A VISIT WITH A RANCH WIFE

busy ranch wife

"You are introduced in the book to our beloved companions, the Australian shepherds Bess and Annie, as well as the fascinating and wayward town cat, Mehitabel, who bravely faced many heart-rending adjustments to ranch life.

"Throughout the book, the protagonist remains the bleakly beautiful expanses of Northern Arizona, which can be both friend or enemy. You learn to know her as we do, bathed in the calm glory of September sun, lying cold and hostile beneath the winter snow, stirring with the wild fury of spring sandstorms, bone-dry and tortured through the summer drought and triumphant with the first tender green blades of gramma grass that shoot up after the long-awaited late summer rains.

"I have tried to tell the story of our ranch and our efforts to raise cattle, brand them, keep them fed and watered. The last chapter takes you on the culminating experience of every rancher's year-Fall Roundup, from the start of our first day's drive to the moment the cattle are shipped out on the Santa Fe."

Ranch Wife, 288 pages, with illustration by Ross Santee, consists of thirteen chapters: The West, The Rib, Home on the Range, Branding, Navajo, The Dogies, Cats and Dogs, Winter, Spring, The Red-necked Steer, Summer, Enemies and Roundup. This book can be purchased where ever better books are sold. Readers who do not have bookstore facilities available to them can order Ranch Wife direct from ARIZONA HIGHWAYS, Phoenix, Arizona 85009. The price is $4.95. Add 25c for postage and handling.

Here in Arizona, as "the swift seasons roll" to bring Autumn leaves tumbling round our ears, I am reminded anew of the poet who urged America to know herself. Where else has that ringing challenge, meant for all of us to follow: "I celebrate myself, and sing myself..." been so well answered? Walt Whitman, if I read his lines aright, would have applauded a celebration, impossible in his time but so right now: proclaiming in a universal language even the unlettered may read, if he but has eyes to see the singing color, spread out on page after page of Arizona's own month by month "book."

Forget, for the moment, that you can read these words, though printed in a language of which half the world now makes some use. Perhaps you belong to the other half and cannot! (For this is, after all, a magazine seldom discarded but rather, is passed on from hand to hand often around the world.) You may be doing just what I am about to suggest, without my asking it. Forget the printed page and look again at the pictures of bright October in Arizona. Wander from cover to colored cover. Opening the doorway of page after page, walk right on into vistas of shady forest or along a desert wash under the glowing cottonwood trees. Celebrate with each new scene, the beauty of this world into which you are invited, whoever and wherever you are. If you will bring your whole self, the clean spice of pine woods will come out to meet your nostrils; the rustle of leaves will be audible to your ears.

What a glowing world it is. Red cliffs, probably much higher than you think, stand rooted deep in the foundations of the earth. From rims you look off into the roominess of great canyons, furnished with massive buttes designed in fundamental styles, impervious to passing fad. Mountain peaks, seen through October's golden frames may be climbed in a glance. There are deserts, reaching far to fringe of sharp-cut, ridged horizons, "peopled" by plants as extravagant as the landscape. It is peopled too by human figures, wondering at the scene, themselves part of the long distances, the rolling hills, all limned against the crisp clarity of air, native to this region, and sharpened by the season. Fields, rough with stubble new cut, or green with one more of the continuous crops, unroll through valleys. Cattle browse in broad meadows. What a never-never land it must look, viewed from some distant, less peaceful, serene, and gracious spot.

There is, though, an end to pictures and so, a parting of the ways. Those who can follow only what is portrayed by camera or paintbrush must stop at the turn in the road, when the printed page takes up the task of guide and celebrant. Around that final bend, where vision halts, we can assure the reader of more Autumn. On the other side of the mountain we can lead the mind's eye to new slopes, festooned in color; canyons splendid as the one the camera saw are just past the next rise. All of Arizona's highlights, each of Autumn's specials can't be pictured in a single issue.

walking into RED, YELLOW, AND BROWN DAYS

Red, yellow, and brown days, The tumbleweeds, on brittle stems, Ripe for rolling, while cottonwood leaves, Yellow as brass, twist in the arid breeze And heavy squashes nurse Their fibril stems.

The bins are stacked with corn, The walls are hung with chili; Aspens ring the peaks with trembling color As the sun, between the naked trees, Strikes lightning from the rios: Red, yellow, and brown daysGreat Indian summerCloudless months in the offing.

Now perhaps, dropping into Walt's own element; words, we can catch up with the poet, striding along a side road, which he might expect to lead, not US into Autumn, but Autumn into US. As we match our step to his, we come upon a small bridge, built for more water than the chattering stream now commands. A path drops down to kneel at the water's edge, and then goes on a pace, heading to a private rendezvous. An unseen bird, garbling a shortened version of his spring song, warns against it, but do you mind a little mud on your shoes? It seemed to me that last inquisitive breeze carried an echo. Now a jay rebukes us with his "Thief! Thief!" when all we want to steal is a look at his hidden waterfall. See it, over there, hanging above the bend of the stream? A few steps more and we are there. The same tale-hearing breeze, or another, lifts the skirts of the young pines and starts the aspen leaves to shocked whispering. Bushes shake out a bagful of their yellowed leaves for the water to tumble about, and the sunlight, pushing past a trunk which shaded it, picks out colored pebbles in the bottom of the creek, making one a ruby and another a black diamond.

People with more strength of character than I, seem to be able to take all of this in at a single glance and be on their way. I linger in hope of spotting at least one fingerling, darting through his own cool, fluid world. There should be a frog about, waiting, like the chairman of a board-meeting, for perfect silence, before he lifts his