WALKING INTO AUTUMN

Autumn scenes of serene enchantment voice. The throaty reply from the other side of their "director's room" is always a deeper tone, but in perfect agreement. In Frog Realms, there seems never to be any difference of opinion. While the chairman makes known his decision and the vice-chairman seconds it, the water, in gay trills and splashes, with changes of rhythm and varied tempos, invents a baker's dozen ways in which it can descend over the smallest of falls. As all these small nothings are happening, the patrolling sun has moved on, but not until we find ourselves casting an affirmative vote with the frogs.

Another affirmation of October's special grace could lead us along the road to an open park, circled by darkening pines at the soft edge of the day. The sun, in lowering, floods a group of aspen trees; white limbs straight, their leaves and branches interlocked like the arms of a dancing chorus. One hardly dares snatch a glance to take in the rest of the stage: white road bending in gentle curves through a sea of grass, pine, spruce and fir, moulded into somber drop, pulling the eye back to the aspens which burn and shimmer, flaring into a final burst of color, a visual clash of tympany to mark the end.

Through the succeeding hush and dimming light, phantom shadows steal from the wood's edge: deer coming out to feed. A young buck, in the pride of his first antlers, reaches up for a mouthful of leaves and pulls down a shower of golden coins which slide from his back to entangle in the green of a little tree. They shine palely, like an arrangement of half dollars in goldfoil tied to branches as a 50th wedding anniversary center-piece.

More vignettes of fall color come to mind that we can visit, for time and distance mean nothing to the agile imagination, riffling through a drawerful of memories. We might look at a mountain slope which could have been labelled: "In the White Mountains of New Hampshire," but was really in this Arizona's White Mountain range. The foreground of meadow grass, clipped lawn-short byContinued on page 29"AUTUMN IS DEPARTING, WINTER ARRIVES" BY JAMES TALLON. You know winter is arriving when the lofty San Francisco Peaks near Flagstaff don their robes of snowy white. At lower elevations autumn still lingers but her days are numbered. Hasselblad 1000F camera; Ektachrome; f.8 at 1/50th sec.; Zeiss Tessar-Pola Screen.

OPPOSITE PAGE

"ROAD THROUGH THE GOLDEN FOREST" BY DARWIN VAN CAMPEN. Photograph was taken along the primitive road to Point Sublime on the North Rim of Grand Canyon National Park. The trip to Point Sublime is a memorable experience in the fall. The leisurely, away-fromit-all road takes you through beautiful golden aspen groves and open meadows offering frequent glimpses of the countless deer that make this woodland paradise their home. 4x5 Linhof camera; Ektachrome; f.27 at 1/25th sec.; 127mm Ektar lens; early October morning, Weston Meter 300; ASA rating 64.

"AUTUMN SKY IN THE PATAGONIA AREA" BY JOSEF MUENCH. This portrait of "Arizona in Autumn" was taken between Patagonia and Nogales along Arizona 82. Sonoita Creek in Santa Cruz County, with big cottonwood trees turning yellow against a blue sky, dressed up with clouds, which seem to hover over the setting, is dramatically colorful in early November. 4x5 Linhof camera; Ektachrome; f.20 at 1/25th sec.; 6" Xenar lens; sunny day with clouds.

"AUTUMN WHITE MOUNTAINS" BY RAY MANLEY. This photograph was taken in the White Mountains of Arizona, an area quite rewarding for one to visit during early October when the aspen are dressed in autumn gowns. 5x7 Linhof camera; Ektachrome E3; f.18 at 1/60th sec.; 210mm Symmar lens; bright sun; Weston Meter 400; ASA rating 50.

"QUIET RETREAT IN AUTUMN" BY DARWIN VAN CAMPEN. Photograph was taken a short distance northwest of Baldwin's Crossing in the lower Oak Creek Canyon country along Red Rock Road. Fall color is at its best in this area in late October and early November. 4x5 Linhof camera; Ektachrome; f.22 at 1/25th sec.; late October; bright sidelighting; Weston Meter 250; ASA rating 50.

"DESERT FALLS SABINO CANYON" BY DARWIN VAN CAMPEN. Photograph was taken in Sabino Canyon near Tucson. This location is reached by a short walk from the falls parking area. Sabino Canyon, in the foothills of the Santa Catalina Mountains in Coronado National Forest, is a popular year-round picnic area for Tucson residents. 4x5 Linhof camera; Ektachrome; f.25 at 1/25th sec.; 90mm Angulon lens; November; late afternoon, bright sun; Weston Meter 250; ASA rating 64.

"STROLLING THROUGH AN AUTUMN LANE" BY JAMES TALLON. Photograph taken approximately twenty miles northwest of Flagstaff on Ft. Valley Road near Kendrick Park. The photographer explains: "This is a side road that cuts across the western slopes of the San Francisco Peaks. It has always been one of my favorite 'detours.' Autumn color brings out the best of this region." Hasselblad 1000F camera; Ektachrome; f.8 at 1/100th sec.; Zeiss Tessar-Pola Screen lens; cloudy day; ASA rating 32.

"COCONINO AUTUMN" BY M. PAUL JARRETT. This scene is about fifteen miles east of McNary in the White Mountains. Photograph was taken from near the road to Eagar. Deardorff camera; Ektachrome E3; f.11 at 1/50th sec.; 5" Dagor lens; October; clear day; Lunasix 18 meter reading; ASA rating 64.

"INDIAN SUMMER" BY J. H. BURNETT. Photo taken along the Black River about a mile and a half upstream from the lower Black River crossing bridge on the San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation. This area is off the beaten path and reached only by dirt roads. Black River is one of the largest of the headwaters of the Salt River. It is a beautiful stream any time but especially in autumn. Sycamore and ash give color to this picture. 4x5 Linhof camera; Ektachrome; f.16 at 1/50th sec.; 150mm Symmar lens; late October; clear and bright day with very few clouds; ASA rating 64.

CENTER PANEL

"AUTUMN ALONG OAK CREEK" BY DARWIN VAN CAMPEN. Photograph was taken along Red Rock Road in lower Oak Creek Canyon between Arizona 179 and Alternate U.S. 89, several miles west of where it crosses Oak Creek at Baldwin's Crossing (also known as Red Rock Crossing). 4x5 Linhof camera; Ektachrome; f.27 at 1/25th sec.; 127mm Ektar lens; late October; bright afternoon sunlight; Weston Meter 300; ASA rating 64.

"NATURE'S PALETTE" BY J. H. BURNETT. Photo was taken along a dry wash near the lower Black River Crossing on the San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation. The red and yellow leaves are of the Bigtooth Maple. 4x5 Linhof camera; Ektachrome; f.32 at 1/2 sec.; 150mm Symmar lens; late October; sky overcast; ASA rating 64.

"THE GOLDEN SEASON ARRIVES IN THE HIGH COUNTRY" BY WAYNE DAVIS. Photograph was taken in the Fort Apache Indian Reservation, on the McNarySpringerville Highway in the White Mountains of Eastern Arizona. 4x5 Linhof camera; Ektachrome; f.16 at 1/25th sec.; 150mm Schneider Symmar lens; late October; late afternoon side light; ASA rating 64.

"FALL ON THE KAIBAB PLATEAU" BY CHUCK ABBOTT. Photo was taken in the Kaibab National Forest between the North Rim of Grand Canyon and Jacob Lake. 5x7 Deardorff View camera; Ektachrome; f.29 at 1/25th sec.; Commercial Ektar lens; early October; bright sun; 400 Weston Meter; ASA rating 40.

"FAREWELL TO SUMMER" BY JOHN WILLIAMS. Photograph was taken in the Arizona Snow Bowl, situated fifteen miles north of Flagstaff in the San Francisco Mountains. 4x5 Linhof Technika camera; Ektachrome; f.22 at 1/25th sec.; Schneider f5:6/150 lens; October; bright sunlight; Meter reading 300; ASA rating 50.

"THE DESERT IN FALL DRESS" BY DARWIN VAN CAMPEN. Photo taken south of Sunflower, Arizona, along Arizona 87 near where it crosses Rock Creek. This fine, hardsurfaced highway makes Payson and the high Mogollon Rim of easy access to residents of the Salt River Valley. 4x5 Linhof camera; Ektachrome; f.32 at 1/25th sec.; 150mm Symmar lens; November; bright sunlight; Weston Meter 400; ASA rating 64.

"DESERT WASH NEAR SUNFLOWER" Photo was taken several miles off Arizona 87 along the first side road turning to the east, north of Sunflower, Arizona. 4x5 Linhof camera; Ektachrome; f.24 at 1/25th sec.; 127mm Ektar lens; November; bright sunlight; Weston Meter 300; ASA rating 50.

"GOLDEN PAINT BRUSHES ON THE NORTH RIM" BY DAVID MUENCH. Photograph was taken along Point Imperial-Cape Royal Road where the upper reaches of Bright Angel Creek cross on the North Rim of Grand Canyon. A few hundred yards further east of this scene is the junction of the two viewpoint roads. Exposure was made after calculating, the day before, when the late sunlight would skim across the brilliant aspen tops leaving the evergreens of the forest dark, making the contrast possible. Linhof III camera; Ektachrome E3; f.18 at 1/10th sec.; Zeiss Tessar 210 lens; October; late afternoon back light; ASA rating 64.

"LAZY AUTUMN DAY" BY J. FRED AND FRAN DODSON. This pleasant scene depicts a drowsy fall day in Peeples Valley north of Yarnell on U.S. 89 in Yavapai County. 4x5 Busch Press camera; Ektachrome; f.22 at 1/25th sec.; 135mm Raptar lens; early November; full sun; ASA rating 50.

"APPROACHING STORM" BY T. E. VICKERS. Scene is looking east, about one-half mile down the road from the old Ski Lodge, near the Snow Bowl, San Francisco Peaks. The dark threatening sky emphasizes the brilliance of the golden aspen. Minolta SR-2 camera; Ektachrome; f.11 at 1/60th sec.; Auto Rokker 55mm lens; mid-October; Weston Meter 150; ASA rating 64.

Cattle, lapped at the forest's edge, where the summer green was dulling. Higher, to lift and pour over foothills and descend in billows, was the potpourri of tones we had come far to see. Yellow, orange, and even red hints in the populous aspens hid their white trunks. Oaks added another red, verging on rose or tilting toward russet and frank browns. The maples: sugar, vine, and scrub, were mixed with scarlet sumac and almost purple wild rose. Yet not bush or tree claimed individuality, but lent itself as single thread in many; embroidered petit point on the warp and woof of hunter's green.

Since aspens troupe through any western wood, at their own chosen altitudes, our wandering feet may come upon them in intimate groves as well as the lingering views from roadsides. These trees take over where longforgotten burns laid waste the slower-growing evergreens. Not above acting as "clean-up committee," Populous tremuloides, which in northeastern woods pale beside their blood brothers, the birches, here reach conspicuous girth and height. Allowed a short life, (half a century, at best,) but a merry one, they prepare the ground for a new company of conifers. The gay show of sunny foliage in fall, climaxing months of fabricating green from yellow light and blue skies, is all but over when Autumn winds come to collect their due. Depending on mood, the aspens may pay off, coin by single coin, loosed from a branch's grasp, or in sudden abandon, toss down a gambler's pile, upon the forest table. Then denuded branches take on the pale gray of drifting smoke, and the ground shows gold-plating, soon tarnishing to dross. If these be indeed, "the melancholy days... saddest of the year," the "wailing winds" might protest that, in spring and summer, when they blew, the same leaves flirted and coquetted on their flattened stems, showing off pale "underslips." Why now do they refuse to frolic, dropping instead of rebounding from a jovial busk? Well, if fall they must, the wind will harry them from white pillar to bare post; shake the stripped boles in a fury of disappointment at being defrauded of its rightful fun.

In plateau and canyon country, where surprises, any season, are the general rule, we go out of our way, as summer wanes, to find the chamisa, called rabbitbrush for its most devoted admirer. Perhaps to accommodate "Jack" and "Cottontail," the chamisa varies its size from neat, round almost balls of yellow, to man-sized clumps which may usurp a whole landscape. At its most photogenic, bushes of it outline the turnings of a dry wash as neatly as though set out by a careful gardener. I have seen it following an ephemeral watercourse as long as the pebbled bed could be tracked over the tablelands. If the annual blossoms had not long since "mailed" their seed packets by wind or winged carriers, but were still there to lend support to the illusion, the rabbitbrush might, from afar, be taken for poppies and it be spring in cool October.

AUTUMN REQUIEM

Aspen's gold, birch's bronze Brim the azure streamBright tears shed for summer fled And a spent dream. Faster with each gust, leaves fall To bury the mirrored sky Beneath this bronze and aureate pall Where ghosts of summer lie Sleeping, sleeping, root and stem, To the stream's hushed requiem. -Ethel Jacobson "A BLAZING AUTUMN DAY" BY BOB BRADSHAW. A scene such as this is a reward for the motorist who goes exploring the back roads in the high country near Flagstaff during October, the golden month. Crown Graphic camera; Ektachrome; f.16 at 1/50th sec.; Ektar lens; late October.

The desert is no stranger to autumn, either. If you have assumed that the ample lowlands, where the Gila and Salt River Valleys rival the ancient Nile in climate and fertility, is neglected or left undecorated, the cottonwood tree will be the first to disabuse you. True, the sun has side-slipped from its high summer trail across the sky, trimming another slice from daylight hours, each day, but you still choose a rock in its full glare as a bench at your peril. As soon as you top a rise, giving a preview of desert basin beyond, if there be a live stream, poking a way through rocky boulder and sand, an accompanying line of cottonwood trees waves invitation to shelter. Some spur of road, if not main thoroughfare, will head for it, as surely as to man-made hostel with letter sign, swinging gently in the breeze. If the year be near its end, (the exact date calculated by as intricate a method as IBM contrives: no doubt counting in the heart-beat of collared lizard and the smile on the face of the Lady in the Moon,) the cottonwoods will tell you in one glance that Autumn is here. Seen with light flowing from behind and through the ample spread of branch and leaf, they can be as dazzling as any tree which grows. Their shade is welcome to man and any other animal lacking an underground retreat for daily siesta. The big Fremont or white cottonwood towers above almost every other desert plant and scorns the subtle devices of cactus, leafless shrub or escapist-annual, for either conserving water or denying itself what you might regard as “the pleasures of the table.” Its leaves are many and generous, for the parent, sprawling great trunks and limbs like an amiable giant, is a good provider. If goes unerringly to an adequate supply, not of necessity above ground all year, but still present, waiting to be tapped, below. In the umbrella shade, a stream may be running quietly about its business, humming softly as it ferries the leaves which come sailing down like paper kites. They whirl at the touch of fellow voyageurs and gather in groups behind the slightest of twig dams before setting off again, toy flotillas bent on seeing the world beyond. If you linger in these cool “patios” the hush envelopes you, and the reflected light comes where it can in shafts, as though streaming through stained glass into the nave of some great church.

Willows frequent these stream as well, a different species for a different elevation, but all yellowed in fall. Some of the slim wands will know happy reincarnation in tightly woven Papago Indian baskets, holding water without caulking, as the stems swell to make an impervious surface.

The tamarisk, familiar in the Southwest as a tall, feathery windbreak under irrigation, may never grow bigger than a shrub on its own, but big or small, has a bright shade, almost orange in Autumn. Seedlings, windscattered or stream-borne, may make a brave start in the still-damp sand of a wash and by fall be jaunty sprigs, bending and waving to any flick of breeze. Taken together, a whole nursery not destined to outlive a full, dry sum-mer, give the wash the look of having stolen some of the sun's own gleam.

The sharp cold of night, clamping down, once the sun's back is turned, holds the brush which paints color in the leaves, out in the desert, as elsewhere. There is, though, more to the story. Chemistry holds the main key with variables of soil content, precipitation rate, and a jolly company of contributing factors to make quality, quantity as well as timing, as unpredictable with preci-sion, as the coming of spring flowers. Rather depressingly, we face the fact that those pretty daubs of leaves are just skeletons, ghosts of their summer selves when they grew on the tree; its cells dead, cut off from the chlorophyl supply which bestowed their greenness, now showing other colors which were present but covered, as old masterpieces have been discovered under layers of later paint. All up and down Arizona, desert, plateau, and mountain country, there are unsung plants, each saying plainly: "Autumn was here;" Kilroys of the plant world.

Now another crossroads loom ahead. Those of our companions who were reading from distant armchairs, must be left behind. Perhaps next year, or some tomorrow, will shrink the world enough to bring them here in person. Since Time is of the essence in our century, even those of us who like to walk, fearing that, after a few more generations of disuse, human legs may become as insignificant as the vermiform appendix, must compromise. The tourists equation now stands: Limited Time + Many Miles = A Car.

Walt Whitman would still be with us, for he urged us to move with the times, and would agree, no doubt, that not a great share of Arizona's Autumn can be covered afoot. So we will go acar. Most pleasantly too, for the state's ever-evolving highway system was built with that in mind: that the way might be pleasant and not merely safe; the views the finest, and always some place, not too far, to stop for the night. Look to your road map for every possible answer, with numbers to key into your particular problem. The choice is yours since you are many, coming not by any one, but diverse gateways into the state, asking: "Where does Autumn 'grow'?"

It springs into vision first, of course, up high, where the tempo of the seasons is brisk. Leaves color in early October, and the aspens, of which we think again and again since they are first to carry the banner, as leaders of the parade, most conspicuous and most widespread. Wherever plateau or lofty slope reaches above 7,000 feet, they are apt to show. The Kaibab Plateau, swooping back up from the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, (Arizona 67 is your key), is one of the great exponents of rampant color, in a hurry to make its seasonal state-ment before winter can bring up a white-lipped rebuttal. Not much farther south, U. S. 89 carries on to Flagstaff, where it looks toward yellow and green "posters" plastered on the slopes. Trim forest roads push in for a closer look.

Indian summer-that gay, restless sprinter, Goes running ahead of staid, proper winter. His stay is so brief, so transitory, He gathers huge armfuls of autumn's glorySeeking to hoard her dancing gold Before it is lost beneath winter's cold.

He lingers beside a brook-leaf-strewn, To quaff sweet nectar distilled from June. Great swirls of beauty drift with the wind Like Gypsy children-undisciplined. A gilded pageant-swift to enthrall! Summer taking a curtain call.

At eastern gateways, on the New Mexico border (via U. S. 60, 260, and 70), travelers are admitted to the state's biggest and most important range, the White Mountains. Here Autumn has room to lay out every shifting combination of meadow and forested background, admire her own festive beauty reflected in cupped blue lakes or set out unexpected arrangements, caught up in orgies of yellows and reds, along hundreds of miles of mountain streams. There are fields ready for harvest or already cleared, near little towns reveling in the time of the Harvest Moon. Picnic spots, and hunters' paradises lie away from through-roads and alongside. You may be delayed as a wild turkey flock bustles across in front of the car, to raise a clatter of falling leaves and lifting wings, as they take off, faster than camera can catch save in a blur. Deer are moving cautiously down from summer resorts, their "radar" ears combing the woods for danger. You must hunt up for yourself the hidden retreats where maple trees show off the traditional family brilliance. sentinels are quartered on steep banks along a purling stream.

Still lower on the map (from U. S. 80), the Chiricahua Mountains are visible, guardians not only of rock fantasies, but the promise of color etched below peaks which can almost claim 10,000 feet of elevation.

The Santa Catalina Mountains, above Tucson's ancient valley, wear Autumn's badge in colors which will "run," somewhat later, down into the desert, using such charmed routes as Sabino Canyon, where saguaro cactus Snow may have shut the door to the North Rim on the Kaibab before the desert cottonwoods will admit that fall is come, but escalator-canyons provide smooth descent from one seasonal "floor" to another. Oak Creek Canyon, for one, though it confuses the issue by wearing variegated autumnal tints on its walls and buttes, all year-long. When you come, it may be switchbacking down from winter on the rim, through Autumn-tinted forest glades, to slip into summer warmth below. Since it numbers among its forest residents such "color-makers" as oak, aspen, sycamore, maple, with cedar and pines for green ballast, mark it (on U. S. 89 Alternate) with four stars, or as many more as you can spare, for an Autumn "must." The creek takes stairs down, as lively as the competition between plants and rocks, in creating vivid effect, and then warmed by its race, slows to a walk under the serene cottonwoods in the Desert valley.

I dare say it would take you all of the autumn season to really "do" just the highlands, along Arizona's many roads, and deep into November or even into December to get the answer to the poet's question: "Where do the colors of Fall go?" They flow from mountain to plateau, down canyon or over the paint-splashed cliffs, to eddy in pools and trail long streamers out into the desert. By the time it is over, the night's crispness, mild reminder of the mountain-winter's bite, gives way to warm days already reaching ahead to spring.

I can think of no pleasanter time to be anywhere than the tag-end months of the year, in the desert. In the Patagonia Country, hard by the Mexican border (where Arizona 82 rambles leisurely from Tombstone, west to Nogales), the aftermath of early Spanish Days seems to hover in the golden light. North (on U. S. 89 to Tucson), as well as west of the highway among the Ruby Mountains, Time loses its sting. All of this southwest corner (through which U. S. 80 rushes to Yuma, and U. S. 60-70 from Phoenix to Blythe), lies in the Cottonwood Kingdom. Lakes, lazing behind the stiff-harness of dams on the Colorado River, put out tamarisk and willow spotlights, with fishing, if you need an excuse to loiter.

We would be delinquent not to mention the sprawling acres of the Navajo Reservation, kitty-corner on the state map, where "Indian Summer" takes on a double meaning. You may not have yet heard that blacktop makes a flying wedge, pointing east from U. S. 89 near Cameron, and opening the whole reservation to travel in comfort. Arizona 64 points roughly north and then east, along the Navajo Trail. At Kayenta one prong of a two-tined fork strikes toward the Utah border at Monument Valley. (In Autumn I always think of one veteran cottonwood tree lording it over Tsegi-ah-tosie Canyon, deep in the Valley fastness. You can look up, dazzled by the purest gold ofleaves set against dark veins of heavy branch, caught between sky and old-rose walls.) The route to Kayenta and beyond to the Four Corners, fairly drips canyons and washes, their cottonwoods showing. Tamarisk and willow flood tributaries coming down to meet road and eye. The other side of the wedge (Arizona 264) diverging at Moenkopi, through Hopiland, Keams and Steamboat Canyons to Window Rock, will break the back of any hard-and-fast schedule, if the camera gets into play. Canyon de Chelly, lies east and betwixt and between the two routes, on its own northbound paved road (from Ganado on Arizona 264). It has held fall festivals of color even before the Navajos claimed it for their special sanctuary, several centuries ago. Not only do the massive walls of its several-fingered gorges hold in fee the homes of an ancient people, and tamarisk, willow and cottonwood crochet patterns at their base, but there is no finer time to explore its archaeological and geological wonders than now, when the sandy floor is a firm highway and the rim drive an air-conditioned balcony for overviews.

Afoot or a car, or just fingering pages on which the colors glow, there is no doubt that Arizona this fall, will be out-doing the poet. Part of this glory, if we but enter into it (and if not, why do we look or listen or travel there?), we can be of the company of the tinted leaves and declare: "I celebrate myself, and sing myself."

THE LEAVES THAT PLAYED ALL SUMMER

The leaves that played all summer long -

That tossed with wind in argument, and dimpled with the rain - Descend as light as dust to earth a muted counterpane.

Lillian Rudolph

Dee Flagg...

Nothing startling about finding an artist in "The West's Most Western Town." Take aim and mark your man. Painter, silversmith, lapidary, weaver, potter, etc., etc., etc. Yet, somewhere along the etcetera trail, the hip-shooting ricochets against a craft that has been diminishing since the beginning of the 19th Century. Wood sculpture. In the Scottsdale studio of Dee Flagg, a one-man renaissance is stemming the decline. Seated at a work bench, surrounded by curled shavings, sketches, books on Western Americana and mercilessly sharp chisels, gouges and spades, this artist in wood creates amazingly detailed and delicate masterworks. Meanwhile, back at the masonry wailing wall can be found all the reasons why a wood-carver is an anachronism. Machinery and production costs have combined to discourage, if not wholly defeat, his skill and chances for a livelihood. More sophisticated killjoys can ponder that individual pieces can never stand alone as art and must be relegated to the status of novelties.

Dee Flagg hasn't heard the arguments, or if he has he isn't letting on. Besides, his reputation in desert country has prospered so steadily that his commissions are loping years ahead. And it will take years, many, for Flagg to achieve his eventual goal, that of bringing the Old West uniquely alive in wood. His interest in carving began casually enough twelve years ago, with little thought beyond the momentary pleasure it afforded. Flagg's first objects were cowboys and Indians, whittled by the folding blade of a pocket knife. They were crude statuettes standing about ten inches high, but possessed of an unmistakable twinkle of humor, a characteristic that emerges in much of his current work. "I thought of these subjects first because my family lived in ranch country, Great Falls, Montana, and I knew cowboys and Indians. Horses, too. I had four horses when I was a kid, and I worked 'em." Flagg's curiosity about the pioneer saga is legitimate and intimate. His father, also an artist, was a pony mailman and his grandfather worked along the Oregon Trail as a teamster during the early days of the West.The first products of Flagg's newly acquired pastime were given as gifts to friends. As shavings rose, his craftsmanship improved noticeably and cash customers appeared, sporadically at first and then regularly.

BY TIM KELLY Artist in Wood

Flagg admits he's a flamboyant personality. To accent his conviction, he favors flashy western garb highlighted by a bushy raven beard and saloon mustache. However, his dandy wearing apparel is easily topped in showmanship by his journey to Hollywood some years back.

"I purchased a stand-by fire truck from the city of Great Falls a 1914 American La France and rigged it up as an open display studio. Along the top of the hood I fastened my ten-inch statuettes. I took along a life-size carving of Chief Sitting Bull in mahogany. He rode alongside me. The rest of the truck was decorated with plaques. That 9,000-pound American La France went four miles to the gallon, and wherever I turned off the ignition I was ready for business. You see, my idea was to have something people wouldn't expect to see on the road." He got his wish.

In one respect at least, Hollywood proved more than a whimsical turning point. Seeking solitude to complete a rush order, Flagg scurried up a tall, wide-spreading tree that branched over his father's studio. ("Well, the tree was handy and I knew no one would disturb me there.") The foliaged lee gave him the desired privacy and enabled him to ignore a caller below who paused to chat with the elder Flagg. It wasn't as easy for the stranger to pass off the whittler! In no time bits of wood, like stiff snowflakes, began to flutter down. By the time the man managed to brush himself clean, Flagg realized the visitor was Gene Autry. The former cowboy film idol is one of Flagg's ardent collectors. When the Adams Hotel in downtown Phoenix was remodeled a few years ago, Autry purchased its ninefoot Dee Flagg carving of a Hawaiian Fire God for display in California.

Although he steps from the western motif when occasion demands, Flagg prefers the world of Cochise, Judge Roy Bean, and Billy the Kid. One of the finest pieces in the Autry collection is a five-foot panel depicting a dust-followed stagecoach cutting across the desert stillness, the Superstition Mountains supplying the backdrop. The sense of motion is perfectly conveyed. To simulate in wood clumps of raising sand is a painstaking ritual, but Flagg manages to represent even more difficult matter. Cloth, fur, hair, scrub, jacket fringe, even leather chaps and feathers on ladies' hats are created with a winning sense of the vivid.

Dee Flagg works mostly by commission, and more times than not such assignments are measured in footage. For example, a restaurant or bank will require, say, seventy-five or one hundred feet of woodcarving, usually paneling, in the spirit of a frieze. The subject matter is discussed in general terms and the wood sculptor begins to plot his creation, a process combining concentrated research and preparation. Only when this is done, only when he is confident he has the "feel" of his subject, are preliminary sketches made.

Flagg's major work to date is generally considered to be Jesse James' Last Train Robbery (see preceding pages), a wood sculpture commissioned by C. L. Leggitt, a wellknown St. Joseph, Missouri, businessman and student of western folklore.