Trails in the Desert

They wander into the desert, these desert trails, winding and twisting, lazily stepping aside now for a saguaro, now for a palo verde. Their destination is the desert edge where the foothills roll upward and lose themselves in the bluish haze of the distant mountain range. This winding path will take you to a ranch house in some small canyon in the foothills where a friendly cottonwood shields it from the sun. Another of these lazy desert trails will lead you to a prospector's camp and another to a small mine and another to a cottage in the desert where someone, shielded in the desert's bosom, is regaining lost health. Each desert trail is an adventure, a glorious adventure into the sunshine and into the peaceful silence of a great out-door cathedral. Not any place else on earth can you be more alone, more immersed in your thoughts, more steeped in the beauty of simple Nature than when idling along on some desert road or trail, your thoughts as care-free as the small white clouds drifting along with you so high above. You should leave worry and hurry behind you for the desert and the lonely trails there have no patience with such clatter, tommyrot of cities and crowds. Here is a place to relax and dream and to return to the simple thoughts and the simple life.

We recommend the desert for an afternoon of loafing. Your car can easily follow the trails that lead you into the desert or you can walk or ride a horse. Forget your watch or leave it at home, because the desert has no patience with timepieces. When you measure your existence in centuries you, too, would scorn the hour-glass. Let the sun and the shadows tell the time of day, for you should follow your desert trails until sunset's tardy light steals away before darkness. And if sunset finds you around a fire of mesquite wood, with the aroma of frying steak and bubbling coffee enveloping you as the most tantalizing of all incense, your afternoon in the desert has been complete and for a few hours your life has been completely filled with beauty and repose. R. C.