Bright Sun Shining

Mix sunshine with droplets of rain in proper position and you have a rainbow. Mix sunshine, the good earth, moisture, loving care and the results are the green cornfields growing in the lonely wash of Moenkopi, where by all the laws of husbandry no cornfield should grow so rich and lush. Take a plow, turn over useless desert soil, plant seeds in long, straight furrows, bring water to those furrows by irrigation ditch, turn on the full force of a desert sun and hardly before you get back to your evening's chitlings and hominy grits the cotton will come a'whooping.

It is the sun that gives drama to the depths of Grand Canyon, and with its restless shadows instills movement and vibrancy in the inner mysteries of that wonderful gorge. It is the sun that causes the ocotillo to shed its sparse leaves after a rain, and it is the sun, too, that closes the blossoms of a saguaro.

To know the sun is to know the way of life in an arid land. The sun, according to those who best know the ways of the universe, is a minor planet around which the earth and other minor planets revolve. Sun's rays, traveling some 92,000,000 miles to earth, lose much of their potency. If we received all of the light and heat generated by the sun, our poor earth would be about as comfortable as a hot dog turned on a spit over a campfire, and we would all have very becoming suntans, indeed.

In Arizona, where we receive more sunshine than any other part of this fair land, the sun is a benevolent tyrant that decrees a way of life, and a rather pleasant way of Life it is. Visitors come from all over the world to share our winter sun with us. We enjoy their company and are pleased with the pleasure they receive in our environment. A succession of warm, sunshiny days and bright skies is a wonderful antidote to more severe climates elsewhere. Here our winters, because of the graciousness of the sun, become eternal spring and life becomes considerably more easy and comfortable. We wouldn't change it. It is the sun, too, that formed our desert land. The plants of the desert have

adapted themselves to the mandates of the eternal sun of summer, a sun beneath which plants less hardy and less cunningly designed would quickly wilt and perish. So we have, among others, the crucifixion thorn, the cholla, and the ironwood, right fine neighbors once you learn to live with them.

It is the sun that gives brilliance and sparkle to our landscape, that adds distance to the shimmering horizons and makes our world a bigger place in which to live. Here the sun, when it rises and sets, does so in a cascade of color; so day is ushered in with a mighty fanfare and ushered out with a mighty fanfare and each day becomes more than just a dreary and dull period of light between curtains of night. Day in our sun, whether summer or winter, is always something of an adventure.