EDITOR'S LETTER

editor's letter Watercolors and Wildfires

Kevin Kibsey is an artist. He's a cowboy, too, and a certified high-end auto mechanic. Despite his proficiency with calf ropes and half-inch socket wrenches, it's his artwork that impresses us the most. And that's been going on for a long time. Kevin has been our resident artist for 22 years - his first assignment was in February 1993, when he illustrated a story about an Apache warrior named Chato. Since then, he's done several books and feature stories for us, and every month he creates the maps for our Hike of the Month and Scenic Drive. The maps are impressive, but they're more than just maps. Each one is illustrated with one of Kevin's paintings. Unfortunately, they're not very big. Because of space limitations, what begins as a full-size watercolor gets scaled down to 1 or 2 inches. It's not really enough. That's why we're spotlighting Kevin's work in this month's portfolio.

Like a lot of artists, Kevin is unassuming. "When I was in school, I wanted to do traditional art in the manner of the masters," he says. "At the time, I figured I didn't have the talent to be a painter or an illustrator."

Turns out, he had plenty of talent, and he quickly found his niche. "After I was out of school and doing freelance work, I went to a two-week course on plein-air painting, which is the traditional way in which the French Impressionists painted landscapes. That was a turning point for me," he says. "To this day, whenever I paint a landscape, I have to go out on location two or three times and do plein-air studies before doing a studio-size piece."

One of those landscapes is the opening spread of our portfolio. It's a scene from up near Prescott titled Blessings of a Cowboy. Kevin calls it his "most personal work," but he doesn't have a favorite. "I have many favorites," he says, "for uniquely different reasons: execution, design and composition, or the inspiration provided by the subject matter."

I don't know how he feels about the black bear in this month's Hike of the Month, but it's perfect for our map. I've I've seen several bears on the West Baldy Trail, which is one of the most scenic trails in the Southwest. Meadows, streams, evergreens, aspens, black bears, gray wolves ... this is where you want to be in June. And if you can't be on West Baldy, any of the trails in this month's cover story will do. It's a collection of day hikes that we've excerpted from our new book, Arizona Highways Hiking Guide.

The first edition of that book came out in 2011. A few months later, the Wallow Fire burned 535,000 acres in the White Mountains. A lot of trails were scorched, including five from the book. Subsequent fires around the state increased the death toll. Thus the second edition.

Because every trail everywhere is unique, it's impossible to replace the trails that have been lost. However, we're fortunate to live in a place with an abundance of great hikes. So, finding replacements wasn't a hardship. In all, there are a dozen new hikes in our new hiking book. One of the best is the Kachina Trail, which barely escaped the Schultz Fire.

That big fire began five years ago this month, when a gust of wind turned an abandoned campfire into a fast-moving inferno that would eventually decimate more than 15,000 acres in the Coconino National Forest.

"On the first day of the Schultz Fire," Annette McGivney writes in Sifting Through the Ashes, "I stood in my front yard in downtown Flagstaff and watched in disbelief as an orange-and-black mushroom cloud billowed hundreds of feet into the sky. In the years after the disaster ... I didn't have the heart to hike there and witness the devastation up close."

For our story, she finally went back, and when she got there, she saw some early signs of life, including thousands of ponderosa-pine seedlings. So far, morethan 100,000 trees have been planted under the direction of Andy Stevenson, a silviculturist for the Flagstaff Ranger District. Although he's one of many who wish the Schultz Fire had never happened, Stevenson and his colleagues are learning a lot from the post-fire recovery efforts. Another silver lining is that Flagstaff voters overwhelmingly approved a $10 million bond to support the Flagstaff Watershed Protection Project, which will thin and restore more than 10,000 acres in the Coconino. The objective is to prevent another Schultz Fire.

That's good news for Mother Nature. It's good news for our new hiking book, too, which features several hikes in the Flagstaff area. It's also good for plein-air artists like Kevin Kibsey. Of course, Kevin won't be painting ponderosas in Schultz Pass anytime soon, but that day will eventually come. In the meantime, we all need to adhere to the principles of Leave No Trace. In spite of Smokey's warnings, all of our worst fires over the past 12 years have been caused by human carelessness.

It's a frustrating reality, but history doesn't have to keep repeating itself.

COMING IN JULY...

Next month, look for Jack Dykinga's portfolio of the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge (pictured), along with stories about Walnut Canyon and the Blue Range Primitive Area.