Notes for Photographers

Notes for Photographers "The Colors of November"

OUR PHOTOGRAPHER TAKES US ON A CAMERA TOUR OF HER "SOUTHWEST," WITH COMMENTS AND OBSERVATIONS ON SOME PLACES SHE FOUND OF GREAT INTEREST TO HER AND WHICH, WE HOPE, WILL BE OF INTEREST TO YOU.

OF HERSELF THE PHOTOGRAPHER WRITES:

"After seven years in show business, I chose photography for a career because it seemed to promise freedom with creativity. I chose the Southwest because of Horace Greeley's historic advice! "I found that owning one's business has its price: one is never 'free.' I found that freedom of the free lance photographer has its price: one is never 'secure.' I found the Southwest has its price: a never-ending search to more accurately translate its majesty into human terms. I'm still pursuing the tumbleweed in the wind the last puff of dust down the road. I've never yet reached the goal but I've enjoyed the journey all the way to here. "In my first year in business, when I was wondering where my next customer was coming from, Raymond Carlson, then newly-appointed editor of ARIZONA HIGHWAYS, rang the front door bell and came into my studio wanting to buy photographs of scenic Arizona for his magazine, which he did. Oddly enough, I met my husband, Chuck Abbott, the same way. The moral to this is: be sure to answer the doorbell you never know what editor, or what husband, may be on the doorstep! "I feel pride and honor in being part of this anniversary issue with Ye Olde Ed, but more than that, an intangible bond of love for this Arizona heritage has hitched both of us, together with many others, to the star-wagon, bound to forever glorify this glorious land."

OF HER PHOTO EQUIPMENT:

"My photographic equipment," the photographer says, "consists of the following: a 5x7 Deardorff View Camera mounted on a Davis and Sanford floating action tripod. I use Eastman Ektachrome film exclusively, no filters, a Weston exposure meter and five lenses of these focal lengths: 4, 6, 8, 12 and 19 inches, respectively. The Deardorff camera closes tightly enough to accommodate a 4-inch lens and opens far enough, without attaching an auxiliary board, to handle a 19-inch lens. Anyone who has struggled in haste with an auxiliary board will appreciate the easy collapse and expand of the Deardorff. The Davis and Sanford tripod is light and has all tilts available almost instantly in a broad, sturdy head. Total equipment, plus a complement of plateholders in case, weighs about 40 pounds. I'm good for about a half-mile hike on the level; farther than that, I need help!"

OPPOSITE PAGE

"THE COLORS OF NOVEMBER" Oak Creek Canyon, Arizona. In most places November brings fading and sombre colors, but not in the Sedona area. Here the buoyant landscape shines warm and glowing through all seasons. We found this situation the very day after being driven out of the Lukachukai Mountains in the northern part of Navajoland by snow. Such are the surprises of Arizona's "elevational" seasons.

"SPRING BOUNTY" Photo taken near Parker, Arizona. Years ago on the brown Illinois prairies, we sensed the approach of spring on some March day when a warm and gentle wind, scented with fragrant moisture, arrived to give us hope of winter's end. The next day it would snow! These Southwest deserts are swift but not subtle. After a wet winter, they explode into lush and perfumed bloom, then disappear into the hot hands of summer.

"DELICATE SHADOWS IN A HARSH LAND" Photo taken in Death Valley, California. In 1849, a party of gold-seekers, their story documented in William Lewis Manley's diary (he was one of the scouts), met disaster and death in this Death Valley region of forbidding mountains and violent winds. To us, in this century, their hardships are almost unbelievable. To me, this is a sample of the wonder of the valley: the grim and desolate mountains, the sweet shadows of flowering spring which those who perished here never saw and those who survived never knew, because by then they had been able to move on.

"THE ROAD TO NOWHERE" California Desert. The Southwest deserts are often cross-hatched with wheel tracks that appear between one hillock of blossoms and the next. One follows these desert threads in the expectation of arriving "somewhere," only to find they have disappeared into ever more distant flower fields.

"THUNDERING RETREAT" Arizona's Painted Desert. Desert storms deposit their local fury, then whirl away to other thirsty places. Sometimes they first stir the dust with a mad vengeance, then give us a six-inch desert rain: six inches between each drop! Sometimes they are full of sound and fury, signifying nothing, and we are left with a house to clean and only the smell of a shower.

"DESERT LAKE" Photo taken in Santa Cruz Valley, Arizona. Where have all the rivers gone? In the desert valleys they pursue their courses beneath the sands in order to spring to surface life in such pools (Please turn to page twenty-nine)as this. The ducks enjoy this playful pond, but only man can appreciate its significance.

"Goblin Knobs" - South of Green River, Utah "ROAD-RUT REFLECTIONS"

Santa Catalina Mountains, Arizona. Mirrors, like gold, are where you find them. For a few brief hours after a rain, these mundane places capture bits of sky and hug them in their sandy embrace.

"THE CIRCLE"

St. David, Arizona. Artesian springs produce this desert pond with its circling cottonwoods. These trees, combined with their own reflections, suggest the eternal cycle of water, seasons and life.

"GOLDEN PОСКЕТ"

Unaweap Canyon, Colorado. Who can hold a sunbeam? This desert canyon has surrounded its pocket of water with sunbeams caught and held in each leaf. Soon, November's wind will sweep these shining lights into limbo.

"HARD HILLS"

Sabino Canyon, near Tucson. These unrelenting mountain foothills offer rock glare, sharp shadows, clawing brush and steep elevations to the would-be hiker into their secret recesses. Only the little stream's gentle verdant thread slips easily between these resentful walls.

"PALMS OF THE KOFAS"

Kofa Mountains, Arizona. Once there were many palm-lined canyons in the Colorado basin; now, within Arizona borders, there is only one. Here, several thousand feet above the valley floor, these isolated survivors from a more equable environment cling to a thin existence in a slit in the Kofa walls in Yuma County.

"AUTUMN SHADOWS"

Canyon de Chelly, Arizona. Light bounces from wall to wall in the warmth and glare of sunlit sand and foliage. Only the chill of these shadows hint of the winter wind about to whistle down the canyon corridors.

CENTER PANEL "WINTER-SLEEP"

Grand Canyon, South Rim. Mather Point, echoing most of the year to the pounding feet of thousands of visitors, now projects its silent self above this splendid emptiness. When the Canyon is most glorious, there is no eye to see, no mind to perceive, and no heart (but mine) to give thanks for this treasured moment.

Monument Valley, Arizona. The geologist knows how transitory are the "Eternal Hills." Still, for our lifetime, it's reassuring to know that in a changing world, these great monoliths still pierce the sky in remembered design. The sand patterns shift but the rock forms remain.

"IN THE LAND OF THE ANCIENT WOODCHOPPER"

Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona. These perfect petrified reproductions of past living forms stir the imagination as they speak of ancient seas and the incomprehensible span of time and process that replaced each living cell with its stone counterpart. So clean and sharp are the outlines of these measured segments that I have the feeling some primordial giant just knocked off for lunch. fifty million years ago!

"MOUNTAIN COLUMBINE"

Near Ouray, Colorado. I have never seen a cultivated columbine to equal in size these wild plants that grow near timberline in the San Juan Mountains of Southwestern Colorado. This is a two-season land: winter and spring. "Spring" comes in summer and, at this elevation, "summer" never comes! When the flowers fold, you can expect the Rockies to soon unleash their first cold drafts of winter.

"WHEN FALL AND WINTER MEET"

Photo taken near Ouray, Colorado. Only the white cape of winter could subdue what had been a yellow spectacle the day before this first snow. This most spectacular portion of the whole Rocky Mountain chain is relatively unknown as yet. Come! Explore the witchery of this region.

"RAINBOW DISTANCE"

Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah. A land of living turrets "living" because their configurations are forever changing. This turreted expanse shows how time and weather are constantly chewing away at this great plateau. Aeons from now, gentle hills will replace these spiked slopes. How wonderful to witness one stage of this process!

"LONELY ROAD"

Capitol Reef, Southern Utah. This little road, threading its way past towering Capitol Reef, says, "Follow me, you Refugees from smoke, smog and smell! Follow me and I will show you the Land of the Sleeping Rainbow."

"THE WALLS OF ZION"

Zion Canyon National Park, Utah. A squirrel may live a contented life within these depths, protected from human predators and with nature's bounty to satisfy his needs. The little creature, without the capacity for contemplation, lives and dies unstirred by his tremendous surroundings. Only man has the gift of appreciation; only man can insure this legacy for his children through his National Park Service.

"BEYOND THE RIM"

Canyonlands National Park, Southern Utah. This portion of Canyonlands looks, from the air, like the middle toe of a dinosaur's foot. This rim, serrated into three sections, exactly resembles a huge foot that squashed through the limestone rim to form the canyons that are known as Monument Basin. This is the Land of Nowhere; the Land that Time Forgot.

"THE WAYWARD RIVER"

Canyonlands National Park, Southern Utah. How graceful are these swoops and swirls; how delicate the curve of the Colorado. This wonderful river - born of melting mountain snows trickles, drops, flows, leaps, plunges, cuts and winds its story to the sea. This is but one sentence from one chapter from one volume of its pulsating story.

"LONG SHADOWS"

White Sands National Monument, N.M. Oh man of little faith! How is it possible for the lovely "Candles of the Lord" to ride these waves of gypsum; to find the underground water-courses; to proclaim their bounty of blossoms to all the world? On this early June morning, none but the little desert creatures has walked by these magic blooms and left their tiny prints sculpted in the sand ripples of this fleeting moment:

"THE ROAD ACROSS NO MAN'S LAND"

Panamint Valley, California. One hundred years have passed since suffering oxen and dehydrated humans traversed this hostile terrain. As we skim over these forsaken regions, I think of those early travelers who killed ailing oxen in order to eat the flesh and sew the hides into "shoes" for the sore hooves of the remaining teams. Wars of conquest are won through armaments; the conquest of these forlorn and desolate places was made by vision, courage and sweat.

"SUN'S LINGERING RAYS HERALD DAY'S END"

Northern Arizona. "We," the human animal, delight in clear skies and fair weather. But clear skies never produced an interesting sunset, and fair weather never contributed to our snow pack, our runoff, our harvests of spring flowers, summer fruits and fall abundance. Visitors grouse when it rains, but where will all the flowers be unless there come many days of rain? One man's golf game is ruined but another man's soul will be filled with spring beauty. We can't have it both ways.

MY SOUTHWEST - from page 11

Back in 1929, when we negotiated the Apache Trail for the first time, we had a Model A Ford Sedan, which my father thought high enough to ford streams, short enough to turn mountain corners (without backing up) and insulated against the prevailing dust. Speaking of dust, every locality had its special color: black in Iowa, white in Kentucky, red in Northern Arizona and everywhere prevailing. These were the Burma Shave and Kodak-as-you-go days; over the long, slow, miles Burma entertained you and, if you were too dumb to notice a mountain, Kodak pointed it out. However, no advance man for either Burma or Kodak ever hit the Apache Trail; instead, an Indian profile inscribed on a copper plate was directed toward the landmark you were to notice. The only trouble with this idea was that the landscape was so tossed and jumbled that I never knew to which particular knob the profile was looking. No matter! My father's eyes were glued to the road, my mother was too nervous to look, and with my parents' heads obstructing the front view, and our baggage walling up the sides, the only view I got was out the rear window. On that trip I never saw where we were headed, but I always knew where we had been.

In Chicago, the highest elevation we had ever attained was the top floor of Marshall Field's and the west side viaduct over the Great Northern and Burlington railroad tracks. At that time and place, this was living dangerously! To people with this kind of background, the Apache Trail of 1929 was a shattering experience; we were alternately afraid we would meet another car or not meet another car . . . ever. In fact, we neither met nor passed a single vehicle the length of the trail, and when we emerged at Tortilla Flat for a cold buttermilk, my father remarked he was glad he didn't have the buttermilk concession because it would be a long wait for the next durn fool to come over the pike . . . if ever.

In thirty-nine years, however, a lot of travelers have "come over the pike," which has long been paved, with all the former kinks made into curves. Some of the thrill has gone. You don't have to wonder anymore whether you can get up the grades and down again; you don't have to back up to make the turns; you can just drive and look at the scenery that still terrific mass of tumbled, jumbled landscape so carelessly thrust in all directions by the earth's elemental forces. I wondered then, and wonder still, at the great adaptability of the Apaches who, unable to conquer this turbulent land, managed to maintain themselves and travel within its tortuous confines.

All deserts aren't rock and sand. The desert at White Sands, New Mexico, is gypsum: pure, white, undulating waves shimmering like snow through the day and changing from blue at dawn to rose at sunset.

At White Sands we expected no dividend other than the wind patterns on the sand, but we found awaiting us yucca and verbena in full bloom; yucca, called the "Lord's Candle," and aptly so, for who but the Lawgiver of the Universe could set in motion the laws and forces that developed this wondrous plant whose roots, in this lovely but hostile environment, reach down as much as thirty to fifty feet for water.

From the Midwest we were used to one elevation: flat, and four seasons to the year. Even now, I count among the gifts of the Southwest that capability of changing seasons at will by changing elevations: the pleasure of nippy fall in the mountains while the hot days of summer still prevail in the desert valleys. But I didn't like my first encounter with these unseasonable seasons.

between Prescott and Phoenix, so while we knew Prescott was north, there was no reason to suspect it was also up.

Once on top of Yarnell Hill, where we saw the last of the sun and the first of the snow, we knew we had made a mistake. Still, Prescott was less than fifty miles away, and everybody knows that doesn't take long that is not if you travel faster than eight miles per hour. That road had more curves than a politician has promises; we met no one, we passed no one, and it's a mighty spooky feeling to be the only traveler after dark in a snowstorm in the mountains bound for a place you've never been on a road you can scarcely see!

The old St. Michael's Hotel in Prescott seemed to us to represent the highest peak that civilization had yet reached when we hove into the lobby close to ten p.m. The cozy glow of the lamps, the sweet hiss of the steam radiators, the promise of hot water, bath and bed these joys were incredibly rewarding. Never since, has any place, however luxurious, looked so welcome, so delectable, so ineffably heavenly as that hotel looked to us that night!

On our first western trip by auto, we had visited a friend in Phoenix for lunch and saw no reason why, leaving at two in the afternoon, we should not be in Prescott before dark. Even in 1929 you could go one hundred miles in three or four hours, especially between two prominent cities connected by a "main" road. Ha! Once you started up old Yarnell Hill grade, the road quit being "main" and became some wayward burro's reverie. Furthermore, the misguided artist who designed the map we were using forgot to enter any "caterpillars"

It was in Death Valley that I had my first conversation with an Indian. He was John Shoshone, an important elder of his group. We were parked at a service station when he drove up with a wife, numerous children, chickens, dogs and baggage in a vintage Olds. I began the conversation with a friendly "Good morning" and received a grunt in reply. Thinking a complimentary remark might be better, I began again, "My what fine children you have." Grunt. "Are these all your children?" Grunt. "And is this lady your wife?" That was the question that popped the cork. Old John exploded with a snort that almost threw me backwards, "Wife! No! Woman." I'll never know why this question was so offensive, but I decided thereafter to let the Indians interview me.

If you had never seen a picture of, nor heard about, the giant saguaro cacti, what would you think if you suddenly encountered them through the drizzle in the semilight of a winter dawn? We first saw their towering gray shapes under such circumstances on the road between Florence and Gila Bend, and we thought they must be some strange variety of tree, leafless in winter. The word "desert" is a misnomer when applied to the Southern Arizona region surrounding Tucson and Phoenix. More properly, this "desert" is a botanical wonder garden of exotic shapes, sizes, habits, colors and varieties. Few areas in the world yield such plant diversity and nowhere else within the continental United States. As if this were not enough, periodically this area springs into fabulous bloom. Moisture alone is not the total explanation; the moisture must occur in the right quantities and at the right intervals and time. What a miracle it is that these seed casings, dormant for years under the broiling desert, summer sun, yet sheltering the germ of life within, are never lured into bursting until all the conditions are favorable for the sprouting plant to complete its life cycle and form seeds for the next generation, however many years away that may be. Oh smart Man, with your super-smart computers, compute the dates of the future desert, flowerful years, if you can!

My first encounter with the Grand Canyon was less than spectacular. In those days, my parents figured it was excitement enough to get from Illinois to the Canyon, and after you took a look down in . . . what else was there? We arrived at noon, had lunch at El Tovar, looked at the Canyon from the window, then from the railing. Then my parents announced we had seen everything and it was time to leave. This was so long ago that I believe there were no Rim drives, museum, and certainly no visitor center as we have today; still, to take not even one little step down into this enchanting abyss and to do all our looking at noon all this was a desperate disappointment to me. I was yanked away yelping, but found a tiny solace in licking up my salty tears and wondering if they would last all the way to Williams (they didn't). This visit which had been so tantalizingly anticipated was now a very real and bitter frustration and I resolved to return someday. Years ago I lost count of the number of trips we have made to that glorious Spectacle. I've walked down twice, and we've seen it at all seasons, at all times of day, and from all points, both Rims, many times. Every other photographer can probably make that statement! However, I think we might have been the most persistent. One summer we entered every lookout point, parked, and taking opposite directions, walked several miles along the Rim looking for interesting trees and viewpoints. We drew our own map and marked it exactly, because finding a strategic location took only shoe leather, but returning to it with certainty required a map.

Of all seasons at the Grand Canyon, winter is my favorite. This is the time when I plod on snowshoes along the Rim through the windless, white world of floating flakes that draws a hazy curtain over the great, dark depths below. When it clears, we will have to forget our own pleasures and in a lather of effort, attempt to be all places at once to capture the fleeting magic of new sun on new snow. Being lazy, I most enjoy the silent, sunless cosmos of falling snow when I can have the feeling that this whole, white world belongs to me alone.

With Kayenta as the hub of a geographic wheel, the radius would encompass an immense diversity of people, architecture, color, climate and scene. Within the southern radius would be the Hopi mesa villages and the ancient cliff dwellings of vanished civilizations all this set into a red-rock landscape alternately carved into sky-piercing monoliths, sheer-walled canyons and wind-patterned sand.

Even a generation ago, this northeastern quarter of the state was relatively unknown to many Arizonans. Roads that were mapped as double-dotted lines with the box legend: “Carry water and make local inquiry” were not conducive to ordinary family travel, and I had one sweet argument talking my father into our first trip to Canyon de Chelly and Monument Valley in that long-ago time. The Gouldings were in Monument Valley, the Warner Brothers were in Hollywood, the traveling public was far beyond the Navajo tribal boundaries, and nobody (except Harry Goulding) dreamed it would change.

Those were the years when we carried our own water, food and bedding; when it rained we pulled off the road, camped where we were, and waited for the water to run off and the roads to dry. Those were the years when our children had the most delightful experiences of their childhood: meeting and playing with Indian children who, supposedly shy, were immediately at home with our two boys. It was obvious that in the Mud Pie Culture, the nations were truly united, and the hoots, shouts, galloping feet and waving arms formed instant and mutual communication that only a stupid adult could fail to understand.

The boxed warnings and dotted roads are still on the map in the southern radius of our wheel, but two paved roads now bisect this famous and colorful area, and you don't have to leave the pavement to see many wonderful sights (although it's more rewarding if you do).

Contrast this to the northern half where the most extensive cliff communities of all at Mesa Verde begin the change from high desert to low alpine; a change that brings the architecture and history of the gold rush period.

Durango, Silverton, Ouray and Telluride, in Colorado! Horace Greeley said to go West to seek your fortune; I'm suggesting north from Durango as the treasure-house of gold rush memorabilia. In these towns much remains as it was in those eventful years. To visit these old towns is like stepping back into the yesterdays of our childhood remembrances. The high-ceilinged rooms, the flamboyant wallpapers and chandeliers, the grass-grown sidewalks, the gingerboard facades. Hurry to see them before they have either fallen down through neglect or have been torn down to make way for the same kind of utilitarian modern you are vacationing to forget.

Scenically, this forested, flowered and stream-laced alpine country is beyond compare. Roads are open in winter and yield incomparable arctic vistas, but summer and fall are the accessible times to explore this tremendous, splendid country.

As the years passed, my Southwest extended its borders beyond Arizona, within whose boundaries my camera and I traveled more miles than I could count or remember. I came to know New Mexico, southwestern Colorado, the fantastic wonderland of scenery and color we know as southern Utah, Nevada, and the California desert each distinct in its own fashion, each possessed of certain intangibles common to each other. I long ago learned that sunlight, blue skies, strange, colorful and eroded scenery, emptiness and distance, deceptive horizons, remnants of civilizations long perished all scoff at man-made state boundaries.

I came to the Southwest as a greenhorn photographer newly embarking on a studio career. It didn't take long to find that I had already made the first mistake; choosing a business that would keep me in a darkroom after I had come to a land of sunlight. To make the best of it, I spent weekdays in the studio and weekends probing my new surroundings, which became at once my my delight and despair. It seemed that I always needed one more piece of equipment to properly do the job and then found several correlative facts that all photographers Discover: you never have enough, it is never quite right, it usually doesn't fit the previous purchase and, although you paid dearly for it, it has no value when you try to dispose of it. To this day, I know of nothing so high to buy or so low to sell as photo equipment!

After trial and error I finally reached a balance of five lenses of various focal lengths, only to discover that the next lack was not the viewpoint inherent with the focal length of the lens but the viewpoint within me. I shifted from thinking how shall I take this picture to thinking, what does this subject say to me? When I became less the do-er and more the recipient, I began to hear the Voice of the Land.

leaves you coated with salt; Arizona's Little Colorado River leaves you coated with mud. Arizona's streams: the Blue, the Black, the White, Oak Creek, Clear Creek, Diamond Creek and others leave you coated with sparkling bubbles of purest mountain water.

And, what is this place we call the Southwest? It contains the greatest book of geological history that the forces of nature have ever revealed to us; it contains all climatic zones from semitropic to subalpine. Its elevations reach from 400 feet below sea level to almost 15,000 feet above. It contains a large variety of living animals and the fossil remains of forms that range in size and development from a trilobite to a dinosaur.

Its minerals have given men wealth beyond their fondest fantasies; its fertile soils have yielded the continuing riches of agriculture. Its rangelands have made possible the cattle and sheep industries; its mountain snows have watered its produc tive valleys. Its benign climate has lured more people to its sunny embrace than any other migration in our history.

The Southwest deserts can be sheets of salt, alkali, sage, greasewood or flowers. Which will you have? They are all to be found here. Are the alkali wastes less lovely than the flower carpets? I don't think so. Each has a story to tell. The Southwest's mountains can be heavily forested or rock bare; lush in summer with knee-high flower fields and totally inaccessible under winter snows.Southwest grasslands are dotted with sheep, cattle and, in a few areas, buffalo; Southwest streams can be violent or gentle and they come in all colors: blue, green, white, red, brown, and two densities: thin and thick! Utah's Salt Lake

"Winter Morning"

The lakes of the Southwest range from that shining sheet of water that is Lake Mead to the bottomless little pool called Salt Lake that lies in the crater of an extinct volcano twenty miles north from Quemado, New Mexico. The water is so saline one can't sink, so why wonder or worry about depth? I don't know. I only know I was the only cork bobbing in this old volcano and it gave me a lonesome feeling to think than nobody knew the depth of the water below.

The trees of the Southwest are another miracle of nature. They grow from solid rock, from sand and from fertile soil. Did you know that in Arizona, the often-thought-of "desert" state, there exists the largest standing Ponderosa pine forests of any state? You can drive all day through the sun-speckled dapplings of these great timberlands which exist now because certain restraints prevented the denuding of the forests as occurred in Michigan and Northern Wisconsin in times past.

For all its challenges, my Southwest has its rewards. There is no land so wide, so empty of people, so full of promise. In these days of crowded everywheres, there is nothing so replenishing as the great expanses where man can see himself in true perspective.

At Hoover Dam he can be truly proud of his harnessing of natural forces; on the slopes of the San Francisco Peaks he can be truly ashamed of his desolation of virgin timber through his careless fires; on Kitt Peak he can reach toward the stars; at Grand Canyon he can commune with Time itself; and everywhere he can perceive what a clod he is when he gazes at his own roadside litter from his car window.

Years ago you needed a short, high car and a shovel, bucket and rope; cans of gas and water and to be fully prepared; food and bedding. That day is longer gone than the last passenger on the Butterfield Stage. Today you can enjoy every degree of lodging and savor every type of meal from gourmet to crossroads diner. All important roads are paved and the really "back" country trails are serviced by experienced guides with jeeps.

You can still get hot, cold, dusty or wet; you can get bounced and jounced until your bones rattle. You can still get stuck in sand, mud, water or snow; and you can still get lost at either desert or mountain crossroads where several tracks veer off in separate directions with no sign pointing the way to your destination. You can still do all these things... but you don't have to.

This whole country has now become accessible to all, and while we talk about our past experiences with the fondness that comes from good things well remembered we enjoy knowing that this heritage is now available to everyone.

Who can count the stars in the night sky as they sift through space, never to land but to glow for just one fleeting moment? Who can follow the white fluff of the salt bush, born on the desert wind as it eddies through the dry wash and circles the round of the wheeling vulture? Who can scan the seasons from one golden aspen "penny" as it hangs shivering in the oncoming winter wind, to the aspen catkin as it wiggles aloft in the May breeze surveying the last spring snow patches?

Who can measure the flight of the sundown swallow or the morning journey of the little desert creatures who sculpt their tiny imprints in graceful loops before dawn on the sand dunes? Who indeed? Time is not long enough to encompass all the wonders of this Southwest territory. By poking a camera into part of it, I became aware of its questions, but never yet have I been able to supply the answers.

Notwithstanding many changes, there is still the blue distance that stirs the imagination; the horizon with its landmarks always beckoning; the native populations that give it life and color; the western winds eternally creating new forms, and over all the clear, grand, limitless, western sky. What effrontery leads me to suppose that I can even begin to capture these values on a sheet of film?

I can suggest, and that is all.

BANDAR LOG from page 7

An exhibition of tiny drawings by artist friends of Frank Holme was held in Chicago on October 12, 1903. These treasures were then forwarded to the ranche near Phoenix, Arizona, where Frank Holme fought the losing battle to regain health. Accompanying the drawings were the following verses by Jas. O'Shaughnessy, Jr.: These tiny pictures Evidencing art And such admixtures As admit a part Of artful toil As known to us who daily moil And fret and fuss To make the first Edition or to Get the worst And that is true But coming back To where we were In white and black And gay color And several sorts Of other things That fancy courts Or limning brings We've made for you Since you remain Where skies bend blue O'er alkali plain And o'er your shop Where more or less You carve and chop For the B'log Press We're sending this Exhibition such As ever it is In size not much But we're sending it Out there to you Where sage hens flit And droughts are due Where the 'Pache buck And wild galoot Play chuch-a-luck With the tenderfoot With it we send A howdy do That both may wend Their way to you For where you stay Or where you roam We think alway Of you, Frank Holme.

Spaulding, Booth Tarkington, Charles Dana Gibson, John T. McCutcheon, Melville E. Stone, Peter Finley Dunne, and others equally commanding. The Denver Post of July 31, 1904, would later eulogize: "The greatest statesmen, the greatest artists, authors, bankers, and businessmen all realized the merits of Frank Holme before he died; they did not wait to pay tribute to his ability after his death."

Bandar Log's output was limited solely to the number of stockholders. Mark Twain wanted very much to invest, but all the stock was gone. However, LaShelle did manage to find the distinguished novelist, wit, and gentleman a share: "But it will cost you $50 instead of $25." Twain willingly paid and LaShelle hastily got off the money to Holme.

The remarkable young illustrator and printer lived in Phoenix in 1903, Bandar Log's most productive period. In a way, the stock-selling venture worked against him, encourag ing him to work all the harder.

Holme's base of operation was the Schrogl Ranch, some three miles out from what was then Phoenix's downtown area and what would now be somewhere along the Black Canyon Highway. Attempts to pinpoint the exact spot have proven futile, and many have searched for the locale over the years. Actually, the ranch was nothing more than a gathering of tents, and a chicken coop that housed a Washington hand press.

The authors of the poems and stories were from the Holme fraternity. Charley Dryden, Kirke LaShelle, George Ade and, later, Will Robinson. The right kind of ink was difficult to obtain in the territory and Holme found it even more arduous to convince local printers that they should take pains and time over every page of a Bandar Log product.

Consequently Holme and Herman Sheldon, an ex-actor, according to one account "along with a colony of 'lungers' worked day and night publishing the books every one a clever creation."

It was a time when tuberculosis was deemed "The White Plague," and a hefty segment of the Arizona population suffered its curse.

In a tiny, hand-stitched booklet entitled All About the Bandar Log Press, published on October 28, 1903 (947 copies), Holme concluded: "The books, being handmade, are naturally produced slowly and in necessarily limited editions. Every stockholder gets a copy of each book free, and some extra copies are usually printed in order to give to others the opportunity to share in the almost unearthly joy of possessing a book from The Bandar Log Press.

"One word about the location of the press and we leave you to your meditations. Its location depends entirely on the printer. As we go to press with this it is in a Mexican office in Phoenix, Arizona. It's here because a series of burlesque dime novels by George Ade are in process of construction and as this form of literature is not usually issued in deluxe editions a bum job was desired for the sake of preserving the 'harmony' hereinbefore mentioned. This office has a hand press that may have come over with the Spanish Invaders and some cases of type that are indubitably old so here we are."

The Bandar Log monkey was not a rigid signature. He appears not at all in Just for Fun or Handsome Cyril. He's found swinging by his tail, reaching for a skull nestled in a clump of vegetation, in Swanson Able Seaman. In the illusive Where Is Ray Brown? the hairy imp is scratching his head beside three books, while his free hand holds a trailing vine.

The Poker Rubaiyat displays the simian happily perched on a tree branch, intently studying a poker hand.

It became increasingly evident that Holme's health required the dry heat of Arizona. Physicians told him a year or two in Arizona would make him sound.

Finances were low, but Holme's stock of friends was high. LaShelle hit upon the idea of incorporating the Bandar Log, thus insuring Holme an income of about $2000 a year.

Frank Holme, Incorporated, would have 300 shares, of which Holme was to have 150. A limit of one share was allowed to one person. The Bandar Log was to produce four works annually.

Since the name Frank Holme had a kind of magic about it, shares went fast. LaShelle scouted birth announcements and whenever one of his or Frank's friends became a proud papa, a telegram was forthcoming: "I'm drawing on you for $25 for one share in the Bandar Log Press. Put it in the kid's name."

LaShelle carefully selected the investors. He managed to get an impressive list of subscribers: George Ade, Charles F.

FROM THE COLLECTION OF FRANK HOLME MEMORIAL GROUP BULLETINS BY EDWIN B, HILL

The FRANK HOLME MEMORIAL GROUP includes in its membership Cyrus LeRoy Baldridge, child-member of the students in the School of Illustration which Frank Holme organized in Chicago, and in which he conducted classes. In a letter to a friend, Mr. Baldridge, now a successful artist in New York, says in part: 'Frank Holme was the hero of my boyhood days. While my mother continued to attempt the job of supporting the two of us not easy for a woman before 1900 she decided to leave me in one spot for awhile. I took care of myself pretty much, boarding in Chicago with whatever member of the First Presbyterian church wanted to take a boarder. My mother heard of the School of Illustration and they tried me out. I was the only child in the School, and probably caused the old men and women of over eighteen a great deal of amusement. I became the pet of Holme; he took me everywhere with him. The only point to make here is that Frank Holme I considered the King of All Men. And that he showed me how beautiful a line could be, just a pure line. He used to make me run out to fires, and all that, and jot down sketches of action on the street-corner as things happening.' A member of the Group who was a student in the School writes: I am delighted to hear you have found "Little Roy." There is one outstanding thing I remember of him as clearly as though it happened yesterday. There was an exhibition of Whistler etchings at the Art Institute, and F. H. sent us all over to see it. When we got back he required us to write down and hand in our impressions of them. Roy wrote simply: "There was a lot of very small pictures in very large frames."

The "Mexican office" alluded to was El Progresso, a newspaper publishing in Spanish. Often work was divided. For example, Rollo Johnson carries the odd explanation: "Pages 1 to 16 were printed at the office of El Progresso, Phoenix, Arizona, November, 1903. Pages 17 to 24 printed in the Bandar Log Press' own shack January, 1904."

George Ade, a popular fiction writer, had a projected seven-volume satire entitled The Strenuous Lad's Library in the works. Only three of the Ade volumes were actually printed: Handsome Cyril, or the Messenger Boy with the Warm Feet (674 copies 592 on laid paper, 60 on handmade paper, 20 on Japan vellum and 2 on vellum); Clarence Allan, the Hypnotic Boy Journalist; and Rollo Johnson, the Boy Inventor, or the Demon Bicycle and Its Daring Rider. The editions of these latter two ran to 374 copies each.

Holme frequented the offices of the Arizona Republican, staying up until the paper went to press in the early hours of the morning hours injurious to his already poor health. His name became as widely known in Arizona newspaper circles as it had been in other parts of the country, wherever presses rolled. However, letters written to his wife describe a different sort of existence. From one written on February 24, 1903 in front of his tent: "Talk about lazy they have to wake me up for my meals. I used to have a reputation for being more or less energetic but now I have easily won the belt for being the laziest man in camp."

Holme's cadre of friends never lost touch with him. They had too much respect for both the man and his work. When an exhibition of drawings and paintings was given by Chicago artists, each man made a tiny replica and framed it. No less a figure than William Randolph Hearst chartered a Pullman to take the two cases of tiny paintings to the health exile. A presentation was made on the stage of the Dorris-Heyman Opera House. Notices of the unprecedented event appeared in papers all over the country.

"What can I say," wrote Holme to Ida, "Carnegie with all his money could not have had such an exhibit as I."

The Bandar Log was certainly well known, but it took the Poker Rubaiyat to establish its reputation solidly as something more than a provocative, if not a profitable, venture.

Today, few copies of the Poker Rubaiyat remain on the open book market. Some libraries have them, and they are guarded zealously. The stanzas were written by LaShelle, modeled closely after the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam by Edward FitzGerald. In 1861 FitzGerald's pamphlets (there were five versions in all) went for one penny apiece. In 1929 a single copy of the pamphlet sold for $8000.

The purchase price of the Poker Rubaiyat was high for its day $5. After stockholders had received their copies only about 150 were left for the general public. Holme explained that "the only difference between the stockholders' copies and the others is that the others are for sale."

In announcing the publication of this work he wrote:

"No matter who he is, everybody knows something that I should like to know!" Frank Holme

"The printer may venture the opinion that taking into consideration the oriental touch to the verse and the gorgeous printing inks used on the job, the purchaser of this epoch-making work will find himself the possessor of a treasure which, in its almost barbaric splendor combined with reckless chromatic prodigality, will embody the beau ideal of truly oriental magnificence, or words to that effect. The chopping out of the 106 color and key blocks required enough manual labor to satisfy the most ardent admirer of the hand-made product. These blocks will be destroyed as soon as the edition is printed. While not intended as a book to give to the baby to play with, still he, if it is the right kind of baby, will be able to learn his letters from the initials and to become familiar with the fact cards at the same time, thus combining business with pleasure."

The art of Holme in the Rubaiyat is unquestionably inspired by his admiration for Toulouse-Lautrec's craftsmanship. For the sleuth the work is unusually enticing. Punctuation is erratic in the original. Some cuts have the alphabetic figure reversed, whether by intent or error is open to debate. The cover, looking like dark brown wrapping paper, measures 8" x 10" and displays LaShelle's authorship and a central design advertising the title. Beneath this a circle houses at 12 o'clock a diamond, at 3 a club, at 6 a heart, and at 9 a spade. There are 12 full-page cuts of nine colors. Single pages go 71/2" x 91/2" and the card insert that highlights each page of two quatrains is 21/4" x 3/4". The first letter of each verse breaks into the cut of the card. Colored illustrations were cut out on wood blocks "with a jackknife."

The Bandar Log Poker Rubaiyat poetically dramatizes the woes of the poker player and his never-ending dream of winning. It's melancholy, but fittingly imbued with the spirit of chance.

The last book published by Bandar Log was the work of Arizona author Will H. Robinson (The Story of Arizona, Under Turquoise Skies). The work was entitled Her Navajo Lover, and is not as difficult to procure as other Bandar Log editions. The Poker Rubaiyat gathered most of the attention and established Holme as a master of his trade. But time was catching up with him. On July 28, 1904, in the city of Denver, Frank Holme, printer and illustrator, died. He was 36. Newspapers around the country carried articles written by his buddies, extolling his virtues as an artist and a man, quoting his viewpoints liberally: "Personality is the force that dominates events." "When technique ends, drawing begins."

Eva Dean recalled: "Of him personally, there are only flashing visions left. The first one always called up by mention of him is the tall slender figure in black, with his overcoat flying loose.. always striding somewhere, coat fluttering back, brimmed soft hat a little on one side; his companion invariably a bit behind him. Then memory seems to arrive and look at one out of soft, brown, deepening eyes. There was no sparkle in them-just shadows, and thought, and kindness. The dark brown hair never shone, but was always soft and fluffy. That thin underlip had a habit of dropping in stress or concentration of any kind."

In many quarters there was stunned silence. Frank Holme was gone, and with him went an era.

A few years later, collectors and book merchants began to hunt down the Poker Rubaiyat, but the copies were few, some had disappeared-who knew where? With the approach of World War I, interest in Holme began to dim. He might have been forgotten if it were not for the friendship of another newspaper man, Edwin B. Hill. Like Holme, Hill carried on a continuing romance with printing, although illustrations were not in his line. Hill was an authority on Henry David Thoreau and issued works on his own press in limited number. Like Holme, he had contracted tuberculosis.

He might have been forgotten if it were not for the friendship of another newspaper man, Edwin B. Hill. Like Holme, Hill carried on a continuing romance with printing, although illustrations were not in his line. Hill was an authority on Henry David Thoreau and issued works on his own press in limited number. Like Holme, he had contracted tuberculosis.

His admiration for Holme prompted him to form the Frank Holme Memorial Group, on June 4, 1936, in Tucson, Arizona. And from his press came a steady stream of bulletins dealing with all phases of Frank's life and his work. Acquaintances and friends wrote recollections and discussed his contributions to illustration and printing. References to the Poker Rubaiyat dot the bulletins. It was a lively and interesting way to keep the memory of Holme alive. Hill had no name for his press, but his publications, many issued from Ysleta, Texas, nearly all bore the imprint of a cowboy's hat with the crown riding full up.

A quarter of a century ago, ARIZONA HIGHWAYS ran its first article on Frank Holme. The Memorial Group was then in full flower, active, and thriving. But, year by year, the men and women who knew Holme passed on, until on April 6, 1949, with the death of Edwin B. Hill, in Mesa, Arizona, the group ceased to exist.

The Edwin B. Hill collection is found in the Henry E. Huntington Library, San Marino, California. The Holme collection is scattered. The state archives have some of the original material and so has the Arizona Pioneers Historical Society in Tucson. But the finest grouping of Frank Holmiana in the world can be found in the Special Collections section of the University of Arizona Library.

All of the Bandar Log publications with the exception of Where Is Ray Brown? are represented, along with portfolios containing well over 400 original drawings and reproductions of drawings, covering events and personalities of the 1890's. Also included are 120 original sketches made by students from Holme's School of Illustration, as well as original cartoons by Holme's contemporaries. Holme's personal library of 400 volumes, dealing mostly with the fields of illustration, etching and engraving can also be found here.

has been written of Holme's strongest advocate and friend, Edwin B. Hill: "His death has left one more gap in the rapidly thinning ranks of old-time printers and newspapermen who were an ornament to their craft and who gave unstintingly of their best, not with any thought of purely monetary gain, but because they loved and took pride in a good job well done."

This same sentiment applies to Frank L. Holme and in a larger sense to Bandar Log: the first private press to operate in the Territory of Arizona.