, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Wildlife Federation and others to form the Big Woods Conservation Partnership and even set up a Big Woods birding opportunities website.

Maps were published to show hiking trails and canoe access points. More people than ever before discovered the charms of the Big Woods.

When soybean prices soared in the early 1970s, tens of thousands of acres were drained and cleared in east Arkansas. Since then, much of that marginal cropland has been replanted in hardwoods.

The conservation effort of the past four decades in east Arkansas truly is a remarkable story with expansions of the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge, White River National Wildlife Refuge, Dagmar Wildlife Management Area, Black Swamp Wildlife Management Area, Wattensaw Wildlife Management Area and Benson Creeek Natural Area.

Long before the reported spotting of an ivory-billed woodpecker, the Nature Conservancy was hard at work in the Big Woods.

“Arkansans are fortunate,” Nancy Delamar of the Nature Conservancy wrote in a piece for Arkansas Business way back in 1994. “Our wetland-rich state still has a substantial amount of floodplain forest intact. Conservation and restoration of a long corridor of forested wetlands has already started in Arkansas. Wildlife management areas and refuges exist in the Big Woods as well as several large tracts of sustainably managed, privately held forested land. The U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are planting hardwoods as well as the Arkansas Game & Fish Commission, the Arkansas Natural Heritage Commission and the Arkansas Forestry Commission.

“The Conservancy and other private landowners and companies are also planting native hardwoods in the bottomland — whether the trees are for a natural wildlife habitat, future duck hunting, timber harvesting or ‘I just like to see these trees grow’ philosophy.

“Wetlands of the Big Woods include the bottomlands of Bayou de View, the Cache River, the lower White River and the lower Arkansas River. … The lower 41 miles of the Arkansas River have been listed in the Registry of Arkansas Natural and Scenic Rivers. It is the single remaining stretch of undisturbed ‘big river’ in Arkansas.

“Several rare plants and animals find shelter in the Big Woods, including the federally listed endangered interior least tern. The Big Woods contains nesting sites for bald eagles, and parts of the Big Woods have tracts large enough to provide habitat for native black bear. The Big Woods is vitally important as a migration route for neotropical songbirds, giving food and rest; and the region provides the single most important mallard wintering area in the lower Mississippi Valley.”

Some of the wildest, most remote areas of the Big Woods can be found in the White River National Wildlife Refuge, which was established in 1935 for the protection of migratory birds. The refuge is three to 10 miles wide and almost 90 miles long. There are more than 300 natural lakes and potholes in the refuge along with slow-running streams, sloughs and bayous.

A good place to start any exploration of the Big Woods is the White River National Wildlife Refuge visitor center just off Arkansas Highway 1 near St. Charles. The visitor center was constructed in 2003 and covers 10,000 square feet.

The center’s website describes it this way: “The foyer is home to a 28-foot-tall replica of a cypress tree. In addition to the birds and other wildlife that inhabit this symbol of the swamp, the tree houses two bear families. A cross section of a bear den illustrates the unique denning habits of black bears on the refuge. Another scenario includes a female cub encouraging her older cubs to leave the den. The base of the tree is surrounded by an underwater diorama showcasing flora and fauna typical of the refuge’s oxbow lakes.”

Of the two small theaters at the center, the website states: “One educates the visitor about the importance of flooding on the refuge while broadcasting images on the floor and the wall. The other highlights nature at night. Inside this theater the visitor experiences the refuge on a typical night. As the light dims, a narrator discusses the common sounds of nocturnal wildlife such as frogs, owls, insects and fox. As each call is played, an image of the animal calling is backlit on the theater wall.”

Looking for a different type of spring outing?

Try the Big Woods of Arkansas, a state treasure that far too many Arkansans have never explored.