THE LAND OF MY LOVE AND OF MY JOYS

Editor’s Note: The front cover of our December 1942 issue was unremarkable. The cover photo, a shot of Joshua trees by Esther Henderson, was typically beautiful, but the image was a horizontal, which left a lot of white space. It was nice, but not what readers would come to expect of our “Christmas issue.” The cover, however, belies the words inside. Although we’re best known for our photography, we’ve also featured some of the world’s best writers in our 95 years, including Joyce Rockwood Muench, Nancy Newhall, Charles Bowden, Craig Childs and Terry Tempest Williams. On par with all of them was our editor emeritus, Raymond Carlson. He was an exemplar of the literary medium, and the essay you’re about to read is the best collection of words ever assembled to celebrate our state. It’s presented in the same basic layout we used in 1942, including the same photographs. It’s so good. Enjoy.
 

Springtime on the Desert
Esther Henderson

THIS LAND I LOVE — this small corner of America — holds its broad shoulders firm and strong against the sky. Its personality is as varied as its people. Deserts are tossed against mountains. Canyons cut deep into the solid rock of plateaus. Rocky peaks, which should have perished long ago against the onslaughts of time and the weather, point bravely at the endless clouds drifting by.

The country rolls and tosses and pitches, the unwavering miles flowing out in cosmic poetry. A spendthrift, it is lavish in space and distance and its bigness is overpowering, formidable. To people accustomed to country built on smaller plan, this land in its very bigness is an awesome thing.

 

San Carlos Lake
Josef Muench

THE COUNTRY ISN'T SOFT AND GENTLE. It is harsh and made of the sternest stuff. It bears the very marks of the gods in conflict. It is scarred by centuries of turbulent weather, bruised and battered by the elements in more boisterous mood. The sun, wind, rain have clawed their timeless gossip in mesa and mountain. Geology shouts her lessons from canyon walls. The story of the ages back when the world was a’making is told in trees turned to hardness like a tale twice told, and a million years of yesterdays cram their wisdom into layers of stone for scholars to read.

This land can be cruel, too, strange and terrifying. The charms of the more placid landscape are lost here. Nothing was done in half measures nor do you find the conventional frills of picture book scenery tacked on as becoming afterthoughts. A mountain range doesn’t fade into the desert; it makes its descent in plunges. The desert itself is no delicate garden, but bristles with sharp, protective points of armor. The purple mountains slash the skyline with sawtoothed brutality and the scattered buttes are defiant and aloof. The country wears a tough, rough look as if it had been kicked around a bit. It has.

 

Mountain Majesty
Chuck Abbott

THE LAND AND THE ELEMENTS which go with the land are drama of a more spectacular sort. Suspense is superb, and the surprises in the scenery result from careful timing. The sets are unutterably unreal. There is excitement and action in this land and tediousness is not one of its vices. Those fellow conspirators, the elements, are deft, too, in their roles.

It won’t rain for months. Then one day the wind will hurl a skyful of dark clouds from over the horizon, shake them out in thunderous mirth, and then hang them over the hills to dry. A sandy wash, knowing only the darting lizard and the mincing footsteps of the quail, will suddenly become a torrent of muddy water, and as suddenly dry up again, giving itself back to the lizard and the quail.

An hour’s journey through this country is like turning the pages in a book of fairy tales; a day’s journey like moving from one world to another. Monotony does not weave patterns for this landscape, dullness never dims the lustre of the scenery. You must know this land well to be at home, for in common with old shoes it grows more comfortable with use.

 

Coconino Autumn
Norman Rhoads Garrett, FRPS

MAN WITH HIS TOOLS AND HIS TRICKS has conquered this land and it has treasured him for his patience and perseverance. His less ingenious kind of yesterday, however, went over the hills to extinction. Broken pottery burnished by countless suns are reminders of the people who tried to conquer the country but were broken and dispersed instead. They built their pueblos like citadels on the higher places and under ledges of cliffs. They posted sentries to watch for enemies; yet their greatest enemy of all was the land and the deceiving weather which sheltered them for generations and turned upon them like an uncongenial host and they were no more.

Only the wild and the untamed of yore could survive the land. The price of life was courage and fortitude. You had to hide your fears of the country behind a guise of blustering bravado, and the gay spirits who came laughed a lot and swore. If they were very brave they stayed and came to love, too, the bitter, lonely land. As late as the turn of this our sparkling new and exciting century, the mention of the territory of Arizona induced shudders of horror in more sheltered circles in the east. The country certainly made a name for itself. A bad name it was, too.

 

At the Navajo Fair
Norman Rhoads Garrett, FRPS

THE STRONG WHO SURVIVED BECAME STRONG LIKE THE LAND, became part of it and belonged to it. The country, wide and open and limitless, bounded by not too many fences, puts its mark on its children. Here eyes were lifted to more distant horizons, souls were attuned to more enlivening vistas. You obeyed the mandates of your conscience and the precepts of your God and you were free.

The Navajo, the simple, trusting son of the sparse country, became the freest of all. These people fought and died for their freedom and when it was taken from them they withered and only revived when it was given back to them. They bow only before the demands of the weather. No towns or cities or even villages for them. No marked trails or paths to follow. No little plots of land, measly marked by the tape measure, to cling to. All creation is theirs, all the miles and miles of unending country to roam about in. Their hearts, not maps, point their ponies’ way, and they are as free as the wind that beats upon them. They know the land and its cruel ways and they are humble. They love the land and the freedom it instills in them and they are brave. Their lot, a mean lot to others, is to them a full lot and they are merry. They need little and expect little and they are serene.

 

Big Country
Esther Henderson

OTHER PEOPLE CAME AND BECAME PART AND PARCEL of the windswept miles of this little corner of America. They found freedom in the new land and they dreamed their new dreams of hope and promise. They brought their languages from old worlds and these were mixed with the languages of the new world. A native, primeval civilization clashed with a European civilization and the old bowed before the new. Yet the old civilization, nearer the good, strong land, remained strong in the end. Peoples and their philosophies, races and their religions met in the new land as great currents meet in the boundless sea. All in the end bowed to the will of the land and the land wove from conflicting mixtures the framework for the new race, strong like the land itself.

How foreign to this land would be the ideologies drenching the world with warm blood today! These hills weren’t made for goose-stepping and how ridiculous it would be to deify a dictator in face of the eternal power and beauty of this land. Here you are reverent only to the Power that made the land, loyal to your neighbor and your neighbor’s neighbor. Democracy boiled down is good neighborliness, the Golden Rule in political dress. This land itself breaks down the false prides and the false gods. It only demands that you be strong and brave and honest and tolerant. It demands, too, that you be kind.

 

Storm Over San Xavier
Esther Henderson

THE EARLY SETTLERS WERE FEW AND LIVED FAR APART, for the land was big and there were not enough people to go around. Even today this is one of the least inhabited corners of these United States. Blessed was the circumstance that deprived our wide acres of fabulous riches to lure the greedy and the grasping. There were no gold strikes, or land grabs, or oil booms to draw the undesirables like flies. The early settlers drifted in because land was cheap and there was room enough to run your own cattle without getting in someone else’s way.

But to survive, these people had to be trustful of each other, helpful at all times when help was needed. This was one of the exacting things demanded of the land because no individual or single family could long endure without his neighbor’s good right arm to fall on for support occasionally. He might skin you in a horse trade but he’d come a’shooting when a bunch of renegades started bothering you. The term “western hospitality” was not born a slogan in the mind of some glib advertising writer. This way of life was created by people fighting to survive, it was a toll exacted by the laws of self-preservation. You didn’t butt in on your neighbor’s business because you both came to the new land to get away from butt-inskys. You lived and let live, but you trusted in your friend’s word and you felt it more than social manners to extend a hand to a stranger. The lessons of Democracy are very simple.

 

Saguaro Forest
Southwestern National Monuments

THE GOOD, STRONG, EXACTING LAND set up the social standards, and thus eliminated a lot of the nonsense that cluttered up more crowded parts of the world. Emily Post remained discreetly on the shelf. You could say “Howdy, neighbor!” without a formal introduction.

And if you were broke you weren’t exactly an outcast. A cowboy would grow old in the saddle and never make more than “forty and keep,” but in all the west there wasn’t a more admired person than a good hand. He’d dream of someday having his own outfit and blow his roll in one hilarious first night in town, but he wouldn’t let people look down their noses at him. And why should he? He knew and loved the land. He felt the sting of the wind, and burn of the sun. He knew the cold rains and the hard, dry snow. He knew the starlit nights and the spell of moonglow. He had heard the coyote, and he knew the smell of horses and cattle. He was part of the land and the weather. From sunup to dark he rode hard and laughed often and whether he knew it or not he was closer to God every minute of the day and night than most people get in a lifetime. Yes, the good land was the arbiter of genteel behavior. Thousands of foreign people came into the land to dig copper from it, and the land welcomed them all. Your complexion might be a little bit different and your accent halting as you stumbled over the new language, but it didn’t take long before you felt at home. If you were good people there was room enough for you, too.

 

Land of the Monuments
Josef Muench

AND SO, THIS LAND OF WHICH I SPEAK, is a religion within itself, a manner and mode of living. It is part of that philosophy of life for free peoples called Democracy. It is a story in courage and a text in patience. It is people and how they live, the little people who are part of its goodness and its makeup, because in this land all people are the same and none can be master over his fellows. You can’t strut about like lord of all creation in this land, because the land itself and the weather that is part of it tells you of the colossal jokes and the follies of others who came by long before you.

We and our civilization will dance our little dance and be on our way, leaving the land as it was before, because only time changes the land and time is hobbled. This canyon is a lesson in humility. This plateau tells you how fleeting and transitory is man and his monkey business. The mountain chopped off into a mesa urges you to consider other things than yourself for so many things are more important. There is no place in the scheme of things in this land for greed, power, smallness. Snobbery and intolerance are out-of-place, foreign to the bigness of the land. There is room for all creation in this land, a place for every person. Willing hands will find much to do, for the land is young and there is much to be done. There is a place for everything except meanness.

 

Hopi Roundup in Moenkopi Wash
Chuck Abbott

TO THE DESERVING THE LAND HOLDS RICH SURPRISES, shares exquisite secrets. Its power is in the big things about the land; its charm in the little things stored away. It is a hard taskmaster but liberal are its rewards. Grim and awe-inspiring, it can be again both gentle and meek. With all that can be said against this land, it holds you with its beauty and grandeur. There is nobility in its grim bigness; a majestic serenity in its vast distances.

Its memorable moments are the little things, the little quirks that make it such an exciting land. A few showers can transform the desert from a dull gray-green to a creation in flaming colors. The desert floor will change from a burnt-out brown to brilliant yellow as the rains bring life to forgotten flower seeds. No night is as peaceful as a desert night, with the stars puncturing the ceiling with merry light and the moon etching the mountains’ blue gold against the sky. Sunrise and sunset are little daily miracles you’ll always remember about this land, one of the rich rewards this land pays you for your devotion. These things are sky and earth and sun in perfect harmony, leaping to the task with riotous, extravagant gold and reds at dawn; signing off with reds and oranges and purples as the task is finished when day is done. These little daily miracles are something to see.

 

Sheep Camp
Chuck Abbott

LAVISH IS THE LAND IN ITS LITTLE SECRETS to be shared by the observant. A hawk’s nest in a saguaro, where hawk chicks are safe from danger. An elk, for all his size and awkwardness, speeding through a mountain meadow, as agile and graceful as a mountain lion. Lizards sunning themselves on a rock. A “sing” in the Navajo country and the weird chants and the color in blankets, shirts and blouses. The sweep of a northern Arizona plateau and the dwarfed cedars bending their gnarled limbs in the wind. Clouds telling of storm forming over a mountain top. The Gila Monster, a pattern in orange and black, as colorful as the land that gives him life. The sunshine in the air and the lightness and zest of it. The paloverde in spring dress, showing off in a dress of sheerest yellow. The smell of juniper wood and mesquite around a camp fire at night. The lonely roads drifting off into the desert. A Papago village in the summer sun, when at noonday all the world seems to rest.

The little towns on the maps with the odd names and the way the names came into existence. A highway carving its way through a mountain range, spoiling the beauty not one whit. A century plant precariously perched on a steep hillside holding a cluster of blossoms high for all the world to admire. These and countless other little things were written into the plans of this land, adding to its perfection.

 

The Ancient Forest
Chuck Abbott

ALL OF THIS — THE BIG AND LITTLE THINGS — is the land which some people cherish. It is a little part of a wonderland called America, but a part unlike any other. The smoke of a thousand cities does not throw a haze between earth and sky. There is room enough to breathe in, it’s big enough to move about in, there is space to dream in and to be alone in for awhile. It isn’t crowded yet and fences merely swing along to keep a beef on his own range and not to keep visiting folks out.

It’s a land that hasn’t been trampled too much and there are still thousands of out-of-way places that you can stumble upon with the rare satisfaction of discovery. Some places have to this day remained hidden from the curiosity of inquiring man, and these are a constant challenge. It isn’t cut up too much by roads and miles and miles of it would be a task for a man on a horse.

This is a land to fight for, to protect forever and for all time against all enemies of the people who are part of the land. This is a land to believe in, to cherish for all of its qualities, good and bad, because it borders upon sheer perfection. This is a land of which to be proud, for in its epic proportions it dwarfs comparison. This is a land full of poetry and music and in its sweeping majesty is inspiring background for the march of America’s empire.