HUMOR

Look to the Wild West to Learn

Arizona Highways draws from the Best of the Wild West to teach children shapes and colors, ABCs and 123s. In this series of books by Madeline and Gary Bennett a cast of lively animals and creative insects introduces children ages 3-7 to reading fundamentals. The Accounting Cricket, his pal the LetterBug and goofy Arizona animals play hide-and-seek games while they help children learn shapes and colors or letters and numbers. Each book is 32 pages. Hardcover. Full-color illustrations. $14.95 each or purchase all three for $35.88, a 20% savings #ABENT2

destination It's a 'Secret' Easily Discovered: HASSAYAMPA RIVER PRESERVE Protects Diverse Beauty

ON A COOL MORNING IN LATE MARCH, I SAT on a bench overlooking Palm Lake, a springfed pond of 4 acres at the Hassayampa River Preserve near Wickenburg. Visitors had not yet begun to stroll down the dusty nature paths, and I had the place all to myself. Had I arrived earlier-the preserve opens at 8 A.M. - 1 might have spotted a raccoon, a javelina or, with uncommon luck, maybe even a bobcat. As I peered through pocket binoculars at an American coot darting in and out of marshy brown reeds, its jet-black neck pumping, it occurred to me why the French Impressionist Claude Monet spent his declining years contentedly painting water lilies at his home in Giverny. Palm Lake's tranquil surface reflected the towering cottonwoods and willows in liquid yellows, greens and blacks-nature's alter ego-much as Monet's water garden must have reflected his wisterias and azaleas. At Giverny, Monet had only to move a few paces to discover something new. The same can be said of the preserve, a 5-mile strip of riparian habitat along the Hassayampa River, owned by The Nature Conservancy. Every vantage point offers unique possibilities. Perhaps a blue heron will glide down to the water, or a red-tailed hawk with a 4-foot wingspan will alight in a cottonwood tree. You might even catch sight of a thirsty mule deer. The preserve, after all, hosts some 230 species of birds and a teeming roster of desert animals, many of them as imperiled as the vanishing riparian sanctuaries that sustain them. "Hassayampa" reputedly comes from the Yavapai Indian word hayesamo, which means "following the water as far as it goes." The Apaches refer to it more graphically as the "upside down river." The Hassayampa begins in the Bradshaw Mountains near Prescott and