A Simple Ranch Life on the Arizona Strip

"I'll fight tooth and nail if my husband ever wants me to leave here," says rancher Dixie Northcott. She's talking about the Arizona Strip, that high, lonesome stretch of land sprawling across northwestern Arizona. Cut off from the rest of the state by the Colorado River, the Strip appears barren in parts, but its windswept beauty grows on those living there until, like Dixie, they never want to leave. Stretching from the North Rim of the Grand Canyon north to the Utah border, bound on the east by Marble Canyon and on the west by the Nevada border, the Arizona Strip covers approximately 5 million acres of land with a population of 2,000 to 3,000. Towns are few and small. Most people are just passing through, on their way to someplace else. Only those who enjoy solitude, clear skies and unlimited vistas last here. As Dixie says, "If you can't stand being with yourself, you better not come here."

Fans of the Western author Zane Grey know this country from his novel Riders of the Purple Sage. Sliced by deep arroyos and dominated by the rugged loveliness of the Vermilion Cliffs, the Strip is a land of contrast, but nowhere is it a soft and gentle land. House Rock Valley covers much of the eastern Strip, funneling snow runoff and summer monsoon floods into the Colorado River. The Kaibab Plateau borders the valley on the west. Sand and sage limits the trees, keeping them confined to the high plateaus and clustered around a few watering tanks. Remote ranches dot the landscape. One of those properties belongs to Dixie and her husband, Bud.

Dixie had lived in a nice home in Phoenix until 1982 when Bud, tired of big-city life, bought the ranch. He told Dixie, "It's just like 'Dallas' [the popular television series of the time]. We have a ranch house with a swimming pool in the front yard, and our neighbor is named J.R."

Bud told the truth, but the ranch house was a one-room cabin - since expanded - with no electricity, then or now, and a stock tank that served as a swimming pool. J.R. Jones, the nearest neighbor, was 13 miles away on a washboard dirt road passable only in dry weather. Running water originated from a spring three-quarters of a mile away, cold and clear out of a V-pipe down at the corral.

LADY RANCHER ON THE ARIZONA STRIP Hardships and remoteness have a payoff in beauty

Dixie laughs when I ask about bathroom facili-ties. "See that old plank over there?" pointing to a 10-inch-wide warped board spanning a gully on the north side of the house. "I had to walk that plank to get to an outhouse."

Recovered from the snakebite, Dixie announced there would be some changes made. She wanted a bathroom-and she wanted it now. Bud rigged up a gravity-flow water system, and Dixie quit show-ering down in the corral and walking the plank to the outhouse. She says, "I kept that weathered board over the gully as a reminder of the good old days."

Photographer Bernadette Heath and I are sitting in rocking chairs on the front porch of Dixie's ranch house as she reminisces. "I just knew I wasn't going to like living up on the Strip," Dixie remembers. "But, how can you hate that?" she asks, gesturing toward the Vermilion Cliffs glowing red and gold in the setting sun. "I go to Phoenix now, and I can hardly wait to get back up here.""

At 59, Dixie is tall and lean, her skin tanned dark by years in the sun. Raised on the Alamo Ranch in Mancos, Colorado, Dixie comes from pioneer stock and knows the ranching life. She manages the ranch in House Rock Valley with Bud's help, who comes whenever he can from his business in Prescott. Her brother, Jim Yeoman, and his wife, Ace, help out with branding and roundup, and during busy times other members of the family pitch in.

Dixie and Bud bought their ranch from brothers Trevor and Bill Leach, who went to the Strip from Kanab, Utah, as young boys to herd goats in House Rock Valley. Living in a wagon, they followed the goats as they grazed. Bill didn't move from the valley for seven years and then left only because he was drafted into the service during World War II.

One especially hard winter, Trevor made a pair of skis out of wood from a wagon and skied into Kanab for food when supplies ran out. The two brothers owned the ranch until they retired in 1982 and the Northcotts took over.

Ranch chores are never-ending. Much of Dixie's time is spent inspecting cattle, stock tanks and fences. She invites Bernadette and me to tag along the next morning as she checks on cattle, but warns us to eat a good breakfast."

When I first came up here to the ranch, Trevor helped me run the place. I didn't eat breakfast then, and when we left one morning, Trevor handed me an apple. He said I couldn't eat it until I found a cow. It took me all day to find any cattle, and by the time we got back to the ranch, I was plenty hungry. Now I eat every morning."

We head out early the next morning to a mountain area known as "the buckskin," which some say earns its name from the yellow-white tinge of Kaibab limestone. The road is rough in Dixie's four-wheel-drive pickup truck. "Even with four-wheel drive, there are places on this ranch you can't get to unless you use an ATV [all-terrain vehicle] or a horse," Dixie comments as we bump along.

With a final lunge, the pickup tops out, and below us in House Rock Valley, the sagebrush looks like a bluish-green river winding down the valley. The road meanders through junipers and piñons. Dixie drives slowly, her head out the window looking for cattle tracks.

I ask how they gather cattle in the dense brush. "We water trap," Dixie answers. "See the 'trigger' at the gate to the watering hole? That gate allows the cattle to go in, but the sharpened poles on the side discourage them from coming back through. They stay here by the water until we come get them."

A pair of cinnamon teals swims around on the pond. "These watering tanks provide resting spots and water for migrating birds," Dixie says. "I stock the pond by the house with goldfish just for the birds." That explains the pair of snowy white egrets sitting grandly in the top of a juniper tree this morning.

We follow a rough road along the fenceline when Dixie slams on the brakes as she spots cattle tracks on the opposite side of the fence from the water tank. In this land, natural springs are few. Even worse, there are newborn calves with the lost cows. We immediately return to the ranch so Dixie And Jim can look for the cat-tle on ATVs. Bernadette and I explore while Dixie looks for the cattle. House Rock Valley has long been a corridor for those who must pass through this stark land-its hidden springs providing treasured watering stops. Scattered shards of pot-tery testify to use by ances-tral Puebloan Indians, who were formerly called Ana-sazi. Names and dates carved into the cliffs document the Mormon treks through here in the 1800s. First, explorer Jacob Hamblin traveled the area searching for routes, and then Mormon pioneers passed through on their way to settlements in eastern Arizona. Later, Mormon cou-ples followed the Honey-moon Trail, which stretched across House Rock Valley, in order to get married in the Mormon temple in St. George, Utah.

The Vermilion Cliffs stand out as the most striking feature of House Rock Valley. Named by Colorado River explorer John Wesley Powell, the majestic cliffs change colors from variegated red with white in the morning to glowing orange and buff in the evening. The cliffs are protected as part of the Paria Canyon-Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness. Bicyclists and hikers flock to the Coyote Spring area to explore the beau-tiful rock formations. Endangered condors, released into the wild here, are occasionally spotted. Bernadette and I are admiring the purple and mauve shale of the Chinle formation at the base of the Vermilion Cliffs when I notice a lizard. About 12 inches long with shiny fishlike scales, it changes colors to blend in with the colored sand. Of course, Bernadette wants photographs and orders me to keep him distracted while she sets up her camera. I sprawl out in the sand about a foot and a half from the lizard. We look each other in the eye, and I tell him how beautiful he is while Bernadette snaps pic-tures. The lizard finally tires of my flattery and scut-tles off to his hole, and we head back to the ranch. There we find Dixie, frustrated. "We couldn't find the cattle," she says. "They just vanished in the trees. We left a gate open and hope they find their own way back to water." When Dixie asks if we want to see more of the ranch, Bernadette and I are more than willing. We each climb on an ATV behind Dixie and her sister-in-law, Ace, and head down Coyote Wash. The wildflowers are blooming, and purple locoweed, which is beautiful to look at but is toxic and may be fatal to cattle, dots the coral-colored sand. Dixie's cattle are fat and sleek from the spring grass, with many calves born this season. Dixie says, "The babies are what I like about this life, the new calves and foals each spring." At the wilderness boundary, we park the ATVs and hike to waterholes, actually potholes in the sandstone filled with rainwater. These are lifelines for high-desert animals like coyotes, mountain lions, rabbits and deer. The rock formations around us are swirled into fantasy formations like dollops of red whipped cream. Dixie points out one large beehive-shaped rock. "The Leach brothers told me there is a pothole in the top of that rock, and one dry year they climbed up there and scooped out water." With the sun setting fast, we head back to the ranch, ready for bed. The next morning brings good news. Bud arrives from Prescott and the lost cattle have found their way back to water. Yesterday's prob-lems are solved, but today will present more. It's always that way on a ranch. I know it's time for me to leave, but as I watch the horses in the old stock-ade corral, the cattle by the pond and the sunlight on the Vermilion Cliffs, I share Dixie's attachment to the wild land. Bernadette's going to have drag me kicking and screaming out of this ranch and back to the real world. Always