ARIZONA STRIP-

ARIZONA STRIP The lonesome country BY JONREED LAURITZEN AUTHOR OF "ARROWS INTO THE SUN," "SONG BEFORE SUNRISE," "THE ROSE AND THE FLAME"

There is one segment of this road-streaked, highwaywebbed U. S. A. that is still mysterious, still secluded, still about as well known as Nepal. It is that mile-high country cut off from the rest of Arizona by Marble Canyon, the Grand Canyon, Lake Mead, the Vermilion Cliffs and the Taylor Grazing Act. It is a high, wide, handsome country about as big as Massachusetts and about as lonesome as a cowpuncher in Boston. Like the eye of a madwoman it has been looked at, but never into; it hides more than it will reveal. It has been written about, gossipped about, photographed, mapped, charted, classified, surveyed and ignored-all by people who never actually saw the strip. Once in a while so somebody hurries through in a Government car or a jeep, stares at the cliffs and the wide mesas, and is taken with a sudden incontrollable desire to get to hell out of here and back to a town and some people. Not many have gazed into the Strip's miles of solitary canyon depths, listened to the ghostsighing of the inner gorges, felt the pulse of the high plateaus, felt the hot breath of the Vermilions on their neck, seen the sky burn itself white over the dark mountain shapes of the Parashaunt. Nor have they seen what goes on in the minds of the Strip's people-nor, after all the years, have I. All I have learned from probing and listening and sweating and wondering is that it is the unseen that is the least forgettable and the unsayable that has the power.

Yet, there is much that is visible as well as powerful, and some that can be said.

Start in Houserock Valley for luck. This is a triangular stretch of grassland at the easternmost end of the Strip. It is enclosed on the north by Vermilion Cliffs, on the south and east by Marble Canyon, and on the west by the Kaibab Mountain. Here Arizona clings to the Arizona Strip by means of a slender, fragile-looking, but very substantial piece of steel embroidery known as Navajo Bridge. (This is the only solid connection between the two great segments of the State. For the rest of the two hundred miles to the western boundary they are cleft apart by the Grand Canyon, the long Toroweap Gorge, and Lake Mead.) Before Navajo Bridge was built the only contact the Strip had with its political motherland was by means of Lee's Ferry, which was located a few miles upriver from the present bridge. (Pierce's Ferry was used to a lesser extent, is now submerged in Lake Mead.) Lee's Ferry was originally located by the famous Mormon scout, Jacob Hamblin. John D. Lee later built a permanent house there, improved the roads into and out of the canyon and operated the ferry.OPPOSITE PAGE "TOROWEAP GORGE" BY ALLEN C. REED. Near Tu-weep, in the Strip Country, the Grand Canyon is a narrow gorge, separating the Strip from the rest of the state. From this gorge to the colored cliffs of Utah the Strip stretches out a big and lonesome place, where the number one problem is and always will be water.

COLOR STUDIES OF THE LONESOME COUNTRY

CENTER PANELS - "KAIBAB PANORAMA" BY BILL SEARS. When you climb out of Houserock Valley, in the eastern portion of the Strip, you find yourself in the Kaibab Forest, a green oasis in a vast, dry land. From the lookout tower at Jacob Lake you see in the distance the cascade of color in the cliffs of Utah. In between are the Prismatic Plains and the town of Fredonia, which "stretches out comfortably in the sun."

After Lee was apprehended and executed by Federal officials for his part in the Mountain Meadows Massacre, the ferry and farm came into the ownership of the L. D. S. Church, and was for many years operated by Warren Johnson, his sons and grandsons. Since the Navajo Bridge was built the ferry place has been operated as a guest ranch, and head-quarters for survey parties of the Bureau of Reclamation.

The Vermilion Cliffs of Houserock are of the same geologic pattern as the Vermilions that run west by Fredonia and Pipe Spring and finally swing northward from the Towers of Tumurru. But in Houserock it is not the forms that are striking, as at Tumurru, but the majestic barranca of pure color. From a distance the color is an almost translucent blending of vermilions, salmon reds and corals; but a closer view brings out stripes and veins and large aprons of blue, mauve, lavender, buffs, siennas and browns-all earth colors that are extraordinarily lustrous and rich, even in this richly tinted land.

Houserock Valley is famous for things other than its chiaroscuro. It is the home of the State's famous buffalo herd, and if one is lucky he may see the great mahogany-red shapes dozing in the clear air or moving like dark puffs of dust across the grey-green grasslands that slope up toward the Kaibab Mountain.

From Houserock Valley the highway swerves and soars up the Kaibab, which rises like a long grey surf out of the valley. Quickly comes the zone of the juniper and piñon pine, then the lofty groves of ponderosa in endless procession. Here is the largest stand of virgin timber in the nation, it is said-although this naive writer has not been able to find out what a stand of virgin timber means, precisely.

In the center of the Sleeping Mountain's (Kaibab's) long spinal column, Highway 89 from Houserock hits the highway going north and south. South is forty miles to a dead end, the world's most sublime dead end, the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. The first stretch of this forty miles is through long avenues of noble ponderosa-yellow pine. Then glimpses of wide amphitheatres thronged with twinkling aspen trees. Then small valleys, meadows feeding into longer valleys streaked with the colors of wildflowers, and edged with dark hills where the spruce and fir march down and stand their timid children in the sun.

If it should be autumn-and every lover of beauty should see the Kaibab in autumn-the crescendo of colors and contrasts is stepped up to a shrill and exciting pitch. The green of the meadows is brushed with brown and the hills are alive with bursts of aspen yellow tinged with red among the cool green walls of fir and spruce. Finally, the grand climax of the Canyon from the North Rim.

Going back from the rim toward Jacob Lake after gazing into the great abyss, one finds the forests restful, as if one had wakened from a catastrophic dream to find the earth solid and firm and all in one piece. From Jacob Lake the highway strikes in descending curves along the backbone of Lefevre Ridge, emerges from the ponderosa into the juniper and piñon pine zones again, and to another startling scene-the Prismatic Plains.

Someone with a fondness for alliteration gave the name Prismatic Plains to that noble panorama that lifts high across half the visible world northward. It might better have been named the Prismatic Terraces, or the Walls of Hyacinth. When the clouds boil up into the eternal and the sun is low, that mighty vista is as romantic and rich with color as any canvas of Boticelli. From the sun-silvered white sage of the lower valleys in the foreground that gleam with the liquid transparency of a living sea, the terraces rise northward from wall to wall of brown and red and white and final pink, in vast and ponderous succession. These are the pedestals of the Paunsagunt and Markagunt Plateaus-for more allitera-tion.

At the foot of the Kaibab the highway veers westward, skirts the lower foothills of the Great Terraces (above mentioned Prismatic Plains) to probe its way toward Kanab Canyon. With a wide flourish it dips into Fredonia, the Ari-zona Strip's largest settlement, and the only one in the three thousand square mile area that might be called a town.

Fredonia has plenty of room, and realizing it, stretches out comfortably in the sun. It is not a spectacular nor pic-turesque nor out-of-this-world place. It has a certain pride in being neither richer nor poorer, prettier nor plainer, than many dozen other Mormon towns scattered throughout the mountain and canyon country. It thinks enough of appear-ances to keep its porches painted, its flowers tended, its sidewalks clean; it is concerned enough with the inner life that it crowds its schools on week days and its meeting house on Sunday. It is not visibly concerned with how the world sees it although there are some signs of glamorizing and muscle-flexing. A new service station here, a cafe there, attractive auto courts here and there, and a lumber mill.

The traveler will find a friendly, pleasant reception in Fredonia and will be well served. But he will understand that Fredonia does not exist solely for his comfort. It has its own life to live. It has its farms and a profitable stake in the livestock on the Strip. It also has its own industry, a rapidly expanding lumber plant which draws timber from the almost untouched and limitless sources of the Kaibab forest and provides employment for about one hundred and fifty men, a majority of whom commute from nearby Utah com-munities.

Fredonia has never taken anything but a bashful pride in its surroundings. It has been content to let Kanab, eight miles north, over the Utah border, become the tourist and motion picture center of the area. Now and then a Fredonia citizen will point diffidently to the picturesque Battleship Rock, which stands out from the cliffs a mile west of the town. This interesting object does have the appearance of a majestic destroyer, highly colored, riding waves of foam.

The tired traveler, fresh from the unforgettable North Rim, or from Zion or Bryce, may find the old-fashioned hospitality of Milt's Tavern more refreshing than glimpses of stone ships. The sad-eyed, long face of the proprietor, Milt Cram, can glimmer like the Prismatic Plains at sight of a friend-and who is not his friend!

Wayfarers for many years past will also remember Trav-elers' Inn, Fredonia's homelike hostelry, an old-fashioned place that still resists the corroding influences of modernism. For some years, since the death of its builder and owner, pioneer Thomas Jensen, the Inn has been presided over by Jensen's daughter-in-law, Melissa Brown Jensen. This dark-eyed priestess of tolerance and good-cheer has grandchildren now, but she still seems to me the embodiment of that gentle, quiet, attentive and quaintly charming hostess we used to know when an inn was something besides a place where they handed you a key and took your license number and twice your per diem allowance. In the heyday of the Travelers' Inn a man could get a room-with washbasin and

towels on the dresser-and three squares a day-big slabs of roast beef, brown gravy, vegetables right out of the garden, milk fresh from the pans, ham from the smokehouse, eggs caught on the first bounce-all this for the price he pays nowadays for No. 6 on the menu; two pale eggs, a short stack, a lost-looking bit of ham and a hostile glance from the waitress if he tries to act like he's home.

Melissa is one of the numerous attractive descendants of A. W. Brown, who was among the first settlers of Fredonia. We are told that he and Lorum Pratt, Sr. surveyed the townsite and farmlands in 1885. They used the stars and a piece of charcoal, mostly, but when surveyors' instruments were brought in later to put everything straight with the world, that original survey was found to be right on the button.

Fredonia has a good many things to which it may point with pride, but one thing that will impress anyone who looks into the past, is the fact that the first settlers-Thomas P. Jensen, Abia W. Brown, Thomas Dodson, Samuel Haycock, Laurence Maringer, Joel Johnson, Lorum Pratt, Sr., Henry J. Hortt-divided up the land by drawing lots. Later, when more settlers came in, they cut the tracts smaller, and drew all over again. There had to be some trading back and forth afterwards, for some drew land on which others had already made improvements, but that was the spirit of neighborliness in the beginning. And much of it survives.

Like most Mormon settlements, Fredonia had its mentors and its thirst for knowledge. It did not wait for schools to be thrust upon it. A. W. Brown, a cultured gentlemen with dark brooding eyes who might have stood around making nervous faces at children, got them together instead in his one-room shack and taught them reading and writing and sums. Each student had to bring his own slate and a box to sit on. There was no tuition. Later, Asa W. Judd moved down from Kanab and taught a regular school. Today Fredonia has a fine modern grammar school. The traditional thirst for knowledge started by scholar Brown goes on. Fredonia's sons and daughters have become outstanding doctors, musicians, teachers, and business men.

Fifteen miles west of Fredonia a branch road takes off near Pipe Spring National Monument. This leads to the Moccasin Indian Reservation where a few good-natured and well-fed Paiutes live in small red-stone houses built for them. But mostly they spurn these houses and live under the sky or in tents. The Paiutes are relatively prosperous. They own a community herd of cattle. Each family seems to have one or two banged-up cars which are kept busy hauling the whole tribe back and forth to fairs and rodeos and tribal gatherings wherever they occur within two hundred miles. The jolly brown people are lovers of celebrations, candy, and watermelons. They may lose their teeth and their shirts at some of the gatherings, but they never pick up stomach ulcers worrying about it.

A short distance beyond the Indian village is Moccasin, a bright little hamlet as neat as a Sunday pinafore. The inhabitants are mostly named Heaton, being the descendants of Jonathon Heaton who settled here with a large family. A trickle of outside blood has infiltrated from Short Creek, Kanab, and other setlements, but Moccasin, like all Mormon towns, gives more inhabitants than it takes. The families who have stayed are prosperous and content, having been among the few Arizona residents who held their own when the Taylor Grazing Act divided up the Strip ranges. Their worst problem in the early days was the sand on which their settlement was established, but once they fastened it down with alfalfa and gardens, life became pleasant and comfortable.

Back to Pipe Springs, a pause to drink of its cool, pure water, and sit in the shade of its cottonwoods for a moment of meditation on its historic background, then on through Pipe Valley, with the richly colored walls and tali of the Vermilions on the right.

The cliffs suddenly fall back and swing northward where they are segmented by canyons debouching down from the high mesas. There are preliminary glimpses of the Towers of Tumurru over the horizon of the Forty Hills, and if the light is low and full-bodied the mystic quality of these opal shafts and walls will begin to assert itself.

But the Tumurru is still fifteen miles distant. There is still time to feel the swell of the high, wide mesas that stretch off southward to blue-humped Mt. Trumbull and the invisible Toroweap Gorge beyond. Though the lonely gorge is fifty miles away, once you have looked into its depths you will forever have the feeling on these plateaus that you are riding an immense frozen swell and are somehow detached from the rest of the earth.

From the Forty Hills, the road curves into Cane Beds which was once a populous little town, but since the passage of the Taylor Act holds only a few scattered habitations. Far against the hill on the right is the stone house which was once headquarters for the old Bar-Z outfit, the Grand Canyon Cattle Company, and before them the Mormon Church herd. If one's mind reaches back to the days of the wide, free ranges and boundless opportunity he can still call up the ghosts of B. F. Saunders, Jim Andrus and other hell-for-leather cattle barons who rode out from there. Here, also, Andrew Siler dropped an armful of wood, went around the house, got his gun and shot the man who made the mistake of missing Andrew with his first shot. But of more interest would be the story of the heroic struggle here of the Perkinstamily against all odds.

leather cattle barons who rode out from there. Here, also, Andrew Siler dropped an armful of wood, went around the house, got his gun and shot the man who made the mistake of missing Andrew with his first shot. But of more interest would be the story of the heroic struggle here of the Perkinstamily against all odds.

On from here a few miles and we come to Berry Knoll, from where the land sweeps gently down to the village of Short Creek. Beyond that a meandering caravan of giant cottonwoods follows the wide creek bed, then the green fields of the Lauritzen lands sloping up to the hills which are the bases of the Towers of Tumurru. It is a stirring sight. Enough that Captain Dutton wrote of its magnificence as far back as 1880. “ . . . our sensibilities had been somewhat overtaxed by the scenery of the Grand Canyon. It seemed to us that all grandeur and beauty thereafter beheld must be mentally projected against the recollection of these scenes and be dwarfed into commonplace by the comparison, but as we moved onward the walls increased in altitude, in animation and power. At length the Towers of Short Creek burst into view, and beyond the great cliff in long perspective thrusting out into the desert plain its gables and spurs. The mild, subtropical autumn was over and just giving place to the first approaches of winter. A sullen storm had been gathering from the southwest and the first rain for many months was falling, mingled with snow. Heavy clouds rolled up against the battlements spreading their fleeces over turret and crest and sending down curling flecks of white mist into nooks and recesses between towers and buttresses. Rolling masses of cumuli rose up into the blue to incomprehensible heights, their flanks and summits gleaming with sunlight, their nether surfaces above the desert as flat as a ceiling and showing, not the dull neutral grey of the east, but a rosy tinge caught from the reflected red of rocks and soil. As they drifted rapidly against the great barrier, the currents from below, flung upward to the summits rolled vaporous masses into vast whorls, wrapping them around the towers and crest-lines, and scattering torn shreds of mist along the rock faces. As the day wore on the sunshine gained the advantage.

“. . . Come the colors and as the sun is about to sink, they glow with an intense orange vermilion that seems to be an intrinsic luster emanating from the rocks themselves. But the great gala-days of the cliffs are those when sunshine and storm are waging an even battle; when the massive banks of cloud send their white diffuse light into the dark places and tone down the intense glare of the direct rays; when they roll over the summits in stately procession, wrapping them in vapor and revealing cloud-girt masses here and there through the wide rifts. Then the truth appears and all deceptions are exposed Their real grandeur, their true forms, and a just sense of their relations are at last fairly represented, so that the mind can grasp them. And they are grand-even sublime. There is no need, as we look upon them, of fancy to heighten the picture, nor of metaphor to present it. The simple truth is quite enough.” when they roll over the summits in stately procession, wrapping them in vapor and revealing cloud-girt masses here and there through the wide rifts. Then the truth appears and all deceptions are exposed Their real grandeur, their true forms, and a just sense of their relations are at last fairly represented, so that the mind can grasp them. And they are grand-even sublime. There is no need, as we look upon them, of fancy to heighten the picture, nor of metaphor to present it. The simple truth is quite enough.” These cliffs are actual. I, who have worshipped and cursed them intermittently for forty years, can testify to that. They have held up the sky for me, thrown down the thunder and faced the roaring winds, enriched the light of dawn and fading day for me since I was old enough to distinguish them from the clouds. I know they are actual. Yet each time I top the ridge by Berry Knoll after a journey and see them arrayed against the north I am startled. As if there had been disbelief that they would appear; as if I had imagined it all, and the years of mine that had gone with them. Perhaps there is a wish that I had imagined it. So much and so little has happened to this valley since the first late afternoon when our wagons rolled into it and a solitary coyote trotting over dune under the cottonwoods was the only sign of life we saw. It was lonely and tranquil and dramatically beautiful then. It seemed a place set apart for quiet labor and peace and pleasant hopes.

Frank Johnson was the first to settle where the village of Short Creek now lies. He had been brought up at Lee's Ferry, and to him and his young family-who had been reared with Navajo children-this wilderness was no great change. Later the elder Orlin Colvin moved his family here. Colvin was past seventy, was rearing a second family; but he had time to build a good frame house that was large enough for Sunday meetings and a small store. He grew eighty acres of thrifty dry-land corn, and he and his wife, “Aunt Lizzie,” fiddled and chorded for dances. He had to go out of the store business because the “kids is eatin' up all the profits and the cowfellers is drinkin' all my seasonin'.” He and Aunt Lizzie had to give up playing for the dances for, “Them cowpokes is dancin' my Lizzie to death.” Had “Uncle Colvin” not fallen from a load of fodder he might still be fiddling and growing corn and building houses at a hundred years old. Rugged as life was in Short Creek it had its beginnings of culture. Colvins had the only piano in the valley, and I remember nights when we of the Lauritzen clan trudged the long way over the sands, through the icy creek, with the

wind through the bare-limbed cottonwoods a stiff mixture of sand and snow and moonlight, to sing old songs around the fire at the Colvin's-and maybe chaw some sorghum candy.

The Covingtons came and lived in a big tent under the cottonwoods. Loren Covington, the eldest of the sons, was an artist, and he had the walls of the tent covered with fine reproductions of Corot, Millet, and others I cannot remember now. To a stripling like myself growing up in a harsh wilderness these scenes had an almost paradisiacal beauty and I worshipped them by the hour. Had my poet-mother not already convinced me that I was to be a writer I should have decided then to become an artist.

Covingtons also had a phonograph. Not the usual morning-glory-horn thing with a few records like "When the Sunset Turns the Ocean's Blue to Gold" and "I Can't Get Away to Marry You Today, My Wife Won't Let Me." They had what was then a fine instrument, with records of Caruso and Galli-Curci, excerpts from the symphonies, and my then favorite, "The Herd Girl's Dream." All this was worth the long walk or horseback ride through the knife-like canyon.

As one of my writer friends has said, each part of the Canyon Country has its guardian spirit, its center to which the traveler may go for information, guidance and a glimpse into matters which would otherwise take him years to discover for himself. At Tuweep it is the Kents-Mattie and Bud. They are the guardians of Tuweep Valley and Toroweap Gorge. In the Strip Country where just to live takes some hardihood and courage, I know of no couple who have held on so valiantly with hope where others would have seen no hope.

Tuweep is one of the most isolated post offices in the United States, and its postmark is a treasured stamp collector's item. But that is not the reason why the few inhabitants of Tuweep have kept the post office going with the desperate determination of isolated combat units keeping open their supply line. They have bought stamps when they needed money for socks and shirts and beans. They are the letter-writingest people. They do not put off penning the long overdue epistle to Grandma or Aunt May or Friend Will-they carry on a running correspondence with all three, and a good many more. Even Congressmen. They send pine cones to movie stars and sprigs of sage and cliffrose to prima donnas. It is said they planned to mail to the undertaker the body of the "Old Man of the Mountain" when he was murdered several years ago. But he was a big man and exceeded specified weight and measurements for parcel post. His relatives had to send in a truck. True as it may or may not be, the story indicates how important the people of Tuweep consider their mail service to be. It is their weekly contact with the outside world, and rain or snow or mud, it comes through, winter and summer. In fact duringthe winters the mailman often risks his life to "take-off" through hub-deep snow that covers plains and ridges, with no living human to help nor habitation to shelter him in a stretch of fifty miles or more, should he get "hung-up."

Men and women of the Strip do not regard such risks as extraordinary. It is not an adventure to them to be isolated for weeks in winter by snows, or cut off in summer by floods. It does not often occur to them that in case of accident or illness or other emergency the long miles from a phone may mean life or death. Families have grown-up and reared other families fifty or seventy miles from a telephone and the danger has not troubled them. They have worse problems. Number one problem is water.

The Strip's mile-high plateaus are bled of water from underneath by the Grand Canyon. For many miles northward the waters in the layer-cake strata drain off into the deep gorges, forever inaccessible to the inhabitants above.

In the canyons of the Vermilion Cliffs are the only streams large enough for irrigation. Elsewhere on the plateaus there are only seeps.

The use of water became an art with the many settlers who moved onto the Strip ranges during the 1920's and 30's. Some hauled water for themselves, their cows and chickens from as far as fifteen miles. They evolved the classic procedure which rated the important uses of water in the following order: 1. Drinking; 2. Cooking; 3. Dishwashing; 4. Clothes washing; 5. Hand and face washing; 6. Bathing. The cleanest of the waters left from the various uses was given the chickens and horses, next the cows, then the pigs. Dishwater and hand and face water, and sometimes bath water, could be given to the animals, and soap was therefore used sparingly. Laundry and floor-mop water was poured on the little patch of vegetables or flowers that was cared for tenderly near the house. I have seen nurtured only on dishand-hand-water clumps of petunia, or zinnias, or morningglory vines that brought a light to the tired eyes of a settler's wife as if they were diamonds.

Most of these settlers were forced off the land because they had no water. Their range was alloted to out-of-state cattlemen-who did not have water either. After most of the settlers were gone the Government began to spend large sums building reservoirs for the cattlemen, and drilling test wells, but no amount of money has been able to fill those wells and reservoirs with water. So, the settler may have the last laugh.

Some hardy settlers have refused to be forced out by drought or Taylor Grazing Act. There is Mattie Kent, whose home is an oasis of flowers and vines kept alive by waste water from the kitchen and the infrequent rains. There are the Bundys and Iversons and Sullivans of Mt. Trumbull Village. These people have carried on an epic struggle with drought for thirty years. For thirty years they have hauled water twelve miles by wagon, then by truck, over the worst possible mountain roads. Occasionally their stockwatering reservoirs are filled by flash floods, but more often they are forced to haul water for their livestock, as for themselves. Recently they drilled a deep test well-at their own expense -but though they pierced through hundreds of feet of hardpan they found no quantity of water. The gorges of the Colorado have sucked the high earth dry.

These valiant people have not lost heart. With determination that is heroic, if not slightly mad, they have blasted roads over lava strewn hills, through canyons and out on the lonely peninsulas between canyons, to develop water holes and seeps and rockpockets where their cattle may reach new grass.

There are Pa's Pockets. Anyone in this country around can tell you of Pa's Pockets. Cloe (Mrs. Henry) Mundy, the guardian spirit of Mt. Trumbull Village, writes about the pockets in almost every weekly column she does for the Washington County News in St. George. "We cleaned out Pa's Pockets this week." "Pa's Pockets needed a little patching and we went down Tuesday and did it." "Enough rain this week to fill Pa's Pockets." "The cattle are thankful for Pa's Pockets these days." For a long time we thought she was overplaying a dull joke. Then we went down to see Pa's Pockets and we saw the real fabric of that humor.

The Bundy's have torn a road out of the roughest country I have seen in a lifetime of rough country, and over this they bounced to clean and tend the pockets after rains and between rains, and when rain was only a six-months' hope. Large saucers and bowls are in the rock, where rain collects and makes precious pools. Pools with sky in them, through which you can see insects crawling on the silty bottom. Pools reflecting the blue of Bundy eyes, and filled with sunlight and eagerness. Water! "Pa's Pockets were filled with water today, but we didn't wring them out!" The pleasure in that joke is but a ripple on the surface of a deeper pleasure.

These Mt. Trumbull people take their pleasure with a kind of fierceness, as if it were something owed them for the struggle, and they were determined to have it. They go in swarms, and Cloe is the queen bee. There is a birthday and the tribe packs picnic into the trucks and thunders down over the rocks to Whitmore Spring. Or some wayfarer comes home, and there is a gathering in the school house. Or somebody gets married and they swarm away to Oaksprings, or Nixon on Mt. Trumbull. Or maybe they take over some Utah village, preempt its dance floor, invite everyone within a hundred miles to join them in their frolic. Their energies and capacities are boundless, and most jaded onlookers can only watch them amazed.

A highlight for Mt. Trumbull Village is when some party of river runners comes down through the Grand Canyon. Most of these parties arrange for the Bundys to bring supplies to them at Bundy's or Cloe's Landing, eight miles downstream from the Lava Rapids at Tuweep. Not only do the Bundys bring supplies, they bring Bundys. The whole tribe swarms down over that twenty-five miles of terrible rock-strewn canyon-hacked road from the village to the landing. There are bonfires at the river's edge when the party comes in, and a long evening of eating and talking. The runners tell about their journey down through the canyons, of boats overturned, of men nearly lost, of new sights discovered, of old relics of former boat trips, of skeletons, and abandoned equipment rotting in the sun. The most recent of these river-running rendezvous was last June, 1950, when the "Doc" Marsden party came through in a motor launch, after having lost one boat, had three of the original personnel "rescued" from the canyon by helicopter. My son, Michael, and I joined the Bundy clan in this trek by Whitmore Springs to Cloe's Landing. We arrived at Bundyville too late to ride with the Bundys in their trucks, and we had to take the station wagon over rocks, ravines, dips, canyons, crevices and lava beds, pounding, groaning, until the faithful old car was shedding bolts and rivets like drops of sweat, and it was a nightmare wondering if we could ever bring it out of that stone holocaust again. But we made it to the rim, hoisted our bedroll and grub on our backs and hiked down in.

We were rewarded by an evening of fascinating stories, of deep sleep to the accompaniment of the river's ceaseless snore, and a breakfast of thick Colorado River coffee, bacon and eggs over a driftwood fire. Then a swift, breathtaking tour up the river a short distance and back, with the motor boat slapping over the waves and eddies arrogantly as if this were some backyard fishpond rather than the old Satan, the "River of Mysteries," the fierce and treacherous "Firebrand River" that men have dreaded since the days of Coronado.

There are swift farewells, warm handshakes of men who have become as lifelong friends after an evening of experiences shared. The boat takes off in a shower of spray, arms are lifted in a final goodby, the boat vanishes around the bend in the canyon-the flicker of a wing on a grey sea-then nothing more. We plod our way up the trails and out from solitude into solitude again.

Perhaps the chief value of the Lonesome Country is that in between its flashes of gaiety and enriching experience are wide mesas of stillness where the mind may rest and renew itself in the search for lost meanings and new paths. On its sheer rims or in its dreaming depths you may find treasure, if it is treasure you seek, but it will be the riches that were hidden in yourself.

BLACK GOLD - CONTINUED FROM PAGE THREE.

Usually a load consists of about 35 tons of sacked guano. Moving the barges down lake is often somewhat of a problem. Even during the late spring when Lake Mead is at its highest, there is the ever present danger of running aground on a mud bar. When this happens it may take hours or days to get the heavily laden barge afloat again. Once a major catastrophe struck when a barge sunk, causing the loss of approximately 60 tons of guano. When a loaded barge reaches the boat harbor below Boulder City, the cargo is loaded on trucks for the remainder of its journey to market.

Life at the camp is somewhat leisurely after the day's work is over, and on week-ends. There is no place for anyone to go unless he wants to go down lake after supplies. Occasionally visitors help relieve the daily routine. As the bat cave lies within the Lake Mead National Recreational Area, there are periodic inspection trips to the cave by National Park Service Rangers, and this means breaking out the coffee pot and discussing the affairs of the outside world. Occasionally a plane threads its way up the canyon and gives them a buzz before going on its way. For the most part, however, each person must figure out his own entertainment. Thus it was no surprise to find that some of the crew were ardent fishermen and spent many hours each week catching catfish from the barges or from the shore of the lake.

Visiting the bat cave operation was quite an experience to the writer, especially the aerial tram ride to the mouth of the cave. There was some hesitancy about the ability of the tram operator to handle the job, as he was 12-year-old Larry Swartz, son of the cave operator. As the small platform, carrying its somewhat doubtful minded passenger cargo, climbed dizzily into space dozens of feet above the rock slopes enroute to the cave, some misgivings were dispelled by co-passenger Jim Hodge.

"Larry's a fine tram operator," he explained. "Watch how evenly he takes us up. When he gets there, he'll stop just at the right spot, watch and see. The trip down is also a dandy. He doesn't have to use the motor at all he just takes care of the tram with a brake. Of course, if the brake should go bad and the tram should start to pick up speed, he can throw it into gear and hold it that way (comforting thought!)." And stop it he did, just as forecast, right against the loading platform near the cave entrance while Jim and I looked the country over from our perch high on the cliffs. For miles the massive walls of the lower Grand Canyon rise abruptly from the shores of upper Lake Mead, affording a view that is highly spectacular and only a few people have seen. "Those bats certainly picked a great spot for their homes," Jim said. "It would have been some sight watching them pour out of this hole when it came time to feed. Wouldn't surprise me if there are other caves in this region that they used-maybe some bigger than this one. Do you see that hole in the wall across the canyon from us? I've never been up to it yet, but I'm going to look into it right away. It is in the same kind of rock as this cave and may be another bat hideout."

Jim may be right about that hole in the cliffs. After all, there have been several caves found in lower Grand Canyon, and this might well be another one. Maybe it will turn out to be just a "hole in the wall" when he gets up there to investigate it-but maybe it will furnish a second strike of black gold even larger than the present rich deposit of guano.

As much as 60 tons of guano can be loaded on barge for market.

Miners feed guano to sacking machine through a large pipe.