Snow Scene, San Francisco Peaks

Return to Paradise

Dear Sir: An ARIZONA HIGHWAYS feature in July, 1949, took the reader on a mythical hike into Sycamore Canyon. I never could forget this hidden paradise. I felt as though I had actually been there and even knew the two hermits, Dick and Jerry, who live in its quiet solitude. There was a map with this feature and I well recall the writer's closing phrase, “Here, you keep this map, maybe you'll need it to find your way there some day. I'll never need it for Sycamore Canyon is written clearly in my heart.” I was just a kid in high school at the time and, though more than five years passed before I was able to go there, today I used the map. I left Phoenix early this morning and after only three and a half hours of highway and back country road I stood on the brink of Sycamore Canyon. The fresh reds and tans of the sandstone walls and bluffs, the cool, clear stream, the morning sunlight playing among the trees, made this a very inviting panorama.