Take Your Camera When the Open Road Calls

Forests and a good handful of national monuments showing off prehistoric man's handiwork and nature's marvels.

Let's agree not to hurry or crowd too many miles between breakfast and dinner. September would be a nice time to go-when the summer vacation rush is over and the weather, crisp at the day's edges, is still pleasantly warm. Of course, you'll bring a camera and plenty of film.

Given the conventional two-weeks vacation, there should be two days for you to reach our rendezvous and two more at the end for going home. Like a jacket to be turned and worn either side out, the itinerary could be started at one or the other end, but why not meet us up at the northern border of Arizona? Sundown should find you on Utah State 47's fresh blacktop, just entering Monument Valley.

The only accommodation's here at Goulding's Trading Post and Lodge, but you'll really enjoy what you find. Over dinner in the ranch-style dining room which serves a view off to the dimming skyline of red sandstone monuments for appetizer, we will mull over our route and get acquainted with the Gouldings. Harry and "Mike" have been friends to the Navajos and hosts to the world for over thirty years. You'll enjoy meeting them.

FIRST DAY

The Lodge sits like a sky cyrie on a high ledge. In the morning, waiting for the breakfast gong, you see a great sweep of desert, where Navajo hogans are small dots on the slope. Ten miles off to the Rim, "Desert Skyscrapers" wait for us to load into four-wheel drive station wagons and begin one of the most famous and exciting days offered anywhere in the Southwest. No, we can't prophesy what the next few hours will hold. Like an unrehearsed T.V. program, with only the characters in the cast known, the "show" is always an original.

For backdrop, red sandstone figures: a pair of stone Mitten Buttes, 800 feet from wrist to finger-tip; The Three Sisters, The Castle, set off the color of the Navajos who live here.

You'll photograph them at their camps, the women in swirling full skirts of velveteen, men in blue jeans, wide-eyed, shy children tending the sheep. The driver-interpreter always helps arrange settings at a simple loom or with horseback riders and a flock pouring over an old-rose tinted sand dune.

OPPOSITE PAGE "ROCK GATE-MONUMENT VALLEY" 4x5 Linhof camera; Ektachrome E-1; f.16 at 1/25th sec.; 6" Schneider Xenar lens, September; sunny day. Less than a quarter of a mile from Gould-ings' Trading Post and Lodge, Monument Valley, is this dramatic gateway with its view of the distant skyline of red sandstone monuments set against a blue sky canopied with clouds. This is one of the unforgettable views of the Valley. Eagle Mesa, King on the Throne and The Castle are the names of the monuments in the distance, from left to right.

FOLLOWING PAGES "HOPI CORNFIELDS MOENCOPI WASH" BY DAVID MUENCH. 4x5 Graphic View camera; Ektachrome; f.22 at 1/10th sec.; 6" Ektar lens; June; sunny day. Shown here are cornfields of the Hopi Village of Moencopi-on the Hopi Indian Reservation, several miles from Tuba City. The Hopis are considered among the finest of dry farmers and their fields attest to their skill in raising corn in the desert. The only Pueblo Indians in Arizona, their reservation is completely surrounded by the larger Navajo reservation.

"BIG HOUSE-WUPATKI NATIONAL MONUMENT." 4x5 Speed Graphic camera; Kodachrome; f.14 at 1/25th sec.; 6" Ektar lens; September; sunny day. Photo taken in the Wupatki National Monument, in Northern Arizona, reached from U.S. 89 forty miles northeast of Flagstaff. This particular pre-historic dwelling is known as "Wokuki," from the Hopi word meaning "Big House." This is part of one of the ancient communities built and occupied by early farmers who came into the region after the eruption of Sunset Crater (about 1000 A.D.) had scattered a moisture-holding mulch for miles around. Wupatki was a flourishing community for about one hundred years. Wind, drought and disease finally caused abandonment of the area. Wupatki, meaning "great rain cloud ruins," was created a National Monument December 2, 1924.

"METEOR CRATER." 4x5 Linhof camera; Ektachrome; f.18 at 1/25th sec.; 90 mm. Angulon lens; September; sunny day. Meteor Crater is a short distance south of U.S. 66, seventeen miles west of Winslow. Rocks at the edge of this gaping hole give the spectator a feeling of its depth and size. The Crater is 4,150 feet wide and 570 feet deep.

"IN WALNUT CANYON NATIONAL MONUMENT." 4x5 Linhof camera; Ektachrome; f.25 at 1/10th sec.; 5" Schneider Xenar lens; September; sunny day. Photo taken along one of the trails in Walnut Canyon National Monument, not far from U.S. 66, a few miles east of Flagstaff. The visitor to this unusual monument will be rewarded by a short hike along the trails to see the ruins of the many small pre-historic dwellings tucked into the cliffs. The monument was created by presidential proclamation November 30, 1915, and enlarged September 24, 1938, and comprises an area of 1,873 acres.

CENTER PANEL "SALT RIVER CANYON PANORAMA." 4x5 Graphic View camera; Kodachrome; f.22 at 1/10th sec.; 54" Zeiss Tessar lens; September; sunny day. This photograph was taken on U.S. 60 about halfway between Globe and Showlow. The highway swirls and twists down one side of this expansive Salt River Canyon and up the other side to give the visitor many angles for view or camera shots. Autumn trims the rim with gold.

"MOUNTAIN GRAZING-BIG LAKE" BY DAVID MUENCH.

4x5 Graphic View camera; Ektachrome; f.14 at 1/50th sec.; 6" Ektar lens; September; sunny day. Big Lake. in the White Mountains, is off State Highway 273, south of Springerville. Cattle graze along the edge of the blue waters, guarded by tall western pines and watched from afar by great spreads of forests that clothe the mountain heights.

"PICKET POST MOUNTAIN." 4x5 Graphic View camera;

Kodachrome; f.20 at 1/10th sec.; 6" Ektar lens; May; sunny day. Photograph was taken from the Boyce Thompson Southwestern Arboretum, on U.S. 60-70 near Superior. This imposing mountain overlooks one of the most interesting desert areas in the state.

"ALONG STATE HIGHWAY 73-WHITE MOUNTAINS" BY DAVID MUENCH.

4x5 Graphic View camera; Ektachrome; f.27 at 1/5th sec.; 6" Ektar lens; August; sunny day. This view is in the White Mountains of Arizona along State Highway 73. This region is one of the state's most popular recreational areas.

"RAY, ARIZONA." 4x5 Linhof camera; Ektachrome; f.22 at

Ray has extensive operations here. Gold poppies (Eschscholtzia mexicana) embroider a slope in the foreground, looking up the canyon to the mining town with Teapot Peak above the colorful open copper pits. Arizona Place Names reports: "A man named Bullinger named a mine for his sister, Ray, in 1870. The town took its name from the mine."

OPPOSITE PAGE "FROZEN WATERFALL COLOSSAL CAVE." 4x5 Linhof

camera; Ektachrome; f.11 with flash at 1/5th sec.; 5" Schneider Xenar lens; September. Colossal Cave, situated on the southern slopes of the Rincon Mountains at an elevation of 3,650 feet, one of Arizona's largest caves, is twenty-eight miles from Tucson and reached via U.S. 80 passing through Vail. Shown here is one of the delightful formations to be seen in a tour of this underground fairyland. The full extent of Colossal Cave is unknown; to date about forty miles of its passageways have been explored. There are at least three known entrances, and probably several more for the air in the cave is fresh at all times.

The Navajo Council has named Monument Valley the first of its Tribal Parks and an alert, uniformed Ranger will be stationed at the new visitor center. He probably won't mind having his picture taken. Burning low light, crimsoning the buttes and mesas on our way back to the Lodge, perchance a moon coming up like a great silver plate, welcome dinner and evening chat, round off our first unforgettable day.

SECOND DAY

Monument Valley is the hardest place to leave, but the morning sun should find us heading southwest through the reservation with 150 miles ahead to Flagstaff and perhaps fifty miles more for two not-to-be-missed sidetrips.

This wonderful stretch is all Indian. Every feature adds to the impact of the big land. Massively laid uplifts and striking individual formations dwarf tiny scattered Navajo camps. Maintained by the Indian Service, the road has outgrown old sand traps and corduroy bumps. By the time we travel it in the crisp autumn air, the last bit of blacktop will have been completed.

A gateway to the craggy volcanic plug of Agathlan and the sandstone Owl Butte-sees us out of the Valley. Kayenta is soon in sight, with its agency, school, trading post and motel. We go on, mounting into Marsh Pass and near the solitary Tsegi Trading Post (operated by Indians) must remember to look across the canyon to spot some tiny ruins nestled in an overhanging cave. They are too far away to photograph, unless you have a very long lens.

Black Mesa on the left and a water-pocked upthrust at the right provide scenery until we pass Cow Springs Trading Post. Then around the next corner we see the Elephant's Feet ahead. From a low dune behind them, you can get a fine picture of these two stout formations, looking very much like their name, even to heavy toes.

Tonalea Trading Post sits on a hill right beyond and then we roll along long through level range to bustling Tuba City where, beside school and agency, there is a large Indian hospital.

Turn left here on a paved road that takes us quickly to an overlook of the flat-roofed houses of the Hopi town, Moencopi. A pattern of tiny fields is spread on the flat, tilled industriously by these fine dry-farmers.

West again from Tuba City is U.S. 89 and soon, Cameron, close to the junction of State 64 that serves the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. Cameron, a trading post gone modern, includes a fine motel, spacious store, service station and a welcome lunchroom.

Now, driving due south, the highway mounts to pine forests. Looking back now and then we have one of those grand, but indescribable long views of the desert.

The lovely form of the San Francisco Peaks grows with the miles and an eye-catching sign, "Wupatki National Monument," indicates where to begin a thirty-mile detour into the volcanic area of America's first landrush, back in the 11th century. Ruins of apartment housesthe Citadel and Wupatki-are among 800 sites, occupied after a startling volcanic eruption scattered moistureholding mulch of cinders for miles around. At headquarters we hear more of the various tribes, blending their arts and crafts, improving their architecture and farming, before changing weather or some catastrophe drove them on in the 13th century.

Back at U.S. 89 the road continues to climb, now in the Coconino National Forest before reaching the entrance to Sunset Crater National Monument, featuring the black cone whose sudden birth began the rush at Wupatki. The Bonita Lava Flow, a little ice cave, and the big 1000-foot mountain of cinder itself will appeal as picture subject matter. Late afternoon sunlight brings out coloring of the hot-spring minerals at the crest to make effective shots, perhaps framed by big Ponderosa Pines.

Only a few miles beyond, right below the Peaks and at a cool 6,907 feet, Flagstaff itself waits to welcome us with a wide choice of accommodations.

THIRD DAY

Flagstaff, bustling tourist and lumber center, with the Museum of Northern Arizona and Arizona State College, is in the center of a wide range of attractions. To see one we'll go east on U.S. 66 a few miles-to Walnut Canyon National Monument. Quite different, from most surface dwellings or the usual cave apartments, here tiny houses are tucked into long ledges one above the other on the canyon walls. From headquarters we will follow a short trail to their recesses and photograph the rooms that have used for roof and floor, the walls of the cliff. Fields were on top and drinking water far below on the canyon floor.

Traveling east again on the highway, our way drops out of the forest and after twenty miles, reaches a turnoff to Meteor Crater, six miles south. After listening to a lecture on this tremendous phenomenon, we can go out to stand at the edge of a hole three miles in circumference and some 750 feet deep. Thousands of years ago a projectile from outer space landed here, ploughing out a cavity and burying itself so far below that a search, begun in 1905, has still failed to locate it.

U.S. Highway 66 next comes into open cattle country with Winslow, where Fred Harvey built his Hotel Posada in comfortable Spanish hacienda style years ago, and to the little Mormon settlement of St. Joseph on The Little Colorado River. Emerald green fields on our way are picture worthy, here where the big stock companies used to wage private wars and cowboys, with knife and gun, made their own laws.

Holbrook is our night stop, a railroad, tourist, cattle and farming center, but before we get settled there is another highpoint to enjoy, twenty-four miles east-the "Desierto Pintado."

Here, on the Rim of the Painted Desert, timing is of the essence and sunset the time when we want to get pictures. It is administered as part of the Petrified Forest National Monument and we hurry there to get in position. For uninhibited color and form, there's nothing to compare with this landscape, especially when the last light builds up shadows, enriching already incredible tones playing over miles of weird scenery. To paraphrase a popular ad-"If you know a more colorful spot-shoot it:" A day that ends at the Painted Desert, goes down in beauty.

side parks near the crossing, and along the stream itself where the river cavorts in pretty cascades and trilling drops. Probably because the road conquers the gorge, instead of keeping people on one rim looking across to the other, this magnificent canyon gets less than its share of publicity.

Globe, county seat of Gila County, our night stop, is a busy community set on hillsides and flowing through a canyon. Bustling, prosperous and tourist-filled, Globe has a colorful history.

SIXTH DAY

The Inspiration Mine at Miami welcomes visitors (get hours in folder from gas station or motel) and a tour will be an eye-opener. Colorful, complex, the copper mining and milling operations seen there will awaken an appreciation for the sights you see and photograph through this region. One dissected mountain that confronts you will surely puzzle future archeologists by its resemblance to the Pyramid of Cheops.

Between Miami and Superior, now on U.S. 60-70, the natural scenery-great dark pinnacles and piles of rock through the scenic Queen Creek Canyon-vies in interest with the road itself, one of the state's most expensive bits of road building, as it drops down, tunnels through a long stretch of amorphous rock, and then crosses the canyon by a leaping span. Views framed by the tunnel mouths, of the winding roadbed, and of the torturous canyon are fine to photograph.

A detour that's a must, if you want to get acquainted with the names of cactus and desert shrubs and trees is the Boyce Thompson Southwestern Arboretum, three miles west of Superior. Growing in the gardens are carefully labeled specimens of all the Southwestern flora, consorting with plants from similar climates around the world. The setting is pretty in its own right with richly colored Picket Post Mountain towering behind.

I only hope you'll be as enthusiastic as I am about the next leg of our journey-south on State 177 from Superior. If Walt Disney had a forty-five-mile stretch of big mountain country and wanted to create there a showpiece demonstrating the drama of the copper industry-the result couldn't be more picturesque. But this is the real thing-rumbling trucks, big-mouthed steam shovels and all. The life-motif is desert-rolling mountain slopes set with whole forests of saguaros and bulky barrel cacti that wear halos in the backlighting and might have been planted there just for effect.

The road glides down to Ray, where expanding operations in the copper pit are pushing old camps right off the map, gobbling them up as a man-eating dragon might. The pits are gaudy, full of activity. At one side, clinging to Amanda Gulch, Sonora is very like a mountain town south of the border. A stroll through its narrow streets, with signs on the tiny stores in Spanish, houses one on top of the other, will give some pictures of a doomed city.

Ray's residential district and Sonora are being reincarnated in a spanking new town-Kearny-another fourteen miles south on the Gila River. The highway through all this, and tinted dumps and slag piles, has carved new canyon cuts, filled in great gulches, as though just nothing were too much for bulldozer and steamshovel to accomplish. For a stretch the desert takes over again and then Hayden, the smelter town for Ray, with great metal buildings, overhead conveyer belts and bustle, comes into view.

At Winkelman we find ourselves at the junction of the Gila and San Pedro Rivers. The valley scenery is peaceful and regular, but like every other valley in the state, has its own individual character.

It's nine miles to Feldman and a sign to Aravaipa Canyon. The road is gravel, heading east to a spot that many laud as the most beautiful in all of Arizona. Perhaps you'll agree with them after entering a paradise, created by a free-flowing creek that nourishes lovely ranches, fields and orchards before it cuts right through the Galiura Mountains in a sheer, remote and altogether exotic gorge. The final upper canyon, reached only afoot, is guarded by private lands and seldom seen, but we can enjoy at least a portion of the peculiar charm that only a well-watered desert canyon-cliff-girded-saguarostudded and uninhabited-can claim.

Back on State 77 we have a few miles along the San Pedro River, a stretch once familiar to the early Spanish Fathers who penetrated here, before the road Tombstone is just seventy-one miles over U.S. 80 but since we agreed (didn't we?) not to hurry, we'll use up most of the day on several "shunpike" spots reached by a byroad before getting there.

SEVENTH DAY

Take Broadway east toward the Tanque Verde Mountains to reach the Saguaro National Monument, official home of the state flower, growing on a plant that is the virtual symbol of the Southwestern Deserts. The road through the monument, one way and winding as it pleases, up one hill and down another, has just the right pace as well as setting for the giant cactus. Birds crosses the stream and starts to climb. The copper-conscious towns of Mammoth, San Manuel and Oracle are on the way up to the summit. We drop down the other side to join U.S. 80-89 in the immense basin of Tucson. Arizona's second largest city, the Old Pueblo that has mushroomed into a great resort center, basks there with the rugged Santa Catalina Mountains on our left. Spread out before our cameras is the incomparably scenic valley, ringed by mountains that are chiselled to sharp points, dark and haunting on every skyline.

in great numbers and variety draw many visitors and it shouldn't be hard to get pictures of some of them as well in this big garden. Gaily dressed Gambel quail, topknots bobbing, come close to a picture window in the visitor center to enjoy a bird bath and possibly, the admiration of watchers. I won't promise we'll be lucky enough to catch more than a glimpse of wild peccary scurrying through the underbrush, but the saguaros at least will stand still for any number of portraits.

Turn left outside the monument and continue, on well-graded gravel to twist and wind among more saguaros, barrels, palo verdes et al, to quite a different attraction -the Colossal Cave. Deep within Rincon Peak, these caverns, known to extend more than forty miles beyond the part open to visitors, was put in shape for public use in C.C.C. days and is now a Pima County park. A dry cave that has stopped growing, with an even temperature of seventy-two degrees and a very fine assortment of stalactites and stalagmites all indirectly lighted, there is much to interest visitors. If you've brought flash, you'll get pictures even here under the earth.

On the same road, shortly before reaching U.S. 80,

NINTH DAY

After another pleasant night in Tucson, we head toward Ajo on State 86 and make our first detour into the Tucson Mountain Park. Two goals beckon. First, in the order of our going, being a movie set of Old Tucson. It seems strange to find it way out here, but the false fronts were built years ago for the filming of "Arizona," and made permanent, have been background for many western pictures. Now it's an amusement center. No one needs to point out what subjects to take in the old streets where a stagecoach rumbles along, a tiny railroad chugs on its way, and costumes of olden days are uniform dress for the attendants.

The Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum is more on the serious side. Wild animals are raised to be tame, so that children can play with them, underground creatures are induced to build burrows behind glass to display their mode of life and the wonderful Sonoran Desert is all around.

Continuing on State 86 across the Papago Indian Reservation, you will add this tribe to your collection of Indian portraits. The Papagoes are friendly, broadfaced and brown-skinned. We'll see them in a number of small communities through which the road passes.

There may not be a "composition" for every mile of the 132 from Tucson to Ajo, but there is still much to see and the broad landscape has charms hard to capture in words. I, personally, never tire of a view that includes saguaros.

Ajo waves a smoke banner from the tall chimney of the copper smelter long before we arrive and its quaintness is proverbial. I never think of this little company town without seeing the arches around three sides of the plaza and recalling how well the oleanders bloom there.

TENTH DAY

Our last day leads us south from Ajo into the Organ Pipe National Monument. The entrance is on State 85 which follows through the preserve to the Mexican Border. Unquestionably, this area is one of the choice spots on the desert. There are mountains and long, wide, open valleys. Rocky hills surge up, peppered with not only the familiar Giant cactus and barrels, but the featured plant-the organ pipe. Its tubular branches, spreading at the top are an addition to any hillside. After stopping at the visitor center let's take the suggested Ajo Mountain Drive, off into the Arboreal Desert, out of sight and mind of anything man-made (save our road).

Pictures can, I believe, express more closely than words can, the impact of this place its special magic. Dramatic to the point of being theatrical, the crystal clear air, the aloof mountains, the perfection of the vege-table community create an atmosphere of self sufficiency, poised and everlasting. I like the organ pipes, of all sizes, from one foot up to twenty, and the great variety of other species set among dark, volcanic rocks. The gravel road delves right into the heart of the wilderness, shows off a skyline arch, twists back on itself to look down Mexico way, before coming back docilely to the monu-ment thoroughfare.

clear air, the aloof mountains, the perfection of the vege-table community create an atmosphere of self sufficiency, poised and everlasting. I like the organ pipes, of all sizes, from one foot up to twenty, and the great variety of other species set among dark, volcanic rocks. The gravel road delves right into the heart of the wilderness, shows off a skyline arch, twists back on itself to look down Mexico way, before coming back docilely to the monu-ment thoroughfare.

On the way back to Ajo, Montezuma's Head is out-lined against the sky, looking like a giant Buddha with all the saguaros and organ pipes lifting arms in salute Past Ajo the highway cuts through the miriature Crater Range, with alcoves trimmed in desert garden settings, every plant spiny and complacent, as we move on to Gila Bend and bed.

Here our scheduled tour comes to an end. After seeing so much, there seems little to say, save perhaps, "Hasta La Vista," and hurry back. Perhaps we'll meet again, somewhere along the highways or byways of Arizona.

FIRE IN THE TONTO

One minute the fire was dormant. The next, it raged. The expected afternoon breeze brightened embers along the line. At 2:45 p.m. a whirlwind swirled through a patch of smoldering sotol stalks, scattering leaves across a fire line. Flames fell down a steep draw. The fire climbed both sides of the draw. So sudden was the breakthrough, the Apache crews were forced to flee for their lives to a burned-over area.

"The whole basin blew up all around us," said George Cox of Globe. He had reached the fire, early Monday. A husky, middle-aged truck driver, Cox considered firefighting a hobby, but the Pranty Fire was in no mood to amuse.

"In all the years I've fought fires," said Cox, "this was the worst wind I've seen. It was like the Devil himself was blowing it around us. That fire would burn in one direction, seem to go out, and then burn back over the same place twice as hot. By the time I started back to camp, the fire was all around me. I knew where camp was, but I couldn't find a way out. About 9 o'clock a little shower fell on a few hundred yards of the hottest part, and I broke through."

Cox was on the line sixteen hours. His eyes were hurtful, red. His skin was blackened by ash, and made ruddy by sun and wind. His feet were scorched. He reeked of smoke and perspiration. George Cox slept six hours and headed back to the fire.

The turn of battle brought an air of great expecta tion to the fire camp. The famous Zuñi firefighters were due to arrive, and seldom had they been needed so badly. Forest rangers speak of the Zuñis almost reverently. Collegiate foresters and tobacco-chewing stump-jumpers alike boast that the world has never produced a fire extinguisher to surpass the Zuñi Indian.

Then, when the Zuñis arrived, they were a disap pointment. They were mere human beings, not giants. They were bronze, black-haired, quiet-mannered, ceaselessly smiling, and mostly on the small side. Some were downright skinny. Only one article of clothing was uniform-a silvered helmet with a thunderbird decal on the front, and "Work Safety" stenciled on the back. The youngest was eighteen, and the oldest, sixty; the two could have passed for brothers. The leader of this unim pressive band was a coppery elf named Buddie Hattis.

Up canyon, a fire was racing through an acre a minute. Did those Zuñis head toward it on the double? No, sir. They ate. Hattis balanced his plate on a canteen crate, and around mouthfuls of steak and beans, he told about his men.

They live at Zuñi, N.M., where most of the year they are shepherds or ranchers or silversmiths. Hattis said he ran a flock of sheep. Years ago the forest service encouraged the Zuñi men to train to fight forest fires. The Zuñis have gone to big fires all over the West. Both sides count a gain. The Zuñis found a source of hard cash ($1.70 per hour, for time on the line, plus trans portation and keep). The Forest Service has in them an elite, mobile force of firefighters. There are other crack units, including Arizona's own Hopis, Navajos and Apaches, but somehow the Zuñis have won wider fame.

After lunches settled, we started out for the fire. It was an uphill walk of five miles, with the temperature in the shade nudging 110 degrees. Hattis stopped and rested his men often. In two hours, we were there. Hattis offered no command. He waved an arm.

His Zuñis walked along the fire. There was no haste, but rather a methodical pecking and snatching at the ground and brush with fire tools. At each step a Zuñi removed something flammable from the line of march. When twenty-five men had passed, they left a clean trail to challenge the flames.

A yucca, now a ball of fire, rolled over the line. The Zuñis retreated and built another trail. Again their line was breached. They built again. They kept at the frustrating and wearying work for twelve hours, breath ing the acrid and super-heated air, suffering the radiation of the fire, feeling the hot earth through their shoes.

Through the night they carried on with only a bologna sandwich and a tepid canteen of water to sustain them.

In the morning they marched briskly, in military single file, to camp. Their wistful smiles had not changed, but they seemed to be a lot bigger than they were the day before.

The second day brought another welcome firefight ing machine, a helicopter. A Bell piloted by Bob Murray of PDQ Airways of Phoenix plopped into camp with a put and a wheeze and a cloud of dust.

After morning scouting, Murray was asked to deliver drinking water to a fire crew, and he invited me to ride the passenger's seat. We crabbed out across a Dante-land of white ash and spiraling fumes and grotesque skeletons and orange flame. With but a morning zephyr behind it, the inferno was sprinting up slopes faster than a man could run. A clump of brush would flash and in turn bake the brush around it. With a whoosh the tortured chaparral would flare, at times, tossing flames for fifty feet. The fire had spread from a single bush, to an area four miles across at its greatest diameter. The helicopter ride induced a mixture of exhilaration and depression, because in two minutes we traveled the trail that had taken the Zuñis and me two laborious hours to walk the day before.

Howard Shupe, fire control officer for the Tonto, and Jimmy Blackburn, veteran forest roadbuilder, led crews to the head of the fire on the third day. Reinforcements had arrived, with more equipment and supervision. Shupe and Blackburn held high hopes of holding the fire at Reevis Road, a wide, clean gash of gravel lying athwart the path of the Pranty Fire. The morning was promising.

Blackburn backfired. Shupe consolidated ridges. But there was no denying a conflagration in high-octane brush, encouraged by temperatures climbing to 108, and fanned by gusts to twenty and thirty mph. At 10:30 a.m. on the third day, the fire jumped the Reevis Road. The wind rose to forty mph. Fire attacked holly leaf buckthorn and laurel, and ceanothus, and oaks, and mountain mahogany. By 3 p.m. all attempts to control the fire were abandoned. Crews were pulled off the line for their own safety.

Even in this time of stress, an easy man to know and like was Jerome Thompson, district ranger and fire boss. Lean, brown and balding, he was a practitioner of softsell leadership. A sizable section of his neck of the woods was going up in smoke. He had a thousand details to consider-strategy, safety of his men, cans of peaches, weather forecasts, snake bite kits, daily reports, No. 2 shovels. Washington and Albuquerque brass were peeking over his shoulder. Yet he was capable of lifting spirits with whimsy. After calling his men down from Reevis Road, he scouted on, and for a couple of hours was trapped between blowups.

"Jerry," he was asked when he escaped in his scorched truck, "how's the fire doing?"

"Fine," he said. "We're not doing worth a damn, but the fire-wonderful!"

Sometimes borate puts out fire and sometimes it does not. This is true of all other fire repressers, including man. At the Pranty Fire, perhaps too much was asked of borate. Too much. Too late. Borate is a mineral cousin to the things put in hand cleaner and jet aircraft fuel. It is mixed with water to make a slurry the color and consistency of rich cream. It drops from an airplane as a heavy, irregular mist, and it coats foliage like speckle-paint from a spray gun. Borate works best when it is spread in front of a fire, retarding spread. Borate buys time. The price is high. Delivered to the Pranty Fire, borate cost $1 a gallon. Converted navy PBY patrol planes can carry one thousand gallons. A torpedo bomber can handle five hundred gallons, and the old B-25 that set Tokyo afire has a capacity of six hundred gallons of borate.

For Pranty, the forest service shaved the cost of borate by brewing its own, and contracting for delivery. But the expense remained so high, a taxpayer has a right to wonder if the muck does much good. One day I saw it work like a witch's potion. The bulldozers were parked, as a gale drove the fire. Most of the men were back in camp, swatting flies. I stayed with Forester Bill Fleishman on a high, safe, burnt-over saddle to watch the awesome progression of the fire. At noon, it was in the bottom of a canyon, at 3,500 feet. By 3:30 p.m. it was consuming mile-high pines on the parapets of Castle Dome, dominant peak of the area."

"Borate delivery in ten minutes," was the advice over Fleishman's portable radio. We walked down the Reevis Road for a better view. The crackle and bang of boiling sheets of flame carried to the saddle where we stood, covering the hum of the approaching PBY.

The old flying boat circled once, then turned into the greasy smoke that was spewing volcano-like from the mountain top.

A few seconds passed. The airplane suddenly hurdled the peak and zoomed down the mile-long slope. A fog of borate settled before, and into the fire.

Flames collapsed. Black smoke blanched gray-white. One load of borate had temporarily quieted the most dangerous salient of the fire. No $1,000 was better spent that week on the Pranty Fire.

But the next day when the fire was headlong in another direction, I saw the borate operation fail. Four consecutive loads of borate were dumped at places far from targets selected by firefighters on the ground. One load was jettisoned a quarter-mile from target. "Go back home," a vexed, smoke-tortured forester shouted toward the airplane. "You might as well be dropping $1,000 bills." Success seemed to depend on intimate communication between ground spotters and pilots.

Nevertheless, admiration of the wild blue borate boys by groundfighters approached a hero-worship. The pilots regularly dive down smoke-shrouded canyons and release their borate at altitudes below one hundred feet. Sometimes they catch twigs and ashes on their air-planes, and enough times to make the hair rise on the necks of witnesses, borate pilots have crashed. You could not bribe me to do that kind of work for a thousand times $1,000.

Firefighting by plane

There are stories-you have heard them of strange behavior of wildlife when their homes are overrun by fire.

Mortal enemies become brothers in the face of common danger. Timid beasts lose their fear of man. Other species commit suicide, or panic. Still others, it's said, are as purposeful as grammar school children at a fire drill.

You could see it all at the Pranty Fire.

A half-grown cottontail ran out of the fire and tried to hide between the shoes of an Apache firefighter. The Indian picked up the rabbit, stroked it as he might a house cat, and put it in his helmet. The little fellow curled up and went to sleep. Later the Apache released the rabbit at camp, miles from the fire. The bunny took a few exploratory hops, sniffed the air, and darted for freedom. All at once he had regained his terror of man. Mourning doves, better equipped for escape than most residents of their burning habitat, destroyed themselves. Throughout daylight daylight hours one could see doves flying into the fire. If they survived the flights, often they would roost in tall brush and croon their sad songs before soaring again over the flames, finally crumpling as if shot. Some instinct would not let them break from favored flyways.

Out of the Pranty Fire slithered enough snakes to horrify a city. Heat, perhaps, or smoke, brought the snakes up from their holes. Men on fire lines tramped near and sometimes on snakes. They jerked brush off snakes. Men fell near snakes. Not a man was bitten. One man saved all the rattles of the diamondbacks and sidewinders he guillotined with his shovel, and by the time the fire was controlled, he had a shirt pocket full.

Deer apparently evacuated by logical thought. Three does and a spike buck were nearly trapped one night. The oldest doe gave the others a "Wait here" look, and minced to the top of a hillock for an appraisal. Only a narrow corridor was free of fire.

The old doe trotted to her friends, and with a "This way" nod of her head, she led them out of the threatened trap.

Small animals, with neither the begins nor the stems to flies, perished by the thousands.

We watched fire close in on a jack rabbit. He could have gotten away. But he froze in his tracks, head high, cars forward. Hoping to start him toward safety, we chucked stones at the rabbit until our arms hurt. But the rabbit would not move, even as the flames passed over him. One old firefighter said that the little animals are thought to die of fright before they are burned.

On the fourth day Jinary Blackburn finally got the tool he wanted. In much of his thirty years in the forest service, Blackburn had breathed smoke. smoke.. At the Pranty Fire he had led Indians in building trail by hand. He had directed borate bombardments. He set backfires. Nothing seemed to work Now, he said confidently, be might do some good. He was given charge of a bulldozer, a D-8 caterpillar operated by Jina Mercer and Franklin Delmolin, of Globe.

Blackburn was ordered to contract and if necessary burn out a dozer line from Davis Wash on the west, to tie in with the burn, thereby saving a scenic strip along the Apache Trall. Shupe was to complete a line along the west side of the fire near a place called Windy Saddle. Five borate plates were assigned to the Pranty Fire.

Defent, in firefighting as it is in war, often is a matter of inches and seconds.

The Cat was unloaded about y a.m. onto the Apechs Tail near Apache Lake. Morear pushed the bulkiosar eastward until he met the advancing flames, then turned svothward, climbing a ridge line parallel to the fire. Free Apachos picked the trall clean. In two hours, a Hos ton fest wide and bare to the mineral earth wes between the firs and the Apache Trall The fickle wind shifted. Flames rom around the and of Blackburn's defenses. Ho retreated sed car more trail. Again the five outflesiod him. The wind had not read the weather forecast. It blew in a direction exactly opposite to that expected.

Mercer and Dalroolin began the day in clean clothes, Mercer was dapper in pressed cotton set off by a soapbrim, powder-bfne hat. By noon, Mercer's mother could not have choses him from a time of Zutils. Once, when the fire threatened to jump across a pass, Mercer dumped a gallon of water on that once-spiffy hat, and yanked the accelerator, The climb was so steep the tractor slowed and slid downhill fifteen feet. At such places, tractors have turned over, crusting or pinning their drivers. Back up thet mountain Mercer urged his machine, and when he reached the top, ha tuned the doner around and rolled a ball of earth down the fire side of his first line. All the while, onds of flames sprayed over bis hand. Here the fire was plached off, but elsewhere it goc wway."

"One place we didn't reach in time," mid Blackbesen ruefally. "We were almost there, when the fire cromed ova. After that, there was to holding it."

That night the Pranty was classified a four-division fire. Help came from other forests in and near Arisa One firefighter incautiously vold a news reporter that 'there was nothing to keep the fire from running to Roosevek, or even Globe, thiery miles away.

Apprehensive townspeople began to think of the Penty Five as a passoal danger. No longer was it a minor trouble in the tules. Citizens began to wonder what was taking the Forest Service so lang ta in controlling a simple brush Are. Afor all, the fire won't in the forest was ft?

Indeed, on the fifth day, the fire was beaten, andclimactically, undramatically, womantically. There whe no single, decisive victory. The wind ac a good time slockened a bit, and two hundred men scratched don'tdare-cross around the hottest froans of a twenty-mile parimster. Doser tmile began to hold. Borate fell on target. As the Pranty Fire matured to the ridges, it was more easily contained. Dusk brought gusts, but also Eght showers.

Friday crews concentrated on hot shoes, said the high winds that rose in the afternoon, found fire only in islands of brush surrounded by a sea of lifalms sth. The fre was deckered under control et 8 sun.

As cadors with Anderem, said midshipmen with Midway, carcer forests have come to think of the Pranty as & classic barde. The enamy had adventages, of surprise, weather, terrain, diversity, imunedisto supply, tiro leason.

Two large fires close together confused logistics of both. In ball corsions said chearoom lectures foresters have criticised some of their own decisions and tactics, but superiors have judged the Pranty Fire to have bem intelligently and coursesously foughr.

Light thousand-two hundred aleven acres were kid bana. Control cost $140,685. Damage to a watershed overhanging a principal resavoir of the Salt River Project was estimated at Suay,a25. Somme $12,000 was spent is rebellding fences and seeding grama. Torrential ralus which began to fall on the Lewis & Pranty, and the Davis, and the Puc dauinages a low weeks after the firm, cur gulbes into the procipitous slopes and washed away the grass sveds. Topsoil was reseplanted by the ton to Apeche Lake, clouding it with silk and sah, redacing is capacity and disturbing its fubary. Five miles of Apache Trail was deeply eroded by flash floods.

Temporarily, wildlife benefits appeared to overnumber evil. Deer drifted back to succulent shoots sprosting from crowns of once-ampalatable brush. Where cover was left in patches, small gane popalations recovered and increwed.

But in three years, and at most, seven, biologists predict the brush again will be gross and woody. And by then, the thin walls that supported tososition feeds may be in the bottoas of the canyona, and under the leka.

The Pranty Firs did not claim its first human life watil October, four months for it was officially declared out. Mr. and Mrs. Francis Lee Mans of Tecasa were traveling scrom Davis Wash on the Apache Trail when a wall of water engulfed their car. Their daughter, 4week-old Shannon Lee, was toin from her mother's ans, and drowned.

"We feel the flood was caused by lees of watershed cover following the Prosty Fire," and Foremer Bill Fleishaman.

In June, the Prwenty Fize began. In June, it ended.. Yet does a spark of the Pranty Fire glow in a fuss that reaches to tragedies twenty, or forty, or sighay. yours into the fature?