Loving Life in Fayetteville

This Northwest Arkansas college town is easy to love and hard to leave

- JORDAN P. HICKEY

ON A MAP, Arkansas has a slightly tapered shape. It's a lopsided trapezoidal figure turned on its head. A chipped teacup. But maybe the best way to define it is as a vortex. That's what people around here say: When you think you're leaving this state, the line you're following isn't straight at all but is more like a gently bowing curve leading you right back to where you started. Native son and author Charles McColl Portis described it in terms of "escape velocity." But the truth is simpler: Arkansas is a really tough place to leave.

Northwest Arkansas, particularly Fayetteville, is a whole other matter, gravitationally speaking. As I-49 bearing north crests yet another hill that's stippled with maple, black gum, and pawpaw trees, the Ozark mountain town appears like a big reveal a magician showing he had your card all along. Spend time here, and you're suddenly part of it, swept up in its orbit. You may wander, but you'll always come back.

"She just thought she was going to the land of milk and honey," says Cindy Arsaga of her daughter's attempt to move out West to California with her family. We are enjoying a late lunch at Arsaga's Mill District, which is the latest in a decades-long string of eponymous restaurants and coffee shops that she's run in Fayetteville with her husband, Cary. "It took them 10 months," Arsaga continues with a knowing smile. "They came back." The eatery is light and bright, with soaring ceilings and white walls belying its industrial roots. Even on a weekday, well after the lunch rush, tables are slow to turn over.