The hosts · sixteen years on the bluff

Louis & Carla

Two Louisiana natives who came for the quiet, and never quite left.

Valentine's Day, sixteen years ago

Sixteen years of mornings

Louis and Carla Short are Louisiana natives who moved to the Ozarks sixteen years ago, on Valentine's Day. Forty years married, sixteen of them spent on this bluff, and they still stop what they are doing when the fog comes up off the river.

They came for the quiet. They stayed for the view. Everything you see on this site they built and kept themselves — the cabins, the decks over the treetops, the paths down to the water, and the string lights that come on at dusk.

Sixteen years of hosting has taught them the one thing every guest is really after, and it is not a checklist of amenities. It is the feeling of the valley waking up while you are still holding your first cup of coffee.

In Carla's words

We did not build an oasis. We found one.

Louis, behind the camera

A woodworker, a potter, and a photographer who plays African drum. Every photograph on this site is his own original work. He knows, almost to the minute, when the light will break over the far ridge, because he has been waiting for it with a camera for sixteen years.

Carla, at the helm

A nature lover, a business manager of forty years, and a published author. She runs The Oasis with the kind of care that only turns up when someone has done a thing for a long time and somehow still loves it.

When we first drove up County Road 210, the pavement gave way to pine and the whole valley opened underneath us. We did not say anything for a while. We just stood on the bluff and watched the river.

We have spent sixteen years trying to give people that exact quiet. Not a resort, not a schedule — just three cabins on a bluff, the fog in the morning, the fire pit at night, and the sky doing what it does out here when nobody is rushing it.

We would love to keep the light on for you.

Carla & Louis Short

Owners and hosts, The Oasis · Eureka Springs, Arkansas

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