SPRING MIRACLE

BY MARVIN WEESE

PHOTOGRAPHS BY VAL SAMUELSON

Springtime is the gala opening of a show in long rehearsal. Rising rivers sound a theme song and robins chirping gaily are a prelude.

The scarlet bugler comes marching up the foothills as winter moves higher on the mountain. Snowbanks are melting in the sun glow and singing streams responding.

The bouncing buds on pussywillows are first to hear the call of spring. The sap is rising underneath the bark and flowing like a fountain in every waking branch.

The sycamores are usually first to toss their caps from winter buds, then the willow trees and maple. In time a tiny leaf unfurls from every tight-wrapped bud and proudly floats a silken flag in this gay parade of green. The fragrant breath of growing things fills the air and springtime marches north across the land on a magic carpet of velvet green.

Instantly the bright colors follow flags of green. In the forest the first catkins are pale green but soon the maple seeds spread their wings like copper colored butterflies. In orchard country many trees are blooming before the first leaves appear. Apple trees and almonds wear their veils of white chiffon, the peach trees, both young and old, dress in primrose pink and orchid.

Far across the valley floor exquisite coverings are woven by the busy loom of spring. Fields of wildflowers forming rich designs in every rainbow color. Woven in a regal pattern the shining gold of poppies counterpoint the purple lupine. The folded hills of soft embroidery are tidy tips and and baby baby blue eyes. Daisies form a milky way with scattered bursts of shooting star. The ruffles of rose verbena are trimmed with lace of evening primrose. Here is a torch parade of Indian paint brush and a cheering crowd of sunflower.

Among the flowers butterflies dart and hover, sip a bit of nectar here and taste a little there, flitting about like wandering blossoms with petaled wings. The yellow butterflies disappear in the burnished gold of coreopsis and vanish again when they close their wings on the gray green of sage.

The valley quail are nesting and their sharp calls resounding. The sentinels stand alert with tall plumes and shining helmets. The clear melody of meadow larks cascades from a field like the rippling sound of water. All day long the mourning doves are cooing together the age-old songs of spring. Following the mountain range a flying wedge of geese is honking, calling, flapping northward in its melodious annual migration.

OPPOSITE PAGE "MEADOW BROOK" BY WILLIS PETERSON. Purple bee plants dip and wave delicately over a mountain rill while outer ramparts of San Francisco Peaks form a backdrop for this pleasant mountain meadow. These showy, though delicately formed flowers bloom throughout northern Arizona from July through August. Ektachrome film, 34x44 Speed Graphic, 1/10 second at f.22.

OPPOSITE PAGE

"FENCE RAILS" BY WILLIS PETERSON. Split-rail fences, relics of pioneer days, are found throughout the west. Black-eyed Susans and Blue Lupine form a harmony of color along these rustic fence rows. Still in use, this fence has withstood the ravages of over 70 winters. This scene was photographed near Flagstaff. Ektachrome film 34x4½ Speed Graphic, 1 second at f.16.

Where the honey bees live in the hollow cottonwood there is a great activity at the entrance. The bees are out humming when the first flowers open and soon there is rapid flight and return of workers laden with nectar and pollen. On every breeze there is inviting fragrance. The honey stores are low again and many comb cells are empty. Baby bees are hatching every day and must be fed with pollen. From sunrise to sunset the bees are tireless workers. A golden treasure must be gathered there in the orchard and the miles of flowering sage hold a dripping wealth of nectar.

Honey made in spring is a piquant essence, perfume and flavor distilled from fresh new blooming, blended in the sweetest nectar beneath heaven. The flower has flavored sugar but only the bee distills this for the miracle of honey. The sturdy bee with fairy wings has long been a faithful friend. Dusting every bloom with pollen it gives us more than half our fruit harvest and shares besides the golden nectar it gathers and stores.

Many flowers bloom at night and for these the night flying moths carry on the work of pollination. There is a bee or moth or butterfly to visit every flower. Even the hummingbird belongs to these workers that feed with nectar and has its own part in pollination.

The tall white candelabra blooms of yucca have no honey to invite either bees or hummingbirds, but there is a furry white moth that make its home in the heart of the yucca blossom. It carries the pollen from bloom to waxen bloom and lays a single egg in each seed capsule. When the insects are born they are sure to find their food in pollinated seed. The moth and the yucca live to light the hills with candle clusters.

In the rich moist humus underneath a bed of leaves seeds have lain through the winter. A pale green shoot pushes leaves aside and rises up and soon the flags of bright green leaves appear with the true shape of oak.

Lift the young plant out of its leafy bed and there is an acorn with a shoot and white root growing from the heart of the seed. Already the rootlets are probing in the dark earth, for now the plant has used all its food energy stored in the acorn. At this stage it is easily transplanted into new wet earth. It is ready to start in this first spring the life of a tree that may shade the coming and going of ten generations of men.

From the thick carpet of dry needles a magic wand appears with a spray of sparks around its tip. It is a tiny bunch of needles and there is tangy pitch in the stem. It is a baby pine tree growing from a seed that carries the life genes of a hundred million years!

In the heart of a seed is a miniature plant of its kind, sealed in a tough walled capsule, provided with ample food and a snug dry bed for sleeping. No air can reach it and cold moisture is turned away. But spring will come and moisture with the caress of sun and soil will bring it wide awake. The plant grows, the seal is broken, a root slips down into the earth, a shoot goes upward to sun and air.

In a hundred subtle ways the seeds have been made for travel and they have marvelous designs. There are catapults and darts and aerial gliders. Enduring many years they grow again when no apparent life remains. Even if the plant in the living seed is too small for the eye to see it is still large enough to hold all the life patterns of its parents, all the character traits acquired through ages of time. In the world of plants the seed is a miracle of spring.

The conifers came directly out of the age of fern forests. Their cone flowers are hardly true blossoms, the pines require two years to ripen seeds. The first hardwoods came millions of years later with only catkin tassels, and in some species the pistil catkins and the stamen catkins were borne on different trees.

Once there was not a flower in all the forest, no colored blossom on all the plain. The first trees were giant ferns that reproduced themselves by spore cells very much as ferns do today. But the spore cell was a short-lived fragile thing and it had no means of travel except to swim or float in water. The forest was marshy country and the plain was barren.

The flower and the seed are new creations of the growing leaf. The leaf is vastly older than the seed, perhaps half of the leaf age had passed before a seed was born. Great forests had lived and lost, and it was the seed that left the marshes to spread a green mantle across the land. The annual leaves of grass and herbs were made possible by seeds and these prepared the way for man's appearance.

Reproduction by fusion of spore cells had already been achieved long ages past by water plants but a new plan was needed to fertilize the seed. And the plan was the seed flower and a pollen flower with a blending of the two in the blowing wind.

Came a later age when spring arrived with this new ecstasy. There bloomed the brightly colored blossomswith allurements of color and perfume and honey. These were the bisexual blossoms with pistil and stamens in the same flower and the bee and the moth came to form an age-long partnership with plants in this important work of pollination. Crossing means that each new seed will have the stimulated traits of two parent plants. Every plant that grows from seed is a new creation, it does not duplicate like the plant that grows from bud shoots of its parent. This greatly increases the tempo of variation and the formation of new species.

So many spring miracles in the lifetime of plants. So many years from pond scum to lichen, from lichen to club moss, from spore cones to seed cones, and seeds to fruits and flowers. From the one living cell have come so many different combinations.

There are likely half a million species in a world of living things and about half a billion years is the age of plants. This would be just one species created in each thousand years of time. And all of these have purpose in this interwoven world.

The plants have carried on a growing struggle with adversity through fire and flood and hurricane and ice, from changing water and unfriendly rock to fertile soil of their own making. The earth buckled and settled and temperature changed, mountains rose and fell, the seas came and the glaciers came and the first triumphs were buried under a thousand years of ice.

The plants reorganized their lives and came moving back, learning much in the struggle and developing new means and methods. The plants have never given up any of their secrets, they reserve all rights. The things they learned are carried on by newer species.

Contemplate the beauty of a blossom and the wonder of a seed. This is part of a never ending miracle, and creation has surely not come this far without further purpose. The story of man on this earth is written in the seed pods of plants and a new Garden of Eden lies in the heart of a seed.

For us the flowering loveliness is the miracle of spring, but it is for one purpose. The seed that holds the heritage of countless ages past and carries in its heart the miracle of still another spring.

WHITEFACES TO BE FEATURED AT TUCSON HEREFORD CONGRESS

were "imported" in increasing numbers, ranchers gradually breeding over to full blooded herds by retaining the best of the first cross-bred heifers for their mother cow herds, though some purebred cows were also brought in, a somewhat more costly but much quicker method than selective cross breeding through six or seven cattle generations using purebred bulls.

Arizona's rangelands, virtually all of the state except the southwest desert corner, are of widely divergent types-great pine clad mountain ranges such as the Mo-gollon Rim country, vast malpais plains like those below the Grand Canyon, grass-covered rolling hills such as those of Santa Cruz County, and the desert and semi-desert val-leys and foothills where those who are unfamiliar with the vegetation can't understand how cattle can thrive there. Herefords will be found in all of these locales. They are the dominant beef breed in the state, just as they are throughout the nation, and as for quality, Arizona's annual crop of Hereford range calves is among the best, in demand with cattle feeders and farmers in the rich irrigated valleys such as surround Phoenix, as well as with similar farm feeding areas in California. And many of Arizona's calves go east as well, that is, to feedlots in Iowa, Illinois and other mid-west farm states. These feed-ers buy the calves from the ranchers after the fall round-up, and put them in pastures or in feedlots. The calves spend six or seven months on a diet of farm products that promotes their "growth gain," after which they go for about ninety days on a rich grain and alfalfa ration, along with some "concentrates" (cottonseed meal, etc.). During this last period, standing idly in the lots, the cattle do nothing but eat, thus rounding out and fattening up. The feeder's success depends on how well and how quickly his cattle put on gains. The quicker, the better, of course.

When the cattle thus fattened are in a very exact state of "finish"-an almost indefinable condition that can only be judged by experts with years of experience-the packers then buy them for processing in the big meat plants, from whence, after suitable aging in immense coolers, the meat goes to retail outlets. So that, ultimately it is the American housewife who decides what directions the cattle rancher and purebred operator have to take. They have to produce what she wants and right now the trend is for blocky, thousand pound animals that the gov-ernment inspectors, a very fussy lot, can stamp "U.S. Choice."

Arizona has about fifty purebred Hereford ranches and they, along with their counterparts in other states, are the first to respond to the ever-hovering housewife's desires, though this response is not a tangible matter of a year or two, like some new look from Paris. Cattle "styles" change in what are called "trends"-long-time developments over a decade or more, as for example from the large boned, heavy cattle that furnished the steaks and roasts for the larger families years ago to the small, com-pact beeves from which the various cuts are smaller for smaller families and different styles of modern cooking. These changes or trends have a large and mostly un-suspected influence on such things as cooler designs, ceiling heights in meat packing plants and so on. And they seem a far cry from the high-powered bulls one sees in the show ring, but they are all related. These rela-tionships are why such a diversified crowd attends the yearly Hereford Congress and why Tucson can expect a crowd.

Earlier, mention was made of the prominence that Arizona's purebred herds have achieved across the nation. To illustrate and to be brief, we shall cite the career of a famous bull, and though he wasn't a native Arizonan, he spent a good share of his active career here. His name was Larry Domino 50th. He died in 1947 after having had six calf crops for his owner, the Milky Way Hereford Ranch. "Larry's" sons and grandsons still dominate the show ring today. A grandson, HC Larry Domino 112th, sold for $100,000 and other descendents of the "5oth" have sold as well, several going for $80,000 and a number at $50,000. The "50th" would sire up to fifty calves a year, about half of which would be bulls. Of these, perhaps 75% would be top-bracket quality, with two or three in the bunch of really exceptional conformation, character and "breediness." The remaining bottom 25% would be culled out of the herd. These are extraordinary percentages as those things go and illustrate what is meant by a "prepotent" bull, i.e., consistently passing on to his get all or most of his best qualities. Such a bull is the goal of every purebred breeder. It's like having a mobile gold mine in your pasture.

The range man, the commercial beef producer, can't afford that kind of bull, though this good blood trickles down to his beef herd. Other purebred breeders buy these top bulls in the hopes of producing a similar "nick" with their cow herds. Then, those calves that don't qualify as possible show or herdsire prospects are sold to the rancher. They are still very good cattle and the rancher wants better quality in the calves he sells because the higher quality cattle he has to offer, the more profitable it is for him.

The large Hereford herd owned by the San Carlos Apache Indians might well serve as an example of what can be done in breeding up commercial cattle. Some years back the tribal council authorized the purchase of several good bulls from the tribal funds. (Incidentally, and contrary to many peoples' ideas on the matter, the Apaches' tremendous cattle operations are financed by themselves, both tribally and individually and not on government funds.) Previously white lessees had run their cattle on this million and a half acre reservation but along about 1934 the last of these cattle were removed and replaced by Indian owned stock. The cattle were about average or maybe less so. The two good bulls were a start on herd improvement. It would have been a slow process had not an artificial insemination program been instituted under the direction of Dr. John Lasley in which this good blood was infused into the commercial herd with comparative rapidity. The quality of the Apaches' annual calf crop was stepped up in a short time. Today they hold auctions for four or five successive Wednesdays after each fall round-up during which thousands of steers, heifers, cull cows and old bulls are sold. Invariably these Apache cattle, at least the young steers and heifers, bring a premium from the buyers. If top steers are selling at 20 a pound, the Apaches get 216, or even more sometimes. Part of the feedlot men's willingness to pay extra is due to a variable factor known as "shrink," but the premium (one cent a pound can add up) is more than the shrink advantage. This sort of payoff has taught the Apaches to continue improving their cattle and they have become avid students of Hereford bloodlines.

In general, it can be said that the same sort of upgrading has taken place on the commercial ranches of Arizona of which there are over 1,600. They are all sizes, ranging from several thousand head herds, down to fifty head. But whatever the size of their herd each one of these ranchers will be interested in the proceedings at Tucson. So will all of America's registered Hereford breeders. Many will be on hand for their "Congress."

Yours sincerely

"Highway 80": ... I was particularly pleased to see your article on Highway 80 in January issue. I have traveled a number of routes in the West but never had a more enjoyable auto trip than one I took last November through southern Arizona over this delightful route. The only thing I missed was the Tombstone rose in bloom. I'll come along some day in the spring and see it then.

A. T. Williams, Joplin, Mo.

I suppose all roads are interesting in your state and lead to many interesting things. U. S. 8o has always been a pleasure to me and I have traveled it both in winter and summer. I think east Cochise County is one of the most interesting areas in your state. A person could spend months in your delightful Chiricahua Mountains and still have much to see and much to learn.

Mrs. S. A. Record, Albuquerque, N.Μ.

I have read Eighty in your January magazine. You are right in terming it a scenic sunshine route. I hope, though, your readers will note carefully that it is not just a winter route. I travel it often in the summer months. From the New Mexico border through Cochise County to Tucson I have never found the trip unpleasantly warm. I'll admit from Tucson through Phoenix to Yuma it can get plenty warm but thousands travel the road each summer and I have never heard of anyone suffering unduly because of the heat.

Amos Atherton, Palo Alto, Calif.

"80" is a good road 12 months of the year. Our next U. S. highway to appear herein will be "60." We think our readers will like it, also.

COLOSSAL CAVE: ... I have spent several winters in and around Tucson. I never fail to enjoy my visits to Saguaro National Monument and Colossal Cave. That is why I was so pleased to see your article on the Cave. Tucson is to be complimented for maintaining such an interesting place for travelers to visit.

Mrs. T. H. Miller, Los Angeles, Calif.

Tucson does not lack for scenic attractions and all close by. Colossal Cave and Saguaro National Monument are interesting. So is Mt. Lemmon, San Xavier Mission and Sabino Canyon, just to mention a few others.

PARK SERVICE:

As I have been intending for a long time to write to you expressing my appreciation of the consistently outstanding treatment accorded to the national parks and monuments of the Southwest in ARIZONA HIGHWAYS. This intention crystalized when I read yesterday the splendid article and looked at the magnificent pictures on Saguaro National Monument in the November issue. However, to congratulate you on any one issue of the magazine would be inconsistent since each succeeding issue merits congratulations on its own.

MOUNTAIN ROAD:

As I read with a great deal of pleasure and interest Mr. Jack Cary's article dealing with the road up Mt. Lemmon entitled, "Tucson's Year Around Playground," in your November issue.

I can't help but wish that we had known of the contemplated story because I think we could have supplied you with some background data and some human interest stories about the men who have worked on the road that might interest your readers.

As you may know, it is a unique project since it is the only one of its size in the United States of which I am aware that has been constructed entirely by prison labor and by cooperation of several Government agencies and local groups.

OPPOSITE PAGE "TALIESIN WEST-Night VIEW OF THEATER ENTRANCE" BY ALLEN DAVISON. Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin West is located north of Scottsdale in Paradise Valley at the foot of the McDowell Mountains. Here the architect and apprentices of the Fellowship spend fall and winter mountains. This is a study of the entrance to the theater as residents and guests see it when attending motion pictures and recitals on Saturday and Sunday evenings. MAID OF HEAVEN

The bowl of hills curves up toward Heaven's lips, She brushes back her wind-cloud hair, and sips The sunset nectar, liquid grape and peach, Before the canyon dark draws them beyond her reach.

LORRAINE BABBITT

WHO KNOWS?

Will interplanetary space Perhaps provide one day a base For the Venus-bound? A place Where space-tourists out of gas Toll on orange-colored grass, Sipping star stuff from a glass, Interplanetary bards Penning wish-you-was-here cards.

E. J. RITTER, JR.

PINE ON THE CLIFF

It split the face of the cliff Until a surface fell away leaving The tree's black roots exposed, As in a broken tomb; Poor, dumb, blind-feeling things That sought, in empty crevices And rocky cupboards, the food of life.

So lived, but did not flourish; Existed, but did not grow, Yet kept of a certain color and sang, Not with the wind, but by its own tongue; The slow, sure song of those who sing Until the song is ended.

REEVE SPENCER KELLEY

HIGH-POWER TOWERS IN THE DESERT

With arms akimbo, legs spread wide, They straddle dry stream-beds and stride Across hot hills, bone-bare from drouth, While travellers stare with open mouth At giants from Mars whose steel and cable, Born of science-fiction fable, Is no more credible at noon Than by the dim light of the moon!

ELIZABETH-ELLEN LONG

THE RETURN

Tonight This ghost town wakes And dead dreams rise like mist To swirl around the rutted road Of Time.

EMILY CAREY ALLEMAN