EDITOR'S LETTER

Keep Your Eyes Peeled
The bighorns aren’t easy to see. Even when you’re looking right at them, there’s a good chance you won’t see anything. Of all the animals in the wild, they’re among the most camouflaged. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one on the first take. Did those rocks just move? What the ... hey, that’s a sheep. It takes a double take to see what should have been obvious. That is, if you’re lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time. Encountering a bighorn is rare, and it’s getting even more so. At last count, there were only 6,000 left in Arizona, and in the mountains above Tucson, they’ve disappeared altogether.

“The herd was hurled into oblivion by houses dibbling at the very edges of the wilderness area,” Charles Bowden writes in Counting Sheep. “The herd was maimed by our hikes with pet dogs that terrified the sheep, by the slow but certain encirclement of the mountain by our communities that cut off migration routes between the mountain ranges and ended any hope of new blood. It was not a simple thing, or a deliberate thing, or a desired thing. But it was a fatal thing for the sheep.”

It’s been almost 10 years since the last bighorn was seen in the Santa Catalina Mountains. However, there’s new hope. In November, the Arizona Game and Fish Department reintroduced about 30 sheep into the Catalinas. When I learned about the plan last summer, I reached out to Chuck, whose attachment to that mountain range is as powerful as anyone’s — it’s his Walden Pond. I asked about his thoughts on the reintroduction, and whether the return of the sheep would even matter. Then I asked whether he’d like to write something for us. He said he would, but he didn’t give any specifics. He just said he’d brood on it.

That’s how it is with Chuck. I never know for sure what I’ll get. But it doesn’t matter. It’s enough to know that his words will be compelling, passionate and graceful. This piece is no exception. It’s beautifully written, and it will make you think. It will make you think about the bighorns and the mountains and the need to preserve those things around us that mean the most, whether it’s a threatened species above Tucson or an old building in downtown Phoenix.

The Orpheum Theatre is one of those old buildings. It made a big splash when it opened on Adams Street in 1929. However, like a lot of old theaters from the golden era, it changed hands — and names — several times over the years, and by the mid-1980s, it was a mess. That’s when the city stepped in, bought it and began a $14 million restoration. Today, it’s arguably the most beautiful theater in the state, and it’s on our list of Arizona’s most historic places.

Faraway Ranch is on the list, too. Along with Yuma Territorial Prison, Hubbell Trading Post and the Hassayampa Inn, a place that was heralded by the Prescott Evening Courier as “the first definite step towards a greater Prescott.” That heady review was published on November 19, 1927, and as you’ll see in this month’s cover story, the old hotel hasn’t changed much since then. The same is true of El Tovar, the iconic lodge on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon.

The lodge is the hub of what’s known as the Grand Canyon Village Historic District. About 4 million people pass through there every year, most of whom don’t realize there’s another village, a literal village, hidden a half-mile from the spotlight of the natural wonder. Living there today is a unique existence, but in the middle of the last century, it was the middle of nowhere. In Life on the Edge, Kathy Montgomery looks back on that “halcyon time of innocence, simplicity and freedom.” It was so peaceful that most people didn’t even lock their homes.

Although the residents aren’t as isolated as they used to be, they still have to go to Flagstaff or even Phoenix for certain things. The flip side, of course, is that they get to live within walking distance of the Canyon and all that it offers, including the world-famous panoramas, the California condors and the occasional sighting of a bighorn sheep. There aren’t a lot of them up there, maybe a few hundred, but if you happen to be in the right place at the right time, you might see something special. As Chuck says, “to see a bighorn almost floating across a cliff face is to become for a moment part of the rock and desert.” It’s a rare opportunity. Keep your eyes peeled.
 

COMING IN MARCH ...
Our annual portfolio of desert wildflowers. Plus, a profile of Bigfoot, a rugged survival expert who lives off the grid in the Superstition Mountains.