NO SIR, IT'S NO LIE

THAT William who was greater than the kings and queens of his time said in his usually truthful, yet sulphitic manner, “Travelers never did lie, though fools at home condemn them.” I quote from the bard of Avon early for fear that those who remain at home -I should never call them fools call me a liar when I say that there is a magic road a huge irregular circlelying on the Arizona-Utah-Nevada border that could easily match the wildest tales of the Arabian Nights.

I speak of that circle which extends from Zion National Park down across the Navajo Bridge near Lee's Ferry to Cameron, or Flagstaff if you will, and then along the south rim of the Grand Canyon for fifty miles, thence south to Williams, West to Boulder Dam, and back north to Zion. There is a circle a half a thousand or so miles in extent that is the wonder of the world.

A night at Zion is a good beginning for the trip if one enters the circle from the north. There the air is balmy and cool as one watches the shadows creep down on the Great White Throne, or the sunlight creep up, at eventide. The magnificent and colossal stillness of the place, made subtle by the hushed whisper of the Rio Virgin, gives point to existence and prepares the soul for companionship with great things.

It is well to leave the canyon at dawn while the sun is still high on the spires of the Holy City and while the breath of coolness is like a kiss upon the cheek. The thrill of the zig-zag highway which leads up to the tunnels is greatest in the morning when a new sky greets a new earth.

This trip is to be taken leisurely, for, scenically speaking, only he who is a son of perdition drives too rapidly through a country like that. At Jacob's Lake a pause is made to see the Kaibab squirrels and to breathe deep of the resinous air of the great yellow-pine forest that mantles Buckskin mountain. If one is new in the Kaibab, he will turn aside to visit Bright Angel Point, Cape Royal, and Point Sublime on the north rim of the Grand Canyon. If he is native, he probably will roll on down through the avenue of lofty trees to House Rock Valley, to the land of the Balancing Rocks at Soap Creek, where the Vermilion Cliffs are warm and high against the serene sky.

He will pause at the bridge for re freshments both of body and soul. There is the great gorge. At last the restless and ageless river is beneath him where he can see it still carving with its patient tides and waves deeper gorges for some future generation. The cliffs at the north, high and sheer and lovely in their mellow tones of deepest red are scarcely more interesting than the ridge which stretches away to the north and speaks of other deserts.

The road here is unpaved but good. Through a land that echoes the footsteps of pioneers from Escalante of 1776 to the present day, both red and white, the road goes on south fringed sparingly with hogans and goats and sheep and Navajos and Navajo-rug weavers.

The traveler can turn aside and visit Tuba City and Meonkopi or he can go on south to the Little Colorado where at Cameron he can cross the stream on a modern bridge. Here he will know that he is in the heart of the Navajo country.

From Cameron the road turns northwest up along the Little Colorado the river goes down, but the road goes up, for, like the big Colorado, the stream has conquered the plateaus. This drive, if the traveler has the seeing eye and the heart that can respond to desert beauty, is one of the finest in America if not in the world. There toward the

JULY, 1937 Magic Circle ArizonaUtah-Nevada Border Is Wonder of World In Scenic Highways

north and east are the endless, mist rimmed valleys, filled with sage and the fragrance of sage. The gorge of the Little Colorado can be seen marked by sheer cliffs visible above the plain. Side roads invite and he who knows how to travel in God's country responds and visits the gorge that is so deep and narrow that his breath is taken from him when he rounds a spur and finds himself looking into chasms out of which faintly comes a roar as of restless giants at work.

At Desert View one can look out over a land whose gray-green loveliness cannot be told in words.

At the Hopi Tower, one gets his first view of the Grand Canyon from the south rim. The canyon has been pictured and described an innumerable number of times, but no picture, no description can equal the glory and the splendor of that first eye-full of sky and gorge and winding river. If I had the words I'd try to lie about the Grand Canyon, but it cannot be done in superlatives. The canyon, itself, gives the lie to language. Here all dreams of loveliness in nature mature. Reality goes beyond imagination. The scale has been run through to the highest note. Only celestial language and feeling can take it further. The Hopi Tower stands at a giant arm which is the Grand Canyon. Up and down the river one can gaze in sheer amazement. If he is fearful that his senses have deserted him and he is suffering from a type of delirium, he can gaze at the canyon spectacle in the dark mirrors which are provided. These like the shield of Mercury, serve to reveal images of the enthralling canyon lest the observer be turned to stone.

Here color, light and shadow, magnificence and splendor run through the scales like a grand symphonic poem. Name your color and you can find it before you; think of a depth or height and you behold it; whisper of grandeur and there it is.

From the tower one goes west, awed, subdued, and made little by the colossal world which he has found an infant in a universe so old that hundreds become millions and millions become eternities. For miles one glides along, constantly invited by signs, to see some view-point different from the last.

ARIZONA HIGHWAYS

At El Tovar, the trail leads south. One rolls out upon a grassy plain relieved to find a world in which a midget like a man can once more take an important place. This ride to Williams is by no means dull, if one loves clouds and matchless skies and trees and rolling hills.

There is a sort of desert country to traverse before one reaches Boulder Dam, but it is interesting country.

At last the road takes one round a hill and there below is a puny dam that some punk creature has flung across the greatest gorge on earth. One wonders at its diminutive size, until he gets close. Then he discovers that man has built in scale according to the cliffs. Here is a colossal thing! A mountain of concrete thrown across a chasm deep and wild.

No man did this. It took men-millions of them-generations of them each building upon what the other knew. Above the dam, blue and serene and peaceful,lies a piece of Arizona sky wedged in between the cliffs. Surely this blue expanse is not made of the red and turbulent waters of the river we saw at Navajo Bridge!

One stands and gazes down the "apron" of the dam and suddenly he sees his race-giants, gods all-conquering!

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He rolls across the dam and winds up out of the gorge sure at last that if he is brother to these builders, he is brother to the Infinite to cliff and crag and canyon and to nature, mother of all.

If one is old in this country of surprises, he will see Boulder City as a miracle. Here where clean white sand once rolled in absolute waste stands a modern city. Man has made an oasis in the desert. He has made grass grow where no grass could grow; water spring up where no water was; paved streets where only the camels of a by-gone day could have traveled easily.

But the circle calls. Over the desert, through Las Vegas, the Meadow, over the Muddy "River" and among the Mormon towns that line the ribbon of oil, one goes on and on. Joshuas, huge plants, companions of the sentient hills, stand on the landscape like huge old men bowed beneath their load of years.

Over a hill and down a small canyon the road winds. The Vermilion cliffs once more march along the highway until at last, like a medallion of emerald(Continued on Page 21)