Desert-Arizona Style

THE COUNTRY ISN'T SOFT and gentle. It is harsh and made of the sternest stuff. It bears the very marks of the gods in conflict. It is scarred by centuries of turbulent weather, bruised and battered by the elements in more boisterous mood. The sun, wind, rain have clawed their timeless gossip in mesa and mountain. Geology shouts her lessons from canyon walls. The story of the ages back when the world was a'making is told in trees turned to hardness like a tale twice told, and a million years of yesterdays cram their wisdom into layers of stone for scholars to read. This land can be cruel, too, strange and terrifying. The charms of the more placid landscape' are lost here. Nothing was done in half measures nor do you find the conventional frills of picture book scenery tacked on as becoming afterthoughts. A mountain range doesn't fade into the desert; it makes its descent in plunges. The desert itself is no delicate garden, but bristles with sharp, protective points of armor. The purple mountains slash the skyline with sawtoothed brutality and the scattered buttes are defiant and aloof. The country wears a tough, rough look as if it had been kicked around a bit. It has.

THE LAND AND THE ELEMENTS which go with the land are drama of a more spectacular sort. Suspense is superb, and the surprises in the scenery result from careful timing. The sets are unutterably unreal. There is excitement and action in this land and tediousness is not one of its vices. Those fellow conspirators, the elements, are deft, too, in their roles. It won't rain for months. Then one day the wind will hurl a skyful of dark clouds from over the horizon, shake them out in thunderous mirth, and then hang them over the hills to dry. A sandy wash, knowing only the darting lizard and the mincing footsteps of the quail, will suddenly become a torrent of muddy water, and as suddenly dry up again, giving itself back to the lizard and the quail.

An hour's journey through this country is like turning the pages in a book of fairy tales; a day's journey like moving from one world to another. Monotony does not weave patterns for this landscape, dullness never dims the lustre of the scenery. You must know this land well to be at home, for in common with old shoes it grows more comfortable with use.

MAN WITH HIS TOOLS and his tricks has conquered this land and it has treasured him for his patience and perseverance. His less ingenious kin of yesterday, however, went over the hills to extinction. Broken pottery burnished by countless suns are reminders of the little brown people who tried to conquer the country but were broken and dispersed instead. They built their pueblos like citadels on the higher places and under ledges of cliffs. They posted sentries to watch for enemies; yet their greatest enemy of all was the land and the deceiving weather which sheltered them for generations and turned upon them like an uncongenial host and they were no more.Only the wild and the untamed of yore could survive the land. The price of life was courage and fortitude. You had to hide your fears of the country behind a guise of blustering bravado, and the gay spirits who came laughed a lot and swore. If they were very brave they stayed and came to love, too, the bitter, lonely land. As late as the turn of this our sparkling new and exciting century, the mention of the territory of Arizona induced shudders of horror in more sheltered circles in the east. The country certainly made a name for itself. A bad name it was, too.

THE STRONG WHO SURVIVED became strong like the land, became part of it and belonged to it. The country, wide and open and limitless, bounded by not too many fences, puts its mark on its children. Here eyes were lifted to more distant horizons, souls were attuned to more enlivening vistas. You obeyed the mandates of your conscience and the precepts of your God and you were free. The Navajo, the simple, trusting son of the sparse country, became the freest of all. These people fought and died for their freedom and when it was taken from them they withered and only revived when it was given back to them. They bow only before the demands of the weather. No towns or cities or even villages for them. No marked trails or paths to follow. No little plots of land, measly marked by the tape measure, to cling to. All creation is theirs, all the miles and miles of unending country to roam about in. Their hearts, not maps, point their ponies' way, and they are as free as the wind that beats upon them. They know the land and its cruel ways and they are humble. They love the land and the freedom it instills in them and they are brave. Their lot, a mean lot to others, is to them a full lot and they are merry. They need little and expect little and they are serene.

OTHER PEOPLE CAME and became part and parcel of the windswept miles of this little corner of America. They found freedom in the new land and they dreamed their new dreams of hope and promise. They brought their languages from old worlds and these were mixed with the languages of the new world. A native, primeval civilization clashed with a European civilization and the old bowed before the new. Yet the old civilization, nearer the good, strong land remained strong in the end. Peoples and their philosophies, races and their religions met in the new land as great currents meet in the boundless sea. All in the end bowed to the will of the land and the land wove from conflicting mixtures the framework for the new race, strong like the land itself.

How foreign to this land would be the idiot's ideologies drenching the world with warm blood today! These hills weren't made for goose-stepping and how ridiculous it would be to deify a dictator in face of the eternal power and beauty of this land. Here you are reverent only to the Power that made the land, loyal to your neighbor and your neighbor's neighbor. Democracy boiled down is good neighborliness, the Golden Rule in political dress. This land itself breaks down the false prides and the false gods. It only demands that you be strong and brave and honest and tolerant. It demands, too, that you be kind.

THE EARLY SETTLERS were few and lived far apart, for the land was big and there were not enough people to go around. Even today this is one of the least inhabited corners of these United States. Blessed was the circumstance that deprived our wide acres of fabulous riches to lure the greedy and the grasping. There were no gold strikes, or land grabs, or oil booms to draw the undesirables like flies. The early settlers drifted in because land was cheap and there was room enough to run your own cattle without getting in someone else's way.But to survive, these people had to be trustful of each other, helpful at all times when help was needed. This was one of the exacting things demanded of the land because no individual or single family could long endure without his neighbor's good right arm to fall on for support occasionally. He might skin you in a horse trade but he'd come a'shooting when a bunch of renegades started bothering you. The term western hospitality was not born a slogan in the mind of some glib advertising writer. This way of life was created by people fighting to survive, it was a toll exacted by the laws of self-preservation. You didn't butt in on your neighbor's business because you both came to the new land to get away from butt-inskys. You lived and let live, but you trusted in your friend's word and you felt it more than social manners to extend a hand to a stranger. The lessons of Democracy are very simple.

THE GOOD, STRONG, exacting land set up the social standards, and thus eliminated a lot of the nonsense that cluttered up more crowded parts of the world. Emily Post remained discreetly on the shelf. You could say "Howdy, neighbor!" without a formal introduction. And if you were broke you weren't exactly an outcast. A cowboy would grow old in the saddle and never make more than "forty and keep," but in all the west there wasn't a more admired person than a good hand. He'd dream of someday having his own outfit and blow his roll in one hilarious first night in town, but he wouldn't let people look down their noses at him. And why should he? He knew and loved the land. He felt the sting of the wind, and burn of the sun. He knew the cold rains and the hard, dry snow. He knew the starlit nights and the spell of moonglow. He had heard the coyote, and he knew the smell of horses and cattle. He was part of the land and the weather. From sunup to dark he rode hard and laughed often and whether he knew it or not he was closer to God every minute of the day and night than most people get in a lifetime. Yes, the good land was the arbiter of genteel behavior. Thousands of foreign people came into the land to dig copper from it, and the land welcomed them all. Your complexion might be a little bit different and your accent halting and lame as you stumbled over the new language, but it didn't take long before you felt at home. If you were good people there was room enough for you, too.

AND SO, THIS LAND of which I speak, is a religion within itself, a manner and mode of living. It is part of that philosophy of life for free peoples called Democracy. It is a story in courage and a text in patience. It is people and how they live, the little people who are part of its goodness and its makeup, because in this land all people are the same and none can be master over his fellows. You can't strut about like lord of all creation in this land, because the land itself and the weather that is part of it tells you of the colossal jokes and the follies of others who came by long before you. We and our civilization will dance our little dance and be on our way, leaving the land as it was before, because only time changes the land and time is hobbled. This canyon is a lesson in humility. This plateau tells you how fleeting and transitory is man and his monkey business. This mountain chopped off into a mesa urges you to consider other things than yourself for so many things are more important. There is no place in the scheme of things in this land for greed, power, smallness. Snobbery and intolerance are out-of-place, foreign to the bigness of the land. There is room for all creation in this land, a place for every person. Willing hands will find much to do, for the land is young and there is much to be done. There is a place for everything except meanness.