ISLAND IN THE SKY

Once upon a time (around 1948 to be exact) a certain Mr. and Mrs. Aver-age Family were living in St. Louis, Mo. with their two small daughters and leading the usual Average Fam-ily life. The girls attended school and were immersed in the usual activities of city youngsters everywhere; Mr. Average Family attended his business in the usual manner, which means that on many nights he got home just early enough to give the girls a peck on the cheek before their bedtime. Mrs. Average Family trod her own merry-go-round of meals, housekeeping, church, civic and social duties; in all, the four members of this Average Family pursued their designated courses vigorously, faithfully, and what ap peared to be unendingly until one day they saw a cartoon which acted like a catalyst in their lives.

This cartoon showed two typical city men on their way to work and one of them asking the other, "Do you rise and greet each new day with a challenge? or do you just get the heck out of bed and go to work?"

No doubt the unuttered question had been lurking in the mental corridors of both Mr. and Mrs. Average Family for some time previously but after the appearance of the cartoon the question was formally out in the open for discussion.

Looking backward it is not hard to imagine a pioneerfamily 'picking up' and venturing West in search of new and better farmlands; nor the prospectors, eyes alight with visions of ore, following the trails into the un-marked frontier. Then, as now, there were pressures to remain in the status quo as against flirting with fate in new lands and occupations. Somehow we think of pioneering as a romanticism of the past rather than of the present and it is a little hard to imagine just a prosaic St. Louis family leaving home, street, neighborhood, city, church, schools, stores, occupation, friends and relatives to strike out in completely new environs and in a new and untried occupation.

family 'picking up' and venturing West in search of new and better farmlands; nor the prospectors, eyes alight with visions of ore, following the trails into the un-marked frontier. Then, as now, there were pressures to remain in the status quo as against flirting with fate in new lands and occupations. Somehow we think of pio-neering as a romanticism of the past rather than of the present and it is a little hard to imagine just a prosaic St. Louis family leaving home, street, neighborhood, city, church, schools, stores, occupation, friends and relatives to strike out in completely new environs and in a new and untried occupation.

Ray and Ruth Kent and daughters Judy and Barbara -our Average Family-did just that arriving at the Silver Spur ranch in the Chiricahuas in October of 1949. To say they were unprepared for such a venture is only partially true; people who have the courage and optimism to translate dreams into deeds already have one of the first requisites for success.

The Kents, seeking a new way of life in a locality totally different from any they had ever known, found both in the Chiricahuas which rise like an island in the sky above a surrounding sea of grasslands. Here, these latter-day Crusoes adapted themselves to their role of guest-ranch-operating so smoothly that today they seem as indigenous to the area as the bastions around them.

One of the earliest voyagers to this island-mountain region was homesteader Neil Erickson, who came to this country from Sweden in the eighties with the avowed purpose of avenging the death of his father who had been killed by Indians in the midwest years before. It was certainly a long way between the prairie tribes and the Chiricahua Apaches but presumably Mr. Erickson didn't acknowledge such tribal distinctions; an Indian was an Indian and he had heard there were plenty of them in the Chiricahuas.

region was homesteader Neil Erickson, who came to this country from Sweden in the eighties with the avowed purpose of avenging the death of his father who had been killed by Indians in the midwest years before. It was certainly a long way between the prairie tribes and the Chiricahua Apaches but presumably Mr. Erickson didn't acknowledge such tribal distinctions; an Indian was an Indian and he had heard there were plenty of them in the Chiricahuas.

Oddly enough, after homesteading what is now the Faraway Ranch, Mr. Erickson called off his one-man Indian war and became in time a loyal friend of the Apaches who had received some shocking injustices from the U. S. government.

The termination of this 'private' war was just as well from another standpoint: the Apaches held such formidable redoubts in the Chiricahuas to the east and the Dragoon mountains to the west, that it took the U. S. Army more than ten years to bring this proud and resourceful people to terms.

As time passed and peace came to the Chiricahuas, the area later to become a national monument was still an unknown, rocky fastness whose designs in stone had still to be appreciated in their scenic sense by the eyes of a white man. That man was Edward Murray Riggs, born in the Sulphur Springs valley below, who first penetrated the Heart of Rocks area and was first to photograph the famous balanced rock. He literally became the first trail-blazer, cutting brush along the proposed trail, then riding his horse over the path thus cleared until it was firmly trampled.

Most of us can't be Ericksons, Riggs or Kents to whom the Chiricahuas gave a new way of life. But the mountain range is there for us, too, offering a new outlook, a lift, a retreat, and a change however temporary, from our usual experiences.

Are you a prospective refugee from bells-door or telephone? From TV-instruments or packaged dinners? From memo-pads battered with penciled appointments? Would you too, like to escape from tooting traffic and the ulcer pill-bottle? The Chiricahuas are waiting for you; big enough to absorb hundreds of visitors in their labyrinthine canyons without rubbing elbows with fellow solitude-seekers; near enough to be reached over paved roads in a few hours from any point in Southern Arizona.

This sky-island, dark under its foliate covering against the clouds, remote from the centers of population, isolated by its valleys spreading out on all sides, has offered the sanctuary of its fastnesses to countless generations. From its earliest primitive inhabitants, to its first homesteaders, to the pioneers from St. Louis, to youa short span in the total length of time and the passage and weatherings of time present the deeper significance of the Chiricahuas.

For here, a man is cut down to size and he may realize, perhaps with some misgivings at first, that his whole life span is less than a bat of the cosmic eyelash, but therein lies the benefit: if one's total earthly voyage is so minute-as it is than take a new appraisal of your daily problems-they are smaller still.

The Chiricahuas are a recreational area for all ages as both campgrounds and guest ranches show. Elderly visitors enjoy hiking the easy trails and are particularly charmed with the solitude that obtains throughout the area in contrast to more populated resorts. Children and young people enjoy long rides in the more remote canyons and always there is an abundance of flora and fauna to discover for those who are naturalists at heart.

Here, the last glow of evening brushes the rhythmic patterns of a giant sycamore; young and old are gathered around the stone barbecue to watch Ray Kent prepare grilled ribs, that gustatory treat for appetites sharpened by hours of mountain air, exercise and scenery.

At day's end, the smoke from ranch and campground barbeque fires curls through the darkening canyon carrying with it an assortment of cooking ooking fragrances the more tempting when mixed with the scent of f pines, pines, the sound of leaves, the feel of fresh winds strumming their own song among the branches overhead.

For thousands of years both people and mountains remain much the same and here in the Chiricahuas, only the most superficial of outward appearances have changed. The same starlit darkness draws its mantle of silence over the same mountains and canyons as in the days when Cochise and his people gathered around similar campfires, hearing the same night sounds, lulled by the same west winds, dominated by the same craggy shapes that march like black giants against the light of the night sky.