Trail of the Singing Wind

All things had to be done by hand at Yaquitepec, the home of the South family on Ghost Mountain in the heart of the desert. Sheet iron was carried from the desert below to roof the home. Here Marshal and Tanya South and their children lived close to nature and found happiness and peace in the desert. The depression forced them to turn their backs on "civilization," their meager living coming from the land.

TRAIL OF THE SINGING BY MARSHAL SOUTH

SOMETIMES think that if one should search deep for the real soul of the desert lands of sunlit silence it would be found in the wind. The old, old wind that forever wanders the shimmering leagues of thirsty wash and painted butte and cactus-studded plain. The ancient desert wind that comes up out of Mexico, from the valleys of the Yaqui and the Mayo. Drifting, singing to itself, across the rooftops of Moctezuma, of Cananea and of Nacozari. Whispering across the old battlefields of Agua Prieta. Stirring restless above the throbbing smelters of Douglas and dreaming through the storied streets and alleys of Old Tucson.

For the wind of the desert is a living thing. As it comes wandering and drifting, whether from the north or the south or the east or the west, across the glinting, sun-splashed leagues of Arizona and all the bordering lands of the Desert Empire, it croons and whispers to itself of the fled days of long-dead desert centuries. Chanting strange songs of mystery through the noon-hot ranks of the weird saguaros and through the ghostly stillness of ruined cliff dwellings lying lone beneath the desert stars.

And I like to think that it was really the song of the wind that brought Tanya and myself back to the desert and to the peace and silence of the sunlit trails.

It was the beginning of the year 1931 that we fled from "Civilization," turning our faces from the throbbing, hustling world of Pacific Coast cities and heading out into the wastelands in an old car that would have been a joke in any second-hand car lot. The reason for our going was simple. It was the lack of money. The bottom had fallen out of our particular writing market and left us practically penniless. It was a bleak prospect to face. Perhaps there were a number of "practical" things we could have done, in the circumstances. But we did none of them. Instead we took the "maddest" course which proved to be the only sane one. We fled to the desert.

And I am firmly convinced that it was the wind which was our prompter and guide. The old, wandering desert wind which, even amidst the hustle and clamor of cities, has still power to come stealing in through the windows at night and ruffle the pages of the book of memory. In those black days of disaster, when everything seemed lost the long nights when one tried to sleep, and couldn't, were the worst the wind sang songs of peace and freedomthat turned my mind back to long past former days that had been spent in the desert and along the border in Arizona. And, oddly, I remembered again the things which an old Yaqui crone had told me once in a little village in Sonora. Queer things. Prophetic things— and at the time lightly considered. Now those words came back vividly, and with them a flood of other personal details which seemed to fit together like the bits of a puzzle picture. Perhaps when one is under the strain of worry and trouble the brain becomes supersensitive. But it was as though some compelling force was reaching out from those lonely lands that I remembered and was tugging at me. “Let's go out and live in the desert.” I had said to Tanya. And she had jumped at the suggestion with an eagerness which we have both talked about since. Tanya hails from New York and from the seething business world of Wall Street. She has, in these latter years, often been accused of being an Indian.

WIND The Story of the South Family Who Found Happiness and Content Deep In the Heart of the Lonely Desert

that turned my mind back to long past former days that had been spent in the desert and along the border in Arizona. And, oddly, I remembered again the things which an old Yaqui crone had told me once in a little village in Sonora. Queer things. Prophetic things— and at the time lightly considered. Now those words came back vividly, and with them a flood of other personal details which seemed to fit together like the bits of a puzzle picture. Perhaps when one is under the strain of worry and trouble the brain becomes supersensitive. But it was as though some compelling force was reaching out from those lonely lands that I remembered and was tugging at me. “Let's go out and live in the desert.” I had said to Tanya. And she had jumped at the suggestion with an eagerness which we have both talked about since. Tanya hails from New York and from the seething business world of Wall Street. She has, in these latter years, often been accused of being an Indian.

Our exodus from the old life that we had known and from all the gadgets and trimmings of civilization wasn't exactly spectacular. Neither dog barked nor trumpet blew at our going. Our few “household goods,” wedged among books and bedding, jounced complainingly as our ancient conveyance lurched over the ruts of dusty roads. Skillets and cooking pots, wired shamelessly, gypsy fashion, to the outside of the load, clattered and banged. People stared at us along the way and fashionable, sleek cars whirred past disdainfully. But we didn't care. It was flight.

ingly as our ancient conveyance lurched over the ruts of dusty roads. Skillets and cooking pots, wired shamelessly, gypsy fashion, to the outside of the load, clattered and banged. People stared at us along the way and fashionable, sleek cars whirred past disdainfully. But we didn't care. It was flight.

We traveled slowly, for the old bus could not stand much speed. But we passed over the mountains and came down into the wide, stretching sweep of the desert. On the second night we made camp in a little natural clearing in the midst of a wilderness of creosotes and yuccas. It was a thirsty, silent land of dry, sandy washes; little, hemmed in valleys and rocky, barren mountains. Coyotes called to each other from the shadowy canyons as we slept beneath the stars.

At noon the next day, blazing a trail of our own through the yuccas, creosotes and ocotillos, we halted the car amongst a scatter of giant boulders in the mouth of a precipitous walled gorge. The place had been an ancient Indian camp spot. Sherds of old, desert-weathered pottery littered the ground, and innumerable chippings from the making of obsidian arrowheads. There were horns and bones of mountain sheep here too. And deep-worn mortar A desert trail proved to be Main Street for the Souths. The desert gave them a new life and new vistas. Right, Rider and Rudyard revel in the heavy snow that came one winter to Yaquitepec. Their sturdy bodies, nurtured by Nature's ways, are impervious to the elements.

holes in the flat rocks where, away back in the of its ancient peoples, we had come home to vanished years, the patient squaws had pounded stay. desert seeds and the beans of the mesquite into We built our home upon the summit of the meal. It was silent in that canyon. Very silent. The walls of piled, mighty rocks went up almountain that rose above the canyon. It was most sheer on either hand. Cool shadows lay madness, of course. No "civilized" beings would in the deeps between the huge boulders, have deliberately sought such difficulties and Stunted, storm-gnarled junipers clung in the hardships. But already the mantle of civilicrevices. Ages of heat and wind and rainzation was beginning to slip from our shoulders. storm had scoured and weathered the cliffs and And there is a certain satisfaction in doing painted them in patterns of greys and browns "mad" things. The cliffs-dwellers, too, had and purples. Where the sunlight fell upon been "mad" before us. And perhaps for very them they flung back the glare with a radiance similar reasons. They had sought the inacthat dazzled the eyes. We walked up the canyon exploring. And cessible places and climbed the giddy cliffs to of a sudden we stopped, startled. For all at escape the clubs and arrows of ruthless enemies. once, it seemed that we stood on the edge of We were doing the same thing to escape a vague the world. At our feet from the brink of the monster called "Progress." An enemy more great flat rock upon which we stood the earth of a subtle and intangible but every whit as ruthfell away abruptly; sweeping down, down less and deadly. across a tumbled desolation of mazed canyons For the house site we chose a little cactus crowded glade on the crest. It was a sort and ridges into a vast, shadowy gulf. A gulf of natural saucer, bordered about by giant filled brim to brim with a weird, level sea boulders and by junipers and ocotillos and agave of misty blue distance, that was the almost terclumps. From this little hidden bowl, that rifying ghost of the real, long-dead ocean which was completely screened to view from the lower had once rolled there. On the farther shore of desert, we could look east and west into imthis phantom stretch of water, beyond Yuma and mensity getting the first rays of the sunrise the Rio Colorado, loomed faintly the distant in the morning and the last red flares of demountains of Arizona. While further to southparting day at night. It was a spot that the ward, gleaming like a silver sword upon the old time Indians had known and frequented. blue haze that was Mexico, lay the Laguna For adjoining was a small, sandy flat where Salada, backed by the dim, pastel peaks that among the scatter of juniper trees, were sevwalled the Gulf of Cortez. Silence and immenseral great flat-top boulders upon whose workity and an awesome peace that passed all undersmoothed surfaces still lay the old pounding standing lay over everything. Without speak and grinding stones; lying there in the very ing we stood there together a long time, staring. places where their last dusky users had laid Then we went back to the car and began to them down. There were mescal hearths toounpack. The wind came up across the desert dark, circular areas rimmed with a scatter of and sang softly along the canyon walls and big stones which, like the earth itself, were among the clinging junipers. We knew that still scarred and blackened from the scorch of we had reached our homeland. It had been a ancient fires. Cactus and century plants were long, long time since human growing among the stones of the old fire pits. beings had trodden that little glade. If, before us, white men had visited the top of Ghost Mountain they left no trace. Nothing had been disturbed since Indian days. There is a thrill to pioneering; to building and establishing by one's own personal toil a

Home in an untrodden wilderness. It is a deep fundamental sensation which takes the slavery from the hardest of work. Somehow, in those days, to Tanya and myself, as we toiled in the desert sunlight, grubbing out the cactus and the agaves and the ramarillo bushes and boosting aside the rocks to gain space for our little shelter, work was a joy. We had never known such complete satisfaction before. Unbelieve-ably, it seemed, we had somehow escaped the jaws of the mechanical monster which, in the name of "Progress" was enslaving the world. Gratefully there in the peace and solitude and silence we shed our hampering clothes and, like the primitive "savages" which we had joy-fully become, fell to our task in bare skinned, healthy energy. The hot sun beat upon our hatless heads. Sweat ran down into our eyes. The chollas and the dry, brittle branches of the ramarillo stabbed at us. Under our bare feet the gravelly soil was harsh and sharp. Tanya's fingers, used only to the typewriter and the conveniences of the city, were soon sore and blistered from tugging at stubborn boulders and dragging aside uprooted thorn growths. But she kept right on. Hummingbirds whizzed past us, or paused on vibrating wings to study, speculatively, our activities. Big lizards, the sun flashing green and yellow light along their irridescent scales, waddled out upon nearby boulders to observe and to marvel. A pair of desert ravens, who we afterwards dis-covered were residents of the peak, flopped around at a safe altitude above our heads and cawed much free advice. The only tool that we had to work with was an axe. The clear-ing went slowly. The amount of rocks and desert growth we had to move in order to achieve an open space of only a few square feet was amazing.

But bit by bit the foundations of "Yaqui-tepec" were laid; the little house that, section by section, was to rise slowly through the years was begun.

There is no space here to give many details of that homebuilding upon Ghost Mountain. It was a task which, of necessity, was beset with many difficulties. But, to be truthful, the difficulties were a spur and their overcoming was a joy. The lack of money was one obstacle. Food was another. Scarcity of water was a third. The job of clambering to the mountain crest by foot-trail-packing all materials and supplies upon our own back to an elevation of two thousand feet above the last possible point of wheel transportation, was also a formidable task.

Begun on the first day of February 1931-on which date we began our clearing in the un-trodden wilderness of the mountaintop the job has gone on ever since. The months drifted into years and the years into more than a decade. And the task is not yet finished; the dream not yet completed. Yet never was the undertaking a slavery or a burden, even in its hardest aspects. Always it has been a joy and a labor of love. Perhaps this was because we "belonged." That the land was in truth "our land." Then too, while we have worked and built we have also lived. And in the liv-ing have known a peace and a happy solitude and a healthful freedom greater than anything that seems possible in this machine maddened age. Perhaps, therefore, it is little wonder that the years have slipped by swiftly; passing as shadows through the desert grass or as the low singing of the wind.

All of the main problems that beset us when we first settled on Ghost Mountain we managed, in time, to solve or at least to "detour" so that they did not seriously trouble us. The

TIME MODERNS

They climb no more on self-made trails Up the steep hills. When effort fails, They sit before their doors and rest, Watching the sun set in the west, Talking the while in lazy tone, Of life that has too arduous grown.

They climb no more. They rest too long. To them it seems no longer wrong That they decay in heart and soul For lack of purpose and of goal They dread the voice of pioneers, And melt in helpless grief and tears That have no depth-only dismay. Gone! Gone the strength of yesterday!

SUNRISE

The distant hills unveil. The light Like magic touches inky pall, And of a sudden it is bright, With sunshine over all!

Oh, rays of sun, seep deeper yet, To warm that cold, encrusted part, So earthy, and so subborn set, The chill, hard human heart!

THERE IS NO PEACE

There is no peace. The very lights that shine Must find their way through vaporous atmosphere. Each higher impulse toward the Great Divine Must override some ignorance and fear. Man has not come for peace and suavity. This earth life is a school. Our grief and strife Are but the Path to Light. Thus, to be free, There is no recourse but a noble life.

ONWARD

The road goes on and on and on. Endless the turnings as they wind. And they who rest beneath the sun, Rebelling at the human grind, Will some day have to rouse again, Resume their march along the way. There is no course but to attain. There is no permanent delay.

The money question was one that we handled chiefly by detouring it. In other words we went largely without remembering that neither the birds nor the animals nor simple, primitive savages have ever been burdened by the fiction of useless bits of "coined" metal or foolish fragments of elegantly engraved paper. Yet they managed very well to survive, to live out their days and to be reasonably happy. We followed their example as well as we could, substituting personal labor, on our own behalf, for the fictional value of currency. For such actual "money" as we handled we were dependent upon occasional tremors of life in our all but dead writing market. It did twitch, sometimes slightly and at long intervals. But the "money" income that we commanded in the first years of our settlement would have been starvation wages for a sparrow.

Which brings up the question of food. Money and food, under the sway of city civilization, are welded together. But to the world of Nature that dwells close to the earth the food question is linked to effort the personal effort of gathering and storing things that are edible. We learned that lesson too. And we found a surprising number of things that were good for food in the seemingly arid wilderness around us-chia seed and mesquite beans and jo joba nuts and yucca fruit and ocotillo flowers and the fruits of the cactus. There were the agaves too-known as the mescals. All over our mountain they grew. And everywhere, on every bit of level or partly level ground were the old, fire-blackened circles where the dusky ancients had roasted mescal hearts. By trial and error we discovered, eventually, the old Indian baking method. And thereafter were never in any danger of actual starvation. Piñon nuts too, in certain seasons, were to be had for the gathering and made a welcome addition to our food supply. Altogether we did not do badly. If the larder was lean at times it was reflected only in an improvement to our health. About the only times we have ever been "sick" in the desert have been on those occasions when we have had the privilege (?) of access to supplies of "nourishing" civilized foods. Of all the problems that of water was the most difficult. For there was not a drop of water on Ghost Mountain, nor was there the slightest possibility for either spring or well amidst its thirsty crags. From the first moment of our arrival on the sunny, juniper sprinkled crest we recognized thirst as our chief opponent. But even that deadly threat had a dulled edge. For the Biznagas the barrel cacti-grew on Ghost Mountain in profusion. We experimented very early with the biznagas and obtaining their stored water by pounding and squeezing the white, interior pulp. We couldn't very well perish of thirst with this emergency army of spiny water hoarders to back us. Nevertheless, in the beginning, we hauled all our water fourteen miles across the desert and packed it up the last two thousand feet of elevation on our backsfive gallons at a time. Sometimes, in summer weather, with the thermometer around 119 and 120 degrees, five gallons felt like quite a load. In time, though, as we managed to arrange equipment, we began to catch and store water from the desert rains. The water caught in the first cistern-a tiny one served to enable us to build another, a bit larger. And the water from that mixed the cement for one still bigger. So it went along with the years. We never had quite enough water. But we were never actually after the building of the first cisterns in dire need of it. It got so that in time we branched out into actual gardening; raising radishes and lettuce and beans and other vegetables in a limited way on terraces of specially prepared earth built up amongst the rocks. Cisterns and more cisterns! That was always the need. Sometimes it didn't rain for long periods.

So the days passed. And the months. And the years. We had found peace. And in the daily enjoyment of it-woven through long sunny days of busy tasks much of the sham of civilization slipped away from us; its false needs and desires; its illusions and its clothes. We were not troubled over much by visitors. It was six years before the first human being found his way to the door of our retreat. The house grew slowly during the months and years, passing from the flimsy construction of branches and mescal poles to the sturdiness of adobe as we could catch and spare water to mix the mud bricks. Its roof of corrugated iron, from a beginning of a few sheets, finally covered it all. When the desert thunderstorms came and roared down upon that sounding iron roof and the water splashed and raced in the gutters and down-spouts and tumbled swirling into the cisterns, it made the sweetest music ever heard on earth.

Were we ever lonesome? Not a bit of it! It is only in the savage "dog eat dog" maelstrom of the cities that a soul can know true loneliness. Besides, we were too busy to be lonesome. With the job of being our own artisans and providers, our hands were always occupied. We made baskets from the yucca leaves and we twisted cordage from the fibres of the mescals. We learned to make and to decorate our own pottery from clay which we dug on the mountain. And we learned the trick of firing it as our dusky predecessors had done. There was so much to do and such a world of sunshine and peace to surround one while in the doing of it that there was never a thought of loneliness. Besides, we had worlds of "company." Antelope squirrels and rock squirrels and pack rats and pocket mice and hummingbirds and ravens and buzzards and horned toads and whiptail lizards and innumerable assembly of desert friends, many of whom became very tame and would come trustingly for food. Even we had visits from that mightiest of birds and one of the rarest the California Condor. A pair of them lived somewhere, deep in the desert fastness to the north. And at times one or other of them would cruise investigatively high overhead. But not so high but that we could always distinguish clearly the characteristic white under-wing patches which are the badge of this great bird. So many desert friends!

And always there was the wind the ancient desert wind. It was seldom that it was absent from Ghost Mountain. In the sunlit days it would wander softly among the giant rocks and the gnarled junipers, humming faint, almost inaudible songs. In the nighttime it would often come trampling up across the low-lands to roar across our low-hunched houseroof with the sound of wild shouting and the thunder of ten thousand harps. There were voices in the wind. Strange, low, mysterious voices. In the lulls, as it came eddying around the house, you could often hear them talking, one to another. Ghosts. Desert ghosts. Who shall stand within the borders of these ancient lands and deny them?

A house is not a real home unless there be children in it. And usually when one builds the nest, the gods are watching, and are kind. Our little home upon Ghost Mountain was no exception to this mysterious rule. Rider was the first to arrive, bringing with him the glint of the desert sun in a mass of red-gold hair. And four years later came Rudyard, whose dark brown eyes are ever a-twinkle. Lastly little Victoria decided that she, too, wanted to join the desert clan. A healthy, sun-tinted trio. The brightness of the desert has increased a hundredfold since their coming. Their chatter and laughter has raised the echoes of the old rocks of Ghost Mountain as they patter con-stant attendance upon us at our daily tasks. Everything has to be explained, and little minds and nimble fingers are eager to put into practice the lessons given. The wonders of the desert stars must be expounded. The eager questions of Life and Death and Philosophy-on all the marvels of the great universe-must be answered. One does not know the meaning or the responsibility of Life until he is granted the sacred privilege of answering a child's questions. Often when night comes and the stars twinkle out of the velvet deeps of the desert sky and three little heads lie finally in sleepy silence upon their pillows, we give humble thanks that the Great Spirit has given us the priceless privilege of being able to answer so many of these eager questions. For in the fresh, unfolding minds of children, and in the seeds of thought that are planted there, lies the sole hope for the world of tomorrow.

There came a day when there was a new, strange note in the song of the wind over Ghost Mountain. The song of far trails. And we listened to it, disturbed yet vaguely thrilled. Perhaps it was true. Perhaps, beyond the grey desert horizon, there was another haven; a broader haven. A haven where the water came from a flowing spring or from at least the cool depths of a generous well. Another spot of desert solitude where green things would grow more easily; where gardens could be raised without the cramping limitations of small cis-terns and scanty rains. The thought grew upon us. And it continued to grow. Until finally we loaded ourselves, the whole family, bag and baggage, into car and trailer and headed forth into the desert silence-heading down the Trail of the Singing Wind on a long adventure of Search.

It has been a long trail and a happy trail and a trail of many new ad-ventures. But, to this writing, it has not been a trail of success. For the little spot of solitude, that has water and where the peace of the desert broods, as it does upon Ghost Mountain, has not yet been found. Good friends every-where have aided with suggestions. They have sent telegrams and they have sent letters and they have drawn maps. But, so far, the place we set out to look for has not been found. We have discovered attractive locations. Spots where towering cottonwoods rustle above lonely wells. And solitudes where cool springs flow from the heart of rocky buttes among whose shadowing boulders old pomegranate trees doze away the hours. There have been many places. Nearly nearly! Almost-but not quite. Al-ways there has been some vital requirement missing some missing factor which, sorrow-fully, has rendered the location impossible. It may be that, after all, there is no other loca-tion; that, through all the length and breadth of the Desert Empire, Ghost Mountain and Yaquitepec are unique. It may be so. Quien sabe?

ventures. But, to this writing, it has not been a trail of success. For the little spot of solitude, that has water and where the peace of the desert broods, as it does upon Ghost Mountain, has not yet been found. Good friends every-where have aided with suggestions. They have sent telegrams and they have sent letters and they have drawn maps. But, so far, the place we set out to look for has not been found. We have discovered attractive locations. Spots where towering cottonwoods rustle above lonely wells. And solitudes where cool springs flow from the heart of rocky buttes among whose shadowing boulders old pomegranate trees doze away the hours. There have been many places. Nearly nearly! Almost-but not quite. Al-ways there has been some vital requirement missing some missing factor which, sorrow-fully, has rendered the location impossible. It may be that, after all, there is no other loca-tion; that, through all the length and breadth of the Desert Empire, Ghost Mountain and Yaquitepec are unique. It may be so. Quien sabe?

But not yet are we ready to abandon the quest. The wind still sings across the desert and we are still upon the trail. Who knows? Perhaps the very next turning may lead us to that new solitude which we set out to find. Or perhaps, in the end, with the song of the wandering wind for guide, we shall come home once more to the little house, tucked away with its peace and its memories, amidst the oco-tillos and the tall nodding stalks of the mescals. Who knows? And who can say?

It is evening now. Behind a jagged range of mountains that are blue velvet the sunset spills a fading flood of ruby flame. The supper campfire is lighted, and through its long streamers of trailing smoke the children scamper happily, bringing dry sticks. Against the hush of the grey desert distance, where the Master Weaver is already fashioning the blanket of night in patterns of rose and indigo and purple mystery, their joyful voices rise like the clear notes of a vesper hymn.

Far, dimming leagues and the wink of stars. It has been a good trail, that Trail of the Singing Wind, which Tanya and I followed into the desert years ago. To us it has brought happiness and contentment and peace.