New World Oasis

TO THE DESERVING the land holds rich surprises, shares exquisite secrets. Its power is in the big things about the land; its charm in the little things stored away. It is a hard taskmaster but liberal are its rewards. Grim and awe-inspiring, it can be again both gentle and meek. With all that can be said against this land, it holds you with its beauty and grandeur. There is nobility in its grim bigness; a majestic serenity in its vast distances. Its memorable moments are the little things, the little quirks that make it such an exciting land. A few showers can transform the desert from a dull gray-green to a creation in flaming colors. The desert floor will change from a burnt-out brown to brilliant yellow as the rains bring life to forgotten flower seeds. No night is as peaceful as a desert night, with the stars puncturing the ceiling with merry light and the moon etching the mountains blue gold against the sky. Sunrise and sunset are little daily miracles you'll always remember about this land, one of the rich rewards this land pays you for your devotion. These things are sky and earth and sun in perfect harmony, leaping to the task with riotous, extravagant gold and reds at dawn; signing off with reds and oranges and purples as the task is finished when day is done. These little daily miracles are something to see.

LAVISH IS THE LAND in its little secrets to be shared by the observant. A hawk's nest in a saguaro, where hawk chicks are safe from danger. An elk, for all his size and awkwardness, speeding through a mountain meadow, as agile and graceful as a mountain lion. Lizards sunning themselves on a rock. A "sing" in the Navajo country and the weird chants and the color in blankets, shirts and blouses. The sweep of a northern Arizona plateau and the dwarfed cedars bending their gnarled limbs in the wind. Clouds telling of storm forming over a mountain top. The Gila Monster, a pattern in orange and black, as colorful as the land that gives him life. The sunshine in the air and the lightness and zest of it. The paloverde in spring dress, showing off in a dress of sheerest yellow. The smell of juniper wood and mesquite around a camp fire at night. The lonely roads drifting off into the desert. A Papago village in the summer sun, when at noonday all the world seems to rest. The little towns on the maps with the odd names and the way the names came into existence. A highway carving its way through a mountain range, spoiling the beauty not one whit. A century plant precariously perched on a steep hillside holding a cluster of blossoms high for all the world to admire. These and countless other little things were written into the plans of this land, adding to its perfection.

ALL OF THIS the big and little things is the land which some people cherish. It is a little part of a wonderland called America, but a part unlike any other. The smoke of a thousand cities does not throw a haze between earth and sky. There is room enough to breathe in, it's big enough to move about in, there is space to dream in and to be alone in for awhile. It isn't crowded yet and fences merely swing along to keep a beef on his own range and not to keep visiting folks out. It's a land that hasn't been trampled too much and there are still thousands of out-of-way places that you can stumble upon with the rare satisfaction of discovery. Some places have to this day remained hidden from the curiosity of inquiring man, and these are a constant challenge. It isn't cut up too much by roads and miles and miles of it would be a task for a man on a horse. This is a land to fight for, to protect forever and for all time against all enemies of the people who are part of the land. This is a land to believe in, to cherish for all of its qualities, good and bad, because it borders upon sheer perfection. This is a land of which to be proud, for in its epic proportions it dwarfs comparison. This is a land full of poetry and music and in its sweeping majesty is inspiring background for the march of America's empire . . . R. C.

Desert Arizona Soyle by Nan N. Dodge

WHY DO ARIZONANS take pride in the fact that sixty percent of their state is desert? Because they understand the desert. They know its many advantages of climate, scenery, and economic opportunity. People who do not understand the desert and think of it in terms of the Sahara of their grammar school geographies, fear it. To them the desert is thirst, poisonous reptiles, heat, and sandstorms. To the Arizonan the desert is the grey-green verdure of grotesque plants, the pungent fragrance of creosote bush after rain, and the glory of a sky ablaze with stars. What is a desert, and why? Dr. Forest Shreve of the world-famous Desert Laboratory in Tucson has spent a sizeable scientific life learning how to answer those and other questions by taking deserts apart and studying all of the pieces, even the smallest ones. He tells us that an adequate definition of desert must be based on a group of characteristics rather than on a single one, but that deficient and uncertatin rainfall is the fundamental feature. The world contains six large deserts (Sahara, Gobi, Nevada, Kalahari, Tehuacan, and Karoo) all of which are just outside the tropic zone and all of which are isolated from one another. In each, the plant life is distinct from that of surrounding areas and different from that of the other deserts. In North America, the desert region extends south from eastern Oregon to the Mexican state of Puebla, and east from the Pacific Coast of Lower California to the valley of the Devil's River in Texas. This region contains four types of desert which scientists call the Great Basin, Mohave, Sonoran, and Chihuahuan. Arizona is favored with three of the types, lacking only the Chihuahuan. Many delicately balanced factors of geographical location and prevailing atmospheric conditions combine to result in the deficient rainfall that has produced large areas of desert. One of the most important of these is a range of high mountains lying parallel to a seacoast from which prevailing winds blow. Moistureladen air currents from the sea must rise into the cold atmosphere of the peaks to pass over the mountains. The moisture they contain condenses in the colder air of the higher levels and falls as rain of snow on the seaward side of the mountains. Descending to the lower levels beyond the mountains, the dessicated winds become heated and absorb any moisture that they meet. Thus they not only bring rain, but they eagerly pick up and carry off any moisture that they meet. Thus, mountains that are barriers to moisture-laden winds produce in their lees "rain shadows" which have many or all of the manifestations of deserts. Since the basic characteristic of a desert is deficient and uncertain rainfall, it is unreasonable to assume that, if moisture is provided, many plants and animals unable to survive under usual desert conditions can live and thrive within them. The immediate surroundings of the few springs and seeps which occur in the desert, and the numerous and abundant crops grown in the ever expanding irrigated portions of the Arizona deserts prove this to be true.

But what of the normal desert; if rainfall is uncertatin and deficient, how is it possible for any plants to grow or for any animals to live? In answer to that question, which would require volumes to cover completely, lie many strange and interesting facts. In a few localities in the world, there actually is not sufficient moisture to permit plant growth. Without vegetation or a cover of stones to protect the soil, it becomes prey to the winds which blow some of it away and pile the remainder into drifts. These are the sand dune areas which the term "desert" brings to mind for many of us. But Mother Nature for millions of years has operated a remarkable experimental laboratory, and one of her problems

has been to develop plants that could carry on under conditions of deficient and uncertain rainfall. Many of her experiments have failed, and changing conditions have forced many others that worked, out of business. Some of her queerest successes are found in the deserts, doing right well under the conditions which Mother Nature developed them to meet.

One of the interesting things about the Sonoran Desert, which has captured all of southern Arizona except the southeastern corner, is that in most years it is a desert for only eight or nine months. During the rest of the time the rainfall is sufficient and only reasonably uncertain. Mother Nature found this out many thousands of years ago, so she provided a number of plants which could complete their lives in the few months that the desert wasn't a desert. Come the winter rains, and these little cool-weather ephemerals, as they are called, spring up everywhere to cover the hillsides and the desert floor with a carpet of green. They grow rapidly, for their time is short, and with the first warm breezes of early spring they burst into bloom. Tiny white daisies, golden poppies, magenta Owls Clover, apricot-tinted mallows, and a host of others for a few weeks paint the landscape with a blaze of color. Then they are gone leaving their seeds to seek hiding places in the soil where they may lie dormant through the long period of heat and drouth until awakened by the cool moisture of another winter. Thus they escape the drouth, moist climate plants in a desert setting. They have a counterpart in another less A spectacular set of hot weather ephemerals which take advantage of the summer season's less certain moisture from spotty thunder showers.

Imitating with considerable success the ruse employed by the drouth-escaping set, another group of longer-lived plants confine their growing and seed-producing activities to the cool, moist winter and spring months and go into a condition of dormancy, called aestivation, during the hot and dry part of the year. These plants, the drouth evading type, are very much like the shrubs and trees of northern climes which lose their leaves during the winter which is actually a period of drouth because all water is frozen. The principal difference between the desert drouth evadersand those of the north that hibernate during the winter months is that they become inactive at opposite seasons.

By far the most spectacular plants which populate the great stretches of Sonoran desert in southern and southwestern Arizona are the hardy and rugged individualists who brave the months of merciless dry heat through devices or modifications with which Mother Nature has provided them to resist the drouth. Resistance to drouth is accomplished in several ways or by an ingenious combination of methods. Widespreading or deeply penetrating root systems enable these plants to garner every particle of moisture within reach. Special spongy tissues of the stem, roots, or leaves store moisture during the periods of precipi-tation and ration it sparingly to supply the plant's needs during the dry months. Leaves coated with wax, hairs, or varnish, or even the total loss of leaves; development of a tough bark or rind; development of spines to break the sweep of the parching wind; and other devices shield the plants from losses of moisture, and make them appear weird and unearthly to persons unused to desert vegetation. By these devices, the moisture requirements of plants are reduced to meet the deficient and uncertain rainfall of their environment.

Since the majority of the plants that seem strange and "foreign" and give the desert its atmosphere and appeal are the drouth-resistant type, this group deserves more than passing attention. If we are startled by their strange appearance, we can be fascinated by a knowledge of how