The Ranch-shaped Heart

Painted Desert, in no more hurry than were we.

The odometer told us we had used up the allotted 15 miles since leaving the pavement. And there ahead, off to the right of our road, rose the square shape of a building of dark stone... the quiet, silent, empty world as it was before sloppy, careless humanity invaded it.

I am an octogenarian now, and am told that when one passes the 80th year, one can expect to have one's head so jammed with memories that some lose their precision. But I remember when I saw Goldtooth about 20 years ago-all the windows were missing from the great old structure, and the doors as well, but the walls remained sound. It had been, so I was told, a school building once, but from whence its students came no one could guess. There were the skeletons of long dead trees around the structure, the only genuine trees we'd seen on our journey across Ward Terrace.

Across from what I will call Goldtooth School stood the only occupied residence, a Navajo hogan with attendant sheep pen and storage shed. I walked over, hoping to find an occupant who could tell me something about Goldtooth, but no one was home except a large dog, resting in the shade by the hogan doorway. He showed the courtesy so typical of the Diné, rising to his feet to smile at me as I approached. But he also did his guard dog duty, and the smile began showing teeth when I got too close to the door.

WITH GOLDTOOTH ADEQUATELY EXPLORED, the question became "Where next?" with the only choices being back where we had come from or onward. Onward on the only Goldtooth road takes you 10 miles south to a junction. There, another dirt road leads 11 miles northward to reconnect you with 264 at Coal Mine Mesa if you don't wish to continue southward another 26 silent miles across the Hopi Reservation to Indian Route 2. We chose southward.

As a footnote, I might add that we did finally meet the only resident of Goldtooth. He was repairing a fence about 4 miles from his hogan and stopped work long enough to tell us that the nearest place on the road ahead that could offer us either gasoline or water was Leupp, which was about 50 miles away. If we needed same, we should take the shorter route to Coal Mine Mesa.

"How did my dog treat you?" he asked.

When I reported it had been dutiful but polite, he nodded, smiled and said, "A Navajo dog."

Tony Hillerman originated in 1925 as an Oklahoma farm boy, got his early education in an Indian school and discovered the West in 1945. A World War II veteran, he has been a police reporter, newspaper editor and journalism professor, and he has had more than 30 books published. He lives in Albuquerque with Marie, his wife of 45 years.

YAVAPAI COUNTY The Ranch-shaped Heart

In 1951, my parents and I moved from Los Angeles to a remote cattle ranch in Yavapai County. I was 2 years old. My mother and father were in their early 40s and had never lived on a ranch. Our new home was a redwood-framed island in an ocean of grama grass. The house had a stone fireplace in each room, a library with Errol Flynn's My Wicked Wicked Ways hidden on the top shelf, a living room with flagstone floors and a dining room with a lasso glued around the perimeter of the ceiling. Besides our house, there was a bunkhouse for the cowboys, a foreman's house, a maintenance shed, a commissary and a shipping corral. We had no phone, no television and often, when the Kohler power genera-To get there, you had to take a dirt road formerly used by stagecoaches. The stage stop, a cabin made of crudely hewn logs, still stood beneath an oak tree; my father used it to store salt licks for the cattle. To visit a doctor, we didn't take the stagecoach road. Instead, we drove our wood-paneled Ford station wagon some 50 miles on a bumpier dirt road to Prescott.

Our ranch spanned grassland, juniper-sloped hills and pineforested mountains. It was a wild place. Coyotes caroled on our front lawn, bulls bellowed and pawed dust in the pasture, mountain lions screamed from the rim rocks. The land nurtured generations of fine Hereford cattle and strong quarter horses. It also nurtured me.

The only child on the ranch, I played outside whenever I could. I fed frijole sandwiches to my paint pony, Robin, built forts in oak groves, explored rocky Indian ruins scattered along the creek beds, on top of hills, on the sides of mountains.

There was no school bus for the two-hour ride to town and back, so when I was old enough, I attended boarding schools. I couldn't wait until summer, when I got to hang around the cowboys. Some of these men were in their 60s and 70s and fussed over me like grandmothers. They taught me to see the beauty in all wild creatures, even the ones we had to kill. They protected me-just as my parents tried to protect me from their own stresses-dry years, rising costs, low cattle prices, family fights over managing or selling the ranch.

My father officed in faraway Prescott. He would often go to town to negotiate cattle sales, pay taxes, make phone calls, buy groceries, buy horseshoes, buy pinkeye medicine and get the mail. The mail! I would wait by the back porch eating a homegrown tomato with salt. When my father's car rolled up the driveway, I couldn't wait for it to stop. I banged on the driver's side until my amused father handed over the pillowcase-sized canvas mailbag. The mail was my link to the outside world. I remember sitting by the fire and reading The Arizona Republic, starting with "Dick Tracy" and "Mary Worth" on the comics page. I also read as much of Punch magazine and the Sunday New York Times as I could understand. I read The Saturday Evening Post, Life and Look. These publications informed me about the world beyond the ranch. The years passed. My parents guided me away from the ranch life because they didn't think it had a future. I moved to Phoenix to go college, fell in love, married, had kids and stayed in the city. When I was 25, my father sold the ranch because he was dying. I raised my family in Phoenix.

For years, I rarely spoke of the ranch, but I thought of it every day. I could not forget the rhythmic clanking of the windmill when a breeze turned its blades, the raspy touch of an alligator juniper tree, the panicked whinny of a colt separated from a mare, the roar of the creek after a summer storm, the alfalfa-tinged breath of my pony trotting through the meadow, the pop of pine logs as I huddled near the fireplace reading Life magazine. Of course, I became a journalist. I wanted to emulate the writers who had informed me, the ranch kid, about the places I knew nothing about. Through the years, I have tried to give voice to those who have no voice-the misunderstood desert, the dying river, and, yes, the rancher struggling to stay on the land.

I will write until I can no longer write, because even though I have not seen it for 31 years, the ranch is the wild, quiet place that will forever guide my heart.

Terry Greene Sterling of Paradise Valley remains a ranch girl at heart, exploring and writing about Arizona's wild places for publications across the nation. She is a three-time Virg Hill journalist of the year, a contributing editor to PHOENIX Magazine and a faculty associate at Arizona State University.

FLAGSTAFF A Delicate River of Light

Flagstaff nestles amid pine-crested hills about 7,000 feet above sea level, at the foot of Arizona's tallest mountains, the San Francisco Peaks. Like all newly arrived freshmen attending Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, I was told the soaring mountains acquired their name because you could see the lights of San Francisco from the summit. I was also warned that on cold nights, packs of wolves loped down the slopes and prowled the streets in search of meat. I later discovered these were outlandish falsehoods, but to a gullible Ohio boy who had seen little beyond flat fields and farmland, anything seemed possible in this dramatic landscape. The week before Christmas break, I spent long hours holed up in the campus library alternately cramming for finals and flirting with the girl working the returns desk. She possessed piercing hazel eyes and cheekbones so high I imagined teardrops evaporating before hitting the ground.

Just shy of midnight one evening, with synapses misfiring and exhausted by rejection, I stumbled outside, smack into a breathstealing, soul-waking winter scene. Snow had fallen through the afternoon-one of those delicious high-country snows, a languid deluge with flakes the size of kittens. Snow clung now to every surface, bowing pine branches, mantling huddled aspens and smothering roads. A walloping stillness cradled the campus. Yet several minutes passed before I even noticed the snow. My eyes were drawn to the most delicate light imaginable. A sea of feisty, flickering flames stretched along the ground in all directions. Paper bags lined the sidewalks. Inside each bag, a fistful of sand secured a lit candle. Elf lanterns, I thought. Hundreds of shimmering elf lanterns illuminated the edges of the night. What else could they be? I snow-crunched back to the dorm over sidewalks lined by those magical and mysterious lamps, like wading in a river of light, afraid to exhale lest the moment somehow be snatched away, until halfway there, when I stopped in my tracks. A bonejiggling wave of joy suddenly welled up inside me, and I did the only thing I could. I danced like the characters in A Charlie Brown Christmas. With riffs of Vince Guaraldi's piano erupting in my head, I cut loose, all floppy and free and fearless. When teenage hormones are afoot, emotions bubble just below the surface, uncensored and vibrant. Joy means joy. Bottom of the heart, CheshireCheshire-joy. I indulged.

I found out later the lights were luminarias, a holiday custom in the Southwest. Luminarias began as a Spanish tradition of lighting bonfires along the roads to guide people to Midnight Mass on the final night of Las Posadas, which commemorates the Christmas story of Mary and Joseph's search for a room in Bethlehem. The tradition continued into modern times with the decoration of rooftops, walls and sidewalks as a way of guiding travelers to their destination. Thirty years have passed and luminarias are more commonplace, but for me they've lost not a molecule of their magic. Every Christmas I take out that weathered college memory, shaking it like a snowglobe until it transports me back. I relish the stillness, the lights and the wonder of it all, and relive that sense of profound calm, followed by a geyser of joy. That is Christmas. Now if you'll excuse me, I feel a dance coming on.

If Roger Naylor learned only one thing in college, it was that he belonged in Arizona. After traveling the country as a stand-up comedian, he settled into the life of elegant leisure enjoyed by all freelance humor writers. Today he lives, and dances, with his wife in Cottonwood.