TAKING THE OFF-RAMP

Begay Mural Enlivens Kayenta Trading Post

A striking mural adorns the exterior walls of the Kayenta Trading Post on the Navajo Reservation. Artist Carlos Begay painted scenes of Navajo life, including a hogan in winter, rows of corn to represent the tribe's cultural and spiritual ceremonies and baskets and jewelry to represent craftsmanship.

Begay's brush also re-created a local sandstone monolith known as The Toes. Visitors standing at a certain point in front of the store can see The Toes on the wall, then, off to the right, see the real thing. "The idea was to bring out the cultural richness of the Four Corners region," says Begay, a Kayenta resident whose work is known around the Southwest.

The post, not far from Monument Valley, opened in 1914 and has never closed. Owner Melissa Biard says the original owners built a rock home that still stands behind the post. It attracts passersby who remember visiting as children and stop to have pictures taken.

Begay's mural takes up 80 feet of wall space and draws attention to the post, which he calls a community center. He delights That the formerly empty walls now sparkle with color.

"One man told me the mural is a happy painting that has a spiritual quality, and that made me feel good," says Begay.

Two shops in downtown Flagstaff-Thunder Mountain Traders and Puchteca Indian Goods-sell Begay's paintings, as do the Heard Museum in Phoenix and The White Hogan in Scottsdale.

For more information about the mural or the trading post, call (928) 697-3541.

A Little Bit of New York in the Chiricahuas

Since 1955, the American Museum of Natural History in New York has had a branch of its research division planted in the southeastern corner of Arizona, along the quiet folds of the Chiricahua Mountains. Surrounded by oak, juniper and piñon pine woodlands, the Southwestern Research Station rests near the base of the mountain. From there, a short drive up the Chiricahuas travels through five life-zones, creating one of the most varied ecosystems in North America and drawing scientists and researchers from around the world.

Besides the technical equipment laboratory, the station provides comfortable cabins and a main house with a library for study, a lounge with a fireplace and a family-style dining room where chefs serve up home cooking. Outside, a swimming pool, volleyball court and horseshoe pit offer relaxing diversions.

The summer months are prime time for field researchers, but in the spring and fall, the station welcomes birders, hikers, naturalists and anyone else to enjoy their cozy accommodations and spectacular scenery. As space is available, family and tour groups find the station a perfect getaway. Information: (520) 558-2396; research.amnh.org/swrs.

THIS MONTH IN ARIZONA

An 1894 epidemic of glanders prompts the Territorial Livestock Commission to kill horses and burn their casses to stop further spreading of the disease.

In 1898 The Arizona Press Association demands a storage reservoir be placed in Pinal County to help 4,000 Indians whose crops are dying because settlers robbed them of Gila River water.

In 1899 The town of Jerome is incorporated.

In 1901 The saguaro blossom is adopted as Arizona's official flower by the Territorial Legislature.

Miners rush to the Hassayampa River area when prospectors discover gold 4 miles from Wickenburg.

In 1907 The new Territorial prison in Florence opens, and its first prisoners are transferred from Yuma.

In 1912 The State Legislature holds its first session. Among the laws passed: child-laborers must be at least 14 years old.

Popular ditty sung long ago by miners in Jerome's beer halls: My sweetheart's a mule in the mine, I drive her with only one line. On the ore car I sit, and tobacco I spit, All over my sweetheart's behind.

Oops, Sorry Dear Out of the Arizona Woods

With the fallen branches of cottonwood, aspen, mesquite, juniper and ponderosa pine trees found near their Prescott home, Roger Asay and Rebecca Davis craft native Arizona woods into beautiful wooden spheres, blending nature and sculpture, geometry and artistry.

Asay and Davis are two of several regional wood sculptors whose work is shown at Scottsdale's Gallery Materia. One Such artist, J. Paul Fennel, uses mesquite in his work, breathing such elegance into his wooden vessels they appear to be woven baskets.

Todd Hoyer, another featured local artist, uses a variety of regional woods in his dramatic wire-and-wood sculptures. He takes the wood from piles left by tree trimmers, and enjoys preserving these trees in his art. He uses native woods for the qualities he can't find in other woods, like the density and twisting grain of mesquite, and the symmetrical splits and specks of sycamore.

From the delicate illusions of artist Tom Eckert, to the sleek, contemporary vessels of sculptor Virginia Dotson and the fascinating sculptures of Joey Gottbrath, the Gallery Materia showcases a breadth of sculpture as diverse and textured as the native wood of Arizona itself. Information: (480) 949-1262. www.gallerymateria.com.

Everyone's a Kid in Train Museum

The place looks like Christmas morning in the land of the giants. Toy trains running everywhere. Tracks filling 6,000 square feet of warehouse. Smoke billowing, bells ringing, cars chugging. Welcome to the Gadsden-Pacific Division Toy Train Operating Museum, Ltd. in Tucson. Forget trying to remember the name, just make the trip some Sunday afternoon (after calling to confirm hours).

Run by volunteers, the museum at 7401 N. Cholla Blvd. opens twice a month. Photographs and posters of the great trains of the past hang on the walls. But out on the floor, on the raised tracks, the past comes alive and the present moves with a roar as a dozen-plus miniature trains roll. The New York Central barrels by, the Louisville & Nashville huffs and puffs, the Santa Fe hauls. They run through safe little towns, down mine and lumber loops, up hills and over bridges.

Children carried into the museum reach out in all directions, one word on their lips: "Train. Train. Train."

Adults may not be yelling, but you see it in their eyes, a vision of Christmas morning. Admission is free. Information: (520) 888-2222.

Hoodoo Haven

To most of the locals, they're known as "the teepees." Others have suggested "hoodoos" might be more appropriate. Either way, a cluster of odd geological formations 9 miles east of Camp Verde merits a distinctive moniker.

Conical and cylindrical formations of buff-colored earth and rock, nearly all pockmarked cheeselike by wind and water, hunker down alongside two desolate off-road drainages. On a moonlit windy night, it would be easy to imagine these lonely towering sentinels as alien beings come down to give mankind the willies.

The scientific facts are a bit less haunting. The teepeeshoodoos consist primarily of volcanic ash sediment deposited from the air when a nearby volcano (now Hackberry Mountain, 8 miles away) blew its top ages ago. Water percolating up from below congealed the ash into concretelike integrity that out-toughed the erosion of softer adjacent sedimentary deposits. Still spooky, but fun.

LIFE IN ARIZONA 1 9 20 DINNER WITH EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY AT THE BOTTOM OF THE GRAND CANYON

Glenton Sykes met a great literary figure at the bottom of the Grand Canyon in 1923. A young college graduate, Sykes lived alone in a cabin near the Colorado River and worked measuring the river's flow for the U.S. Geological Survey. One night, while at river's edge stowing tools in his boat, Sykes was startled to hear a voice behind him. He turned to see a small woman in a long gray coat. "You must pardon me," she said, "but I have just had the pleasure of observing a young man beautifully lost in his task. I'm Edna St. Vincent Millay. Will you join me for supper at the ranch?" Phantom Ranch, still operating today at the Canyon bottom, had just opened. "Let it be recorded that I had enough judgment to accept," wrote Sykes, who told his story in the Journal of Arizona History in 1976. "Madam, I should be delighted," he told Millay. "Splendid! Then I shall be looking for you in half an hour." After going to his cabin to "slick up," Sykes enjoyed a good meal with Millay, renowned bohemian poet, and her friends. "I answered many questions and talked a good deal - possibly too much-and had a very pleasant evening," Sykes wrote. "I waved the party bon voyage the following morning as they passed by my cabin on their way out, watched them follow the switchbacks, and saw them disappear onto the Tonto Plateau."

Navajo Poster Tells a Story of Beauty

Tourists can own, for the asking, a print of one of the most beautiful images to come out of the Navajo Indian Reservation in a long time.

The Discover Navajo poster, put out by the tribe's tourism office, shows Patty Arthur, a Navajo teen-ager from Vanderwagen, New Mexico,

wearing a traditional rug dress and standing beside a 2-year-old paint mare. The striking backdrop is Canyon de Chelly, the Navajos' ancestral home. Three thousand posters were given away at the Navajo Pavilion at the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City. "They were so popular we had to hide them under the counter to keep from running out," says Kathie Curley, the tribe's marketing coordinator. "Some people found the simplicity and the colors so beautiful they had tears in their eyes." The poster was featured in several newspapers in the Midwest, which led to coverage by the Associated Press and on CNN. It's free to reservation visitors. Information: Navajo Nation Tourism, (928) 871-6436.