God's Country

God's Country by Joan Baéza

The mountain is our mother. She gives us life. When we are hungry, she feeds us. When we are thirsty, she gives us pure water to drink. When we are tired, she gives us mossy rest. She heals us in green silence. When we are away from our mountain, we yearn for her as young robins yearn for their mother. When we die, we go back to our mountain like night rain falling on a lake. The mountain is forever.

Outdoorsmen call Arizona's White Mountains "God's Country." The old uplands must be. He went to so much trouble to make them perfect. God's fourmillion-acre cairn of volcanic and sedimentary rock lies in east-central Arizona and ranges in altitude from 2700 feet to nearly 12,000. There are no boundaries but natural ones to God's Country. To the east and west, the pine belt extends, side-winding into the Mogollon.(muggy-own) Rim and Mogollon Mountains of New Mexico. Southward flow streams and rivers into green valleys between high ridges on the Fort Apache Indian Reservation. The northern skirts of God's Country fold over rounded foothills, where cedar and piñon rupture the malpais. Away to the north stretches the plateau where antelope roam. Property is at a premium now, with most towns situated along the highways, and new developments rapidly closing the gaps between towns. Still much of God'sCountry is the way He made it, thanks to the foresight of conservationists, Congress and government caretakers. Forests of ponderosa pine, preserved by selective cutting, have sated sawmills for a century. In summer, cattle and sheep fatten on mountain meadows. Along the rivers small fields of corn, oats, barley, and rye ripen and ripple in the southwest wind. Tourists land in year-round waves to ski, ride snowmobiles, boat, fish, hunt, camp, backpack, golf, cut firewood, meditate, gawk, or just get away from the big city. They congregate at winterfests, autumnfests, and summerfests. They come for frontier days and pioneer days, barbecues and art shows. They attend fairs and rodeos and horse shows, and evenheaven help them-the World Championship Bathtub Races. The people who live in God's Country call it simply "the mountain." They live and work and grow old by seasons-more than by clocks. They live on the mountain because they want to.

We hear them fighting in the night and know that one of the mares must be in heat. I hold my breath and listen to my heart. I'm afraid the little stallion will be killed. Violence, dark and primeval. We can't see them, but we know they are up in the rocky corner of the pasture where the fence posts are loose. The wild bay is old, a survivor of the traps of men. His tail so long it sweeps the grass. He's big and powerful, an experienced fighter. Our little gray Arab has the courage of his race, and his hooves are sharp. We hear the mares' frenzied flight along the fence. Challenges. Then screams and snorts and pounding.

The moon outlines the trees along the ridge and dusts the meadow. The dogs listen, stiffly. The battle rages on. In the morning, Zair comes in with hismares for breakfast as usual. The family's still together-Sara and the two wild mares our stallion stole the year before. He's nipping at their flanks and herding them around. His chest is wire cut. Hoof marks scar his flesh. He shakes his mane and nickers. All is well.

It is not always easy to make a living on the mountain, but people have been doing it for more than 2000 years. No one knows for certain when or from where the first people came, but their ruins and artifacts are found wherever there was a permanent water supply. Like a subterranean river, their lives and cultures underlie ours. We are richer because the ancient ones lived and expressed themselves in stone, in clay. Their strength comes to us like water from deep wells.

Archeologists call the earliest culture Mogollon. Tree rings date Bluff Ruin near Forestdale at A.D. 300, when people on the mountain lived in round pit houses, made plain brown pottery, and fashioned crude artifacts from bone and stone. They hunted, gathered wild plants, and planted corn, which they ground into meal on Summer on Beaver Creek. Army surveyor George M. Wheeler in 1873 spoke of this little-changed country as the "...most marvelous...perfect landscape, a true virgin solitude undefiled by man...." David Muench photo metates (grinding stones). Anasazi peoples from the north, and perhaps Hohokam tribes from the south, moved into the Forestdale Valley. Traits from other cultures date to A.D. 600-800. By then, the people lived in both round and rectangular pit houses and used a communal kiva for weaving and practicing religion. They learned to make polished red and plain burnished buff pottery. Later, A.D. 9501000, the more sophisticated Mimbres culture from the east joined the Mogollon. These immigrants fashioned elaborate pottery, built multistoried masonry apartments, and organized a complex social system.

By the end of the twelfth century, the Pueblo people vanished. No one knows why they left or where they went. When Francisco Vásquez de Coronado passed through the mountains in 1540 the ancient villages were deserted.

More stars than souls in the universe. Cold night; warm bedroll. Cattle are bed down in the flat below Picnic Hill. We are driving them from the foot of Escudilla Mountain to Harry and Ora Wilhelm's winter range north of St. Johns. We make ten miles a day or more. Threading seeping meadows and pine forests; down ridges choked with juniper, piñon, scrub oak, and manzanita; through the staring streets of Springerville; over the mesa, where grass is knee-high to a horse; crossing the Little Colorado River where freight wagons forded a century ago.

Sleep comes hard and fast. The smell of sourdough biscuits rubs the eyes of morning. Perked coffee, bacon, and scrambled eggs. There's a little water for washing up. Ora and I scrub pots and pans while Harry catches the horses and saddles up. He doesn't have to put up with all these dudes, women, and children, but something in him wants to share the meaning of his life.

"He's done more work for other people than he ever did for himself," said his friend Vince Butler. Harry rides in front, pointing the herd. His helpers ride the flanks and take turns bringing up the drags.

There were no Saturday morning car-toons in Prescott, Arizona Territory. There were no cassettes or arcades. But that didn't mean that life was boring. There was a game for every kind of day, especially the lazy days that were too delicious to waste. Some of the best times were picnics at Thumb Butte, a rocky spire that rose out of the pine trees west of the town. Or someone's birthday party at spooky, beautiful Granite Dells.

One of the favorite games for younger kids was London Bridge. As two children formed a bridge with their arms, the others marched under it and sang: London Bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down. London Bridge is falling down, my fair lady.

Surprisingly, Mexican kids in the old town of Tucson, many miles to the south, had an identical game. Only the words were different. It was about a sea monster, La Víbora. A la víbora, víbora dela mar, dela mar Por aquí pueden pasar Los de adelante corren mucho Los de atrás se quedarán, rán, rán.

Campanita de oro Déjenme pasar Con todos mis hijos Menos él de atrás, trás, trás.

Which means, roughly: Oh monster, monster of the sea They can pass here. Those who run fast get through. Those who hold back remain. Bell of gold Let me pass through With all my children Except the slow ones.

You're It! Games Kids Played on the Frontier by James &. Cook

This article was inspired by original research by Sonoran Heritage, a National Endowment for the Humanities program at the Tucson Public Library. We asked our writer, James E. Cook, to cast our story in language that children can understand. Read the article to your children or grandchildren...or better yet, encourage them to read it!

The child who was caught as the arms fell was asked which side he wanted to be on. In London Bridge, he chose gold or silver; in La Víbora, he chose sandía (watermelon) or melón (cantaloupe). The game ended when all the players stood behind one side of the bridge or the other.

On the frontier, most toys were home-made-a doll made by stuffing a sock with wool, a stick horse, a boat carved of wood. Kids did not miss television, radio, video games, Barbie dolls, shopping malls, or record players; none of those had been invented. Children of all the cultures-Mexican, Indian, Anglo-knew plenty of games by heart. Many games had come across the oceans, then across the United States, or northward through Mexico.

Kids in the barrios (Mexican neighbor-hoods) played a game called La Viudita (the little widow), that probably came from Spain. A girl we'll call Rosa was chosen to be La Viudita. All the others formed a circle around her and began to walk around, singing: Yo soy la viudita de Santa Ysabel Me quiero casar y no hallo con quién.

I am the little widow of Santa Ysabel; I want to marry and I don't know whom.

The circle came to a stop as Rosa turned on her heel, pointing to the players one by one as they continued to sing: Me gusta la leche Me gusta el café Pero más me gustan Los ojos de usted.

I like milk; I like coffee; But most of all I like Your eyes.

Contigo sí, Contigo no; Contigo, mi vida, Me casaré yo.

With you, yesWith you, no; With you, my darling, I will marry.

Navajo kids still play "hide the ball in the shoe," and laugh when they remember how Owl cheated at the game and caused winter nights to be so long....

Illustrations by Linda Avey You're It!

Now Rosa pointed at Miguel, or one of the other boys, whom she would marry. Miguel blushed, and the others giggled and squealed. Now Rosa continued to sing, by herself: Me gusta el cigarro Me gusta el tobacco Pero más me gustan Los ojos del gato.

I like cigarettes; I like tobacco; But most of all I like The eyes of the cat.

And Rosa pointed to Juanita, who would become La Viudita for the next game.

A very similar game was called La Huerfanita, (the little orphan). All the players in the circle sang the first verse: Pobrecita huerfanita Sin su padre, sin su madre La echaremos a la calle A llorar su desventura.

Poor little orphan Without your father, without your mother; We will throw you into the street So you can cry about your fate.

Then La Huerfanita was forced out of the circle while everyone shouted, "Huer-fana, huerfana!" She came back into the circle, knelt in front of the player she had chosen to be the next orphan, and sang: Cuando yo tenía mis padres Me vestían de oro y plata; Ahora que ya no los tengo, Me visten de hojadelata.

When I had my parents They dressed me in gold and silver; Now that I don't have them I am dressed in tin.

Matarile was another barrio game. The kids formed two lines, facing each other, about fifteen feet apart. The first line walked forward four steps, then back, singing a chorus that had no meaning: Agua té, matarile, rile, rile Agua té, matarile, rile, ron.

The second line then moved back and forth, singing: ¿Qué quiere usted? (What do you want?) Matarile, rile, rile. ¿Qué quiere usted? Matarile, rile, ron.

The first line responded with the name of an occupation that it had chosen: farmer, carpenter, cleaning woman.

Quiero un cocinero (I want a cook) Matarile, rile, rile, etc.

The second line answered: Escójalo usted (Choose again), Matarile, rile, rile, etc.

Then the first line said: Escojo a (I choose) lava platos (dishwasher), matarile, etc.

This continued until the players in the first line chose a job title all could agree on. In another version of Matarile, one player stood by himself and faced the line. He was the king or master, and assigned names and jobs until all those in the line had joined him as his servants.

Either version ended with all joining hands in a circle and singing: Celebremos todos juntos (Let's all rejoice together) matarile, rile, rile....

Yaqui Indians from Mexico and Arizona played a game called Hita Kolorim? (What colors?) Leaders chose two teams of players, and goal lines were scratched in the dirt about twenty-five yards apart.

The teams formed two straight lines which stood face to face halfway between the goal lines. One team had a secret: an object it had chosen, such as a melon, a cooking pot, an ear of corn.

The other team asked about its color, its shape, its texture. If that team guessed what the thing was, the members of the other team had to try to run back to their goal line without being captured.

Another Yaqui game was called Totim, (Chickens.) One person was chosen to be a mother hen, and another was the coyote.

The remaining players lined up behind the hen, each holding onto the person in front of him. The hen held her arms out and squawked and clucked like a chicken. The coyote tried to pry the chicks loose, usually trying to catch the one on the end of the line.

But the chicks moved around in a weaving snake of a line, trying to elude the coyote. Sometimes the whole line fell to the ground giggling as the coyote closed in. The game ended when the hen had lost all her chicks.

Navajo kids learned early to play a game called Shoe. It is still played, by children and adults together, at healing ceremonies called "sings."

Two rows of the players' shoes are placed on the ground a few feet apart. Each group stands behind its row of shoes. A ball carved from yucca root, about the size of a marble, is hidden in the toe of one shoe.

While the people laugh and sing, one player from the other side advances on the row of shoes with a stick bent to the shape of a P. He taps the shoe he thinks contains the ball. If he taps the correct shoe, he wins a prize-a coin or a silver button. And he gets to take the ball back for his side to hide. If he fails, another player tries.

There is even a story to go with this game. It is a story told only in winter, never in summer. It seems the animals which always appear in Navajo stories were playing Shoe, but no one could find the wooden ball.

The animals decided that Owl, always a villain in Navajo stories, was hiding the ball in his hand. If the ball was found by the other players, daylight would come. But Owl wanted the night to remain. Finally one of the animals tapped Owl's hand with his stick. As Owl dropped the ball, dawn broke. But winter nights are still longer than summer nights because Owl hid the ball so long.

Of course, there was not always a gang around to play games with. Then, as now, one kid was always asking another, "What shall we do?"

Although frontier kids had few storebought toys, they had one of the most versatile, durable video games ever invented-imagination. Brothers living on a ranch might ride stick horses to gather a herd of tumbleweeds-until a breeze stampeded their animals.

A Navajo boy could gather straight, round sticks like logs to build a model of a hogan, the eight-sided, windowless house he lived in. Boys and girls used sticks to build corrals and stocked themwith horses and cattle made from twigs or clay from the water hole.

Navajo girls made their own dolls of cloth, stuffing the heads with wool from the sheep they tended. Another piece of cloth was frayed to form hair for the doll.

Anglo kids liked to pretend they were doing what their parents did-digging for gold, leading a wagon train, running a store. Girls liked to play house. Sometimes they outlined their imaginary house with low walls of flat rocks and used other rocks for furniture.

The metal hoops which held wooden barrels together became wheels. A stick two or three feet long, with a much shorter stick nailed across the end of it, was used to push the hoop along. The idea was to see who could keep his hoop upright the longest as it rolled over rocks and through weeds.

Papago children also had a toy made of things they found around them. It was called Dia Wolo (ring and pin). A stick about a foot long had a string of yucca fiber or deerskin tied to one end of it. Along this string were placed rings of different sizes, made by slicing rings from a squash. The largest ring was nearest the tip of the stick, and the smallest at the far end of the cord, where a solid plug of squash rind kept it from flying off the

"Let's play Coyote and the Chicken," said the Yaqui kids long ago, and everyone got in the game to save the "hen and her chicks" from the mean "coyote...." (OPPOSITE PAGE) In Prescott, one of the favorite games for younger kids was London Bridgejust as it's played today....

You're It!

string. The object was to swing the cord and catch as many rings as possible on the stick.

If the schoolhouse or the milk house had a peaked roof, a group of kids might decide to play Annie Over. Again, players divided into teams on each side of the building. Someone called, "Annie, Annie over!" and threw the ball over the roof.

Players on the other side tried to catch the ball as it rolled off the sloping roof, then run around the building and tag the other players. Of course, the first team didn't know which end of the building the others would come around.

Red Rover was another lively game, and it caused some skinned knees and elbows. Two lines of players joined hands and faced each other. The leader of one line would call for someone from the other line: "Red Rover, Red Rover, let Margie come over."

There was a lot of whooping and hollering as Margie ran at the opposing line. If she could break through, she got to take one of its members back to her side. If she couldn't get through, she joined that line. The game ended when one line had all the players, or when the teacher rang the bell that meant recess was over.

There were many ways to play Hideand-Seek and other chasing and capturing games. Basically, "It" had to hide his eyes and count to ten, or fifty, or 100, while everyone else ran and hid.

One variation was played on moonlight nights at the Copper Glance mining camp in southern Arizona. "It" was the Tiger, and he had to run and hide while everyone else stayed at the base and counted.

Then the others prowled through the rocks and bushes, looking for the tiger. The catch was, they all had to call out as they went, "All the tigers are gone." The tiger pounced from his hiding place and captured the other players, who then became tigers.

Sometimes being "It" was fun, but in some games it wasn't. As kids decided what game to play, some shouted, "Not it!" and that kept them from being chosen.

When "It" was chosen, he might be insulted by the chant: "It, It, had a fit and didn't know how to get out of it!"

There were a couple of ways to play a game called Statue Tag, or Freeze. In one version, the player who was "It" chased the other players and tried to tag them out. If a player froze like a statue, he couldn't be tagged. But if the player moved at all, he was tagged and became "It."

A livelier way to play the game was for "It" to swing each of the other players around and around by the arm, then turn loose. As the player reeled away, "It" called out, "Freeze!" The player had to stop in whatever silly position he was in, and stay there. The first "statue" to get caught moving became the new "It."

Sometimes it snowed in the little eastern Arizona settlement of Snowflake. The kids would hurry to play in the snow, and someone would say, "Let's play Fox and Geese!"

The snow made it easy to stamp out a big circle, maybe fifty feet in diameter. Then they marked off eight spokes of the wheel and a small circle where the spokes met in the center.

One player was the fox; all the others were geese. The circle in the center was home base for the geese, safe territory. As they raced around the rim of the wheel and down the spokes, the fox tried to tag them. Tagged players had to help the fox chase other geese.

One day in the spring, some boys would bring their marbles to school, and soon all would. "Marble season" would be on, and the boys would play nothing else until the season mysteriously ended a few weeks later.

A ring was drawn on smooth ground, maybe two or three feet across. Each player anted up some marbles, which were placed in a line or a cross at the center of the ring.

The players "lagged" to see who went first. A line was drawn on the ground, and the boy who could shoot a marble nearest the line started first.

The object was to use your "taw," or favorite shooting marble, to knock as many marbles out of the ring as possible. If someone hollered, "No fudging!" all the players had to keep their knuckles flat to the ground and outside the ring. A player who called, "Clearance!" was allowed to clear pebbles and twigs from the path of his taw.

Yaqui boys, who had no marbles, played a game with flat, smooth river stones. They collected good stones, just as Anglo boys collected marbles.

They drew a line about ten feet long on the ground. Then they backed off several yards and tried to land their stones nearest the line was the winner.

One of these lazy Saturday mornings, when you're looking for something different for you and your gang to do, you might try some of the games kids played on the frontier.

The Shenandoah over Los Angeles. "The story [of flight] began with the first balloon in 1783 and seems to have ended with the deflation of the last Navy blimp in 1962.... Today, less than forty years after the last zeppelin was dismantled, it is almost impossible to conceive of the impact these huge ships had on the world's imagination." - Lee Payne, Lighter Than Air, 1977 Courtesy Security Pacific National Bank Photo Collection/Los Angeles Public Library

THE SHENANDOAH VS. PICACHO PEAK

What often is billed as the "farthest west battle" of the Civil War was fought at Picacho Peak in southern Arizona on Avril 15, 1862. The pass lies just east of a noteworthy landmark, the sharp-pointed rocky prominence rising 3382 feet above sea level, Picacho Peak. It leaps abruptly skyward, its summit more than 1600 feet higher than the surrounding plain. And while many Arizonans know about the Civil War battle, few are aware that sixtytwo-and-a-half years later Picacho Peak tried to bring to earth a proud namesake of the South, the Shenandoah.

The original Shenandoah, christened in honor of Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, was a Confederate warship that successfully raided more than thirty Yankee vessels during, and after, the Civil War. In 1923, the name was bestowed on the ZR-1, the U.S. Navy's $2 million lighter-than-air craft, a magnificent dirigible 600 feet long and seventy-aight feet in diameter. It was the nation's first rigid airship and the first dirigible in the world held aloft with noninflammable helium.

Anxious to prove the worth of its invest-ment in dirigibles, the Navy decided to send the Shenandoah on a 9000-mile round trip across the United States, from the ship's port at the naval air station at Lakehurst, New Jersey. Although billed as a test flight, daily Associated Press radio dispatches broadcast from on board and the presence of a writer for National Geo-graphic inake it clear that the Navy wished to infiuence favorably the country's vot-ers and taxpayers.

The career of the Shenandoah ended in tragedy when the airship broke apart (BELOW) during a dawn squall over Ava, Ohio, September 3, 1925. Official Air Force photo (RIGHT) The Shenandoah superimposed over a modern photo of sunset at Picacho Peak. Jerry Jacka/San Diego Aerospace Museum photos Regarded as one of Arizona's premier desert preserves, Picacho Peak State Park, midway between Phoenix and Tucson, features campgrounds for tents and vehicles, with water and electric hookups, and picnic ramadas. A challenging two-and-a-half mile hiking trail to the top of the peak gains 1500 feet in elevation, and another easy two-mile trail circles the peak. Picacho Peak State Park, in the desert, is most comfortably visited from November through May.

Leaving Lakehurst October 7, 1924, the skipper, Lieutenant Commander Zachary Lansdowne, piloted the Shenandoah into southeastern Arizona on October 10, "struggling into a roaring wind that whistled down a mountain canyon east of Cochise, Arizona," where she "proved her worth in her greatest emergency during the darkness of the early morning when she answered the helm and scraped by a mountain peak at 7000 feet altitude and negotiated the gap in safety." The AP reporter provided details: "The Shenandoah was bobbing like a cork.... Slowly, she drifted to the right, and a wall of mountain (Dos Cabezas) rose out of the darkness so close that it seemed within arm's length. It was but a moment before the whirling blades of the propellers were taking hold and, gently, with but a second to spare, she slid forward, away from the mountain that would have torn her fragile sides to shreds." A student radio operator at the Univer-sity of Arizona helped guide the ship safely to Tucson. Sleepy citizens turned out to greet the dirigible at 6:33 a.m. Whistles blew in the shops of the Southern Pacific and the Tucson Iron Works. The Shenandoah, reported the Tucson Citizen, soon "disappeared into the slate-colored haze of early morning." As it receded, "its underslung metallic appendages were turned to gold by the first rays of the morning sun."

The ship's Arizona adventures were not over. The October 11 edition of the Ari-zona Daily Star, under a Phoenix dateline of October 10, headlined another near-disaster: zona Daily Star, under a Phoenix dateline of October 10, headlined another near-disaster: "The airship Shenandoah, flying over one of the most desolate stretches of its transcontinental journey, came within fifteen feet of striking historic Picacho Peak between Tucson and Casa Grande, Arizona, early today, according to a radio message picked up here."

Announcement that the dirigible nearly missed the mountaintop was made by Earl Nielson, local radio operator, who said he heard signals from the Shenandoah throughout the night. The ship was sailing along at a rate of about forty-five miles an hour through slightly cloudy weather as she passed Picacho.

Picacho Peak rises out of the desert like a huge finger. Its pointed summit has been a landmark since the first white settlers came.

From Picacho, it was smooth sailing along the route of the Southern Pacific to Gila Bend and Yuma and on to the Naval Air Station and docking at San Diego.

The Shenandoah returned to Arizona October 23 en route to Lakehurst, her near-scrape with Picacho all but forgotten. It was night when she passed over Tucson; a Star reporter waxed poetic: "Long, gray, and spectral, her twinkling port and starboard lights with her bow light forming a triangle below the mammoth bulk of the gas bag, for four minutes the airship was outlined in the sky above the city, while cheering earth-folk below wished her bon voyage.

"Then to the diminishing drone of the powerful engines, the twinkling lights faded into the eastern sky, and at 9:45 o'clock the Shenandoah passed from view, homeward bound!"

Afterword The Shenandoah, bucking fierce winds, broke in three pieces and crashed September 3, 1925, near Greenville, Ohio, just a few miles from the birthplace of its pilot, Lieutenant Commander Lansdowne, the first American to cross the Atlantic in a dirigible. The crash date was one month short of the Shenandoah's second birthday. Lansdowne and 14 of his crew perished....

ARIZO

Being something of an almanac, a sampler, a calendar,

RIVERBOATS IN THE DESERT

Although much of Arizona looks like the last place you'd find a big-wheeled riverboat, Arizona has a couple of beautiful ones that make daily cruises through scenic canyon waterways. On Canyon Lake, northeast of Phoenix, the Dolly, a brilliant white, forty-eight passenger tour boat cruises the channels of the Salt River Canyon. And at Lake Powell, on the Arizona-Utah border, the Canyon King, a gleaming black and red 150 passenger stern-wheeler plies the dark blue waters beneath the red sandstone walls of the canyons of the Colorado River. Both boats have scheduled public cruises. The vessels also can be reserved for private groups. For more infor-mation on the Dolly, call (602) 983-1235 and on the Canyon King, call (602) 645-2433.

1983 HIGHWAYS INDEX

Can't remember which issue of Arizona Highways featured that favorite article of yours? Tired of thumbing through each magazine published last year to find it? Don't despair, help is on the way. Now Arizona Highways offers the annual index for volume 59 (calendar year 1983). The fifteen-page alphabetical listing, including titles, authors, subjects, photographers, artists, and illustrations, sells for $3.00. Also available at the same price is the index for volume 58 (calendar year 1982). Prices include postage and handling. Please send check or charge card order to Arizona Highways, 2039 West Lewis Avenue, Phoenix, AZ 85009.

A bird that has been extinct in the United States for nearly 100 years may soon return to its native range near Sasabe, Arizona. The masked bobwhite quail, whose verdant grass-land habitat in southeast Arizona was altered by overgrazing in the late 1800s, was feared extinct until a small population was found in the neighboring state of Sonora, Mexico. A bill recently passed by Congress has granted $5 million to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's endangered species recovery team for possible purchase of the 100-square-mile Buenos Aires Ranch near Sasabe. The ranch will be off limits for cattle and the beautiful rust-colored masked bobwhite quail will be reintroduced to flourish on its home range once again.

GREAT ARIZONA WOMEN

Wanted: “a living Arizona woman who has made a valuable contribution to the understand-ing and awareness of Arizona and its history.” The Sharlot Hall Historical Society and the Southwest Studies Program at Northern Arizona University will honor such a woman with the first Annual Sharlot Hall Award at the Arizona Women's Hall of Fame banquet. Applications may be obtained through the Sharlot Hall Historical Society, 415 West Gurley, Prescott, Arizona 86301. Deadline for application is July 15, 1984.

16/Arizona Highways Magazine Want to invest in the future of the Grand Canyon? A National Park Service brochure entitled “Grand Gifts,” tells how you can make a donation that will help maintain and improve the facilities at the Canyon-and get a tax deduction at the same time. Through this program you specify what your money buys-whether you want it to go for part of a $115 pack-mule saddle, an $80,000 patrol plane, or a $20,000 trail improvement for wheelchairs and walkers, to name just a few. For a copy of “Grand Gifts” write: Grand Canyon National Park, P.O. Box 129, Grand Canyon, AZ 86023. (Special thanks to Carlos Elmer.)

NIQUES

and a guide to places, events, and people unique to Arizona and the Southwest.

JUNE WEEKEND WANDERING

JUNE 9, DOUGLAS: THE GREAT AMERICAN BED RACE. As part of National Parks and Recreation Week, citizens of Douglas modify their bedroom furniture and seven-member teams propel them over the grueling 450-foot-long course in heated competition. In addition to the race, live music and food and drink booths in the park add a carnival-like atmosphere to the event. Telephone (602) 364-4058.

JUNE 12, PRESCOTT: RANCH TOUR. Take a tour through real-live working ranches in the heart of Arizona cattle country. Telephone (602) 445-2000.

JUNE 16, WINSLOW: THE CLEAR CREEK CANOE RACE. Paddlers in five divisions (there's even one for kayaks) turn out for five miles of wet fun. Telephone (602) 289-4629.

JUNE 23 AND 24, PAYSON: ELEVENTH ANNUAL COUNTRY MUSIC FESTIVAL. Bluegrass country music under the cool pines of the Rim Country. Telephone (602) 474-4515.

SCOTTSDALE SUMMER CONCERTS

You can swing to the sounds of jazz, Dixieland, and other popular styles of music free every Thursday and Sunday night during June and July courtesy of the City of Scottsdale. The bands strike up at 8:00 p.m. Thursday nights, at El Dorado Park and Sunday nights at McCormick Railroad Park. For information call (602) 994-2408.

Chase Econometrics, an economic consulting firm, recently predicted Tucson, Arizona, will be the sixth fastest-growing city in the United States. The only cities gaining population faster are Austin, Texas; Oxnard, San Diego, and Anaheim, California; and Orlando, Florida.

On these pages are a few of the events scheduled in Arizona. For a more complete calendar, please write: Arizona Office of Tourism, 3507 North Central Avenue, Department CE, Suite 506, Phoenix, AZ 85012 Edited by Robert J. Farrell Designed by Lorna Holmes Senator Barry Goldwater, celebrating his seventy-fifth birthday this year amid friends and wellwishers, was presented an acrylic portrait by John Nieto, worldrenowned Southwestern artist. Nieto, a Mescalero Apache, was commissioned to paint the Senator's portrait by a department store chain founded by the Goldwater family 124 years ago. The portrait, part of the Goldwaters' collection of original Southwestern art, will be on display at Goldwaters stores throughout the Southwest. For more information call (602) 941-0066, extension 2557.

Arizona is home for more five-star resorts than any other state. Of the twelve resorts winning the prestigious Mobil Travel Guide Award for 1984, four are in Arizona. They are the Arizona Biltmore (which has held its five-star rating for twenty-five years) and the Pointe, both of Phoenix, Marriott's Camelback Inn of Scottsdale, and the Wigwam of Litchfield Park. The Rancho Del Rio Tack Room in Tucson also won its five stars in the restaurant category.

(ABOVE) Crescent Lake, at 9100 feet, is twenty-five miles southwest of Springerville, gateway to many White Mountain recreation areas. Dick Dietrich photo (OPPOSITE PAGE) Late August near timberline on the 11,000-foot face of Mount Baldy. Jerry Sieve photo text continued from page 5 Mount Baldy is Dzil Ligai (White Mountain), one of their four sacred peaks.

Mary Riley, 78, lives on a small farm near Fort Apache with her husband. She is white-haired now, and beautiful with the wisdom of her people. In a long calico camp dress, she sits in the sun, her walking stick beside her. She spent her childhood summers on her father's ranch near Baldy and explored its slopes. "There are no ruins on White Mountain (Baldy). No one ever lived there," she says. "The ancient people would camp below the summit, then come to the top to pray, as Apaches do today. "We mention White Mountain in all our prayers. It has special power.... When you take a prayer feather to the medicine man, you include White Mountain in your prayers. There are many sacred songs about White Mountain, but only medicine men can sing them, no one else. The wind lives on White Mountain. All the winds on Earth originated there."

Storyteller, legislator, farmer, grandma. All her long life Mary Riley has tried to help her people move into the future without losing their Apache heritage. She is admired and respected. For twenty years she served her people on the tribal council. Although retired now, people still listen when Mary talks. They listen in the tribal council and the state capitol; they listen all the way to Washington, D.C. In spite of her lack of formal education, Mary Riley was never afraid to approach lawmakers to solicit help for the projects she knew her people needed to become independent some day. Mary worked hard with other members of the council to produce results, and she got them...in housing, education, health, and resource planning. She helped create Fort Apache Timber Company, owned and operated by the Tribe, and the recreation enterprise, which attracts thousands of vacationers to the White Mountains every year. During Mary Riley's lifetime, the Apaches built twenty-six lakes, more than 1000 campsites along 420 miles of stocked streams, and developed Sunrise Ski Area into the fastest-growing ski resort in the Southwest. Her summary: "I'm proud of what we did. All the businesses we have make me so happy."

She learned the value of hard work from her great-grandmother, who spent summer days cutting wild hay, then loading it on horses and hauling it to the cavalry post at Fort Apache. From her great-grandmother she learned a proverb: if you put your arms to work, the things you want will be at the tips of your fingers. Mary knew hard work. On her father's ranch were sixty-one milk cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys, ducks, sheep, and goats. Cornfields ripen in the sun. Young colts frisk and kick. In the distance, White Mountain watches over its people. As Mary Riley goes about with her walking stick, passing on her wisdom to young people. Wisdom born of the mountain.

At one end of my street runs a four-lane highway. It leads to the office, the computer, fluorescent lights, and telephones. At the other end of my street beckons a national forest. Just two minutes away...a breath of pineand water-scented air. I can walk clear to New Mexico if I feel inclined. And so I walk. I walk to keep my feet on the good mountain earth and my mind clear of cables, wires, and words.

Winter prowls like a hungry owl. The pen and ink world of winter. Black dogs race across white hills. Billy Creek snores under mottled ice. Deer tracks wind between chaste oaks and pines. I hear the bells of St. Mary of the Angels across the silent meadow as I walk. Traffic sounds fade away.

Beaded along the highways are the mountain towns. They grow as awkwardly as adolescents, wanting the prosperity that new growth brings, but not quite ready for the responsibility it entails. Day by day, people of different accents and attitudes move in, absorbed by the stronger character of the mountain, a character formed on the last frontier.

Show Low, Arizona, was named by the turn of a card. When Corydon Cooley and Marion Clark decided to dissolve their partnership in 1876, they played Seven-up to see who would get the ranch. Cooley turned up the deuce of clubs and won. The site has been known as Show Low ever since.

South on State Route 260 perch Lake-side and Pinetop, like blonde and brunette sisters holding hands. One is straight-laced as a lattice fence; the other is flirtatious as a dance hall girl. Remnants of farms and meadows amid the subdivisions give Lake-side a quilted rural look. Irwin Hansen's horses graze along Rainbow Lake, across the highway from a shiny restaurant where a person can spend $40 on a dinner for two if he half tries. Pinetop looks like a city, if you stay on the highway and don't go nosing around town. In the old days, it was run by bootleggers. They made whiskey out in the woods and dispensed it to millworkers from McNary, loggers, soldiers from Fort Apache, cowboys, and anyone who came through town. In those days there weren't many visitors. In 1938, homesteader and cattleman Charlie Clark bought Jake Renfro's log cabin cafe and saloon in Pinetop and served the best steaks in the West. It took three hours to make dinner (cutting steaks to order-T bones and sirloins only-weighing them and charging by the pound). Then he heated the grease for french fries and commenced to peel potatoes. Nobody cared. By the 1950s, most Arizonans heard of Charlie Clark's but few knew where Pinetop was. They do now. Two of the most successful country club developments in the nation-White Mountain and Pinetop-were hatched over a steak in Charlie Clark's.

To freeze garden vegetables, to string chiles from the Rio Grande Valley. Scarlet rose hips ripen along the banks of Billy Creek. I pick them and dry them for tea to ward off colds. Tall fuzzy mullein leaves, too, for coughs. And wild grapes, if you can find them before the bears do. With every autumn comes a memory.... A little girl with lion eyes and long straight legs is picking wild grapes. Her dark brown hair is tangled as the vines along the canyon wall. She stays close to me by instinct, like a cub. We feel each other's presence, near or far. A bandana is half-full of grapes before we hear the noise-a snuffle and a growl in the willow thicket to our rear. We dare not turn and look around. "Don't you think we have enough grapes?" a small voice asks.

Autumn is long on the mountain. Sunny days to gather wood and herbs and berries, "I think so," I answer in a whisper. Then I notice bear tracks in the sand. Slowly, we retreat, politely, leaving the rest of the grapes to our growling friend. It is enough for jelly-a glass or two. For after school peanut butter sandwiches in the warm kitchen, safe from bears.

"This is not a birthday party," said Augusta Larson, age 90. "This is a retirement party-to get me out of your hair." Her voice strong and clear, had a nononsense schoolmarm's tone. A voice used to speaking its mind. It was August 27, 1983. Over a hundred faces were turned toward the petite lady in a neat blue suit standing at the front of the cultural hall in the Lakeside Ward of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Born in Flagstaff February 6, 1893, she graduated with a class of sixteen from Northern Arizona Normal School. Her father, who wanted her to be a concert pianist, offered her music training in New York, but, instead, she left home at eighteen to teach school in Holbrook for seventyfive dollars a month. When she married cattleman Wallace Larson they lived in a tent on two sections north of Holbrook. "The wind never quit blowing all the time we lived there," she said. "One day it blew everything off the bed but the mattress." In 1915 the Larsons moved their cattle to Corduroy Creek on the Fort Apache Indian Reservation, where Wallace had a permit. Gussie rode horseback for three days with her eight-month-old son on the front of her saddle. "Apache Chief text continued on page 27

God's Country

Bonito Prairie, north of Military Crossing on the Black River. The boundless savannah, crisscrossed by ancient trails, felt the tread of prehistoric Indian, the conquistador, the cavalry soldier, and the cowboy. Jerry Jacka photo

BY NICK WORTH THE WHITE MOUNTAINS: a Sportsman's Angle

Emerging metallic side stripe of the rain-bow trout. The forests of the White Mountains are home to a wide variety of game animals and hunting is carefully regulated by reservation and state agencies. Late August sees bow-hunters in full camouflage, looking like paramilitary commandos, stalk-ing deer silently through the high forests. When the female mule deer senses danger, she signals like a locoTrophy-size rainbow trout patrol the shorelines of the high lakes. In spring, the "bows" feed along the lake edges, chasing schools of minnows into the shore in a slashing frenzy. As quickly as the action begins, it stops. Anglers casting into the feeding area wonder vainly where the trout have gone. Summer days find the trout deep in lakes, searching for cooler temperatures. Anglers who lined the banks earlier in the year are now out in boats. They troll dark flies, silver In meadow streams, German brown trout lurk under the overhanging banks in the midday sun. They rarely come out from beneath their deadfalls and rocks, leaving that dubious pastime for "mad dogs and Englishmen." When the sun moves into late afternoon and the water cools, the brooding, dark torpedoes glide out into the current and begin, somewhat grumpily, to feed. They take their time looking over the fly rising in the surface film of water. German brown, rainbow, brook, cutmotive purging steam, and the entire herd bounces away down the hillside. Mule deer hop from danger on all four spring-loaded legs, look-ing for all the world like what the old-timers claim they are a cross between an elk and a jackrabbit. In late fall, the bull elk go into rut. Bellowing steam-laced bugling calls into the dawn, they challenge other bulls and try to attract more females to their harems. Hunters creep quietly close and blow their own pale, imiImitation bugles-long plastic tubes-to challenge the herd bull to a fight. Often he will answer the challenge, shouldering his way through the trees, shaking his massive antlers and raging at the interloper. Then, he may turn and be gone in an instant, leaving only silence. Flocks of wild turkeys wander sharp-eyed through the forests. They roost in tall pines by night and fly to the ground to feed on acorns and seeds during the day. They are reputed to see a hunter's eye blink at fifty yards. Blue grouse feed on the borders of meadows in alpine elevations, and mallards drop from the morning on wavering wings to rest on the lakes during their long southward migration. Black bear and mountain lion thrive in the mountains. The bears scavenge through their days, feeding on anything from grass and berries to small animals and carrion. The secretive lion, rarely perceived except as a set of pad prints in snow, stalks the old, sick, lame, and lazy of the deer and elk herds. Regulation of hunting and fishing is preserving the wild animal resources of the White Mountains. Game management programs combined with public awareness and education offer hope that anglers will be able to cast for trout in lakes and streams for many years to come.

spoons, golden spinners, balsa minnows, and the long, heavy lures known locally as "cowbells."

Beautiful streams and lakes-complete with a variety of waterfowlabound in the White Mountains and most are easily accessible. Among them: 480 acre Big Lake, eighteen miles south of Springerville and 9000 feet above sea level. Fishermen will find the lake well stocked. (FOLLOWING PANEL) Morning mist on Hawley Lake. David Muench photo

God's Country

(RIGHT) Refreshing mountain lakes such as Hawley, above, and Cooley, are high country attractions for fishermen and campers.

(BELOW) Escudilla Mountain, "darkblue pot," is the third highest mountain in Arizona. At 10,955 feet, it is a soul-satisfying place to hike, watch a cloud, or settle back and dream. Jerry Jacka photos (FOLLOWING PANEL) Panoramic view from the top of Escudilla Mountain, where autumn's colors are spectacular. TalWiWi Lodge is in the clearing at left, center. Jerry Jacka photo

text continued from page 21 Alchesay would come over a rocky hill with a little wagon. He would walk in my kitchen door and sit down and wait for me to serve him cornbread and milk. He would always bring a turkey, a skinned rabbit, or some corn from his field.

As a young teacher at Fort Apache, she saw children being taught with discarded books by uncertified teachers. She changed that. Years later, after the death of her husband, Gussie was appointed to serve out his term in the state legislaturethen was elected to two more terms. During her period in office, from 1954 to 1962, she supported the development of schools on the reservations and in rural areas.

Gussie told the friends who had gathered for her retirement party: "With two artificial hips, I've stopped running around, but you're all welcome to come and visit me...I just wanted to have a sort of farewell party to all the people I've loved.... Four days later, she was on the phone to Washington asking assistance for an old friend.

In autumn, aspens coin their yellow leaves along the road. Winter appliques patches of white to the dark spruce quilt of mountains. Spring holds clusters of wild irises against her quickened heart. Sheep bells ring matins on summer mornings. The flocks make a field of cotton in green meadow grass.

State Route 260 from Pinetop to Springerville tops out at the turnoff to Sunrise Ski Area, comes down off the hill in a high lope, and trots through bald hills, pulling up in the pale valley of the Little Colorado River.

The 7000-foot-high valley was "found" by a Union scout named Tony Long, who was looking for a wagon load of gold bound for Confederate troops. Struck by the potential of the valley's grasslands, he returned after the Civil War and settled. Early Hispanic settlers from New Mexico called it Valle Redondo (Round Valley). They spread out over the land, spilling into the Concho hills, to raise sheep and cattle and horses.

A. V. Greer and Harris Phelps brought wagons, livestock, and their families from Texas in 1877. A year later, Utah pioneers arrived. While the village of Eagar remained peaceful, the neighboring town of Springerville became a hideout for some of the worst renegades in the Southwest. "I am no angel and have seen most of the tough towns of the West, but Springerville was the worst of them all," said earlyday legislator A. F. Banta (an alias). Sheriff

God's Country

The forests of America, however slighted by man, must have been a great delight to God; for they were the best he ever planted.

(BELOW) KP Ciénaga, Apache Sitgreaves National Forest, offers campsites alongside the Coronado Trail, U.S. Route 666. (OPPOSITE PAGE) Sunrise vista along the Mogollon Rim. Larry Ulrich photos Commodore Perry Owens finally brought peace with a six-shooter and Winchester rifle, more than once leaving a warrant pinned to a dead man's chest.

From the foothills of Springerville and Eagar, U.S. Route 666 passes through Nutrioso to Alpine, where it becomes the Coronado Trail. Occasionally closed by the snows of winter, the trail is long and lonesome to the hard rock country of mines and men at Clifton and Morenci below. To the east lies the Blue Primitive Area, perpetual nominee for Wilderness status...always a bridesmaid, never a bride. "The Blue" as mountain people call the river, curls like thin smoke from a lone cabin through its valley.

The old cow dog, Jody, is privileged to lie in the soft dirt of the flower beds at the home ranch now. She dozes and dreams of the hundred mountain trails she followed behind her partner's horse. Her legs are stove up. When she sleeps, she may dream of wild scents and movements in the brush, of high timber and wide streams and Hereford cattle quick as deer. Her owner, Vince Butler, was born and raised on the mountain: "I always figured I'd never find any place better than this." His grandparents came from Utah and settled in the Greer Valley at the foot of Mount Baldy in the last century. When Vince was a boy, the ranch was so isolated the Butlers had to grow all their own food. In the 1920s, John and Molly started a lodge. Today, Molly Butler Lodge is the oldest continuously-run guest ranch in Arizona. "It didn't start out to be a guest lodge," says Vince. "It was just a ranch house that kind of got out of hand." Among their early visitors was Zane Grey, who hunted bear and lion in the area. The old road into Greer wasn't a road, it was just two ruts, says Vince. To keep from burning the brakes out on their Model A on steep grades, they dragged a log behind the car. In the 1930s, Vince worked for John Hall who ran several thousand head of cattle on the Fort Apache Reservation when it was still permitted. He stayed alone out in cow camp for months at a time. "In winter we couldn't get out. We ate beef, beans, and tomatoes." They also had all the fish they could eat from beaver dams. "There were no lakes then, but there was lots of live water."

God's Country

Backpackers in the Mount Baldy Wilderness get extraordinary views of one of the larger stands of ponderosa pine in the world. Alpine, on U.S. Route 666, is a popular departing point for exploring both Mount Baldy and the Blue Range, at 216,000 acres, one of the Southwest's larger primitive areas. Jerry Sieve photo His line camp was about thirty miles from Whiteriver and about sixty miles from Springerville. One day he ran out of tobacco and started down the trail toward Burnt Corral to see if he might run into somebody with "makin's." When he hit fresh tracks, he followed them around a turn and ran into a man holding a rifle on him. He asked the man for tobacco, which the man passed to him without ever lowering the rifle, then left.

Vince found out later it was Ben Black, wanted by the Apaches for poaching hogs. Times have changed since Vince was a young cowboy going to town twice a year.

Some things are better; some are worse, he says. "We used to have harder winters. We couldn't get to our cattle to feed them. We didn't have any medicine or feed like we do now. When you were gathering cattle, you'd just have a packhorse and a bedroll. Now you can load your own horse in a pickup and haul him to where the work is. The feeding conditions are better. The medicine's better.

Another thing that's better is the weather. He said the temperatures average about thirty degrees warmer now. He recalled waking up on Thanksgiving Day, 1930, to three or four feet of snow. "As soon as they opened the highway, we took the cattle right down the road to a pasture near St. Johns," he said.

As for the mountain..."I don't think you'd find better-all around cow country," he said.

Someone asked me once what the most beautiful sight on Earth was, to me. I answered, "A proud man riding a good horse."* That was before I saw the golden eagles making love. She is queenly-full breasted and dark feathered, flying with power and grace. Not as agile as when she was young, but wiser in flight. She knows how to conserve her energy, pace herself for the right moment to attack. Her outspread wings catch and hold the thermals. She glides tail fanned for balance. She has dominion here, and knows the paths of every living creature. The noon sun bronzes her calm silhouette. Out of the high blue he dives. Brash, cocky, crazy in love. His downhill rush is spangled with golden sunlight. He breaks her flight on impact, flattens her composure, ruffles her dignity. Her wings flutter as she regains her balance and flips the upstart over. He makes a slow loop, comes up from behind, and knocks her off balance again. They tumble and scuffle in midair play then soar together showing off with aerobatics. It is April, and they are in love-the strong mature female and this reckless playful male.

The honeymoon goes on for days, and then they disappear. I see him sometimes, hunting alone at noon. He looks so sad and serious, I fear she's dead or gone. I miss her. Then, one day in early summer, I see a dark wingspan above the trees. As she moves closer, I see closeby a pair of awkward eaglets. They flap and falter, tip and sway. Mother picks them up when they fall, gives them a brief ride, then makes them try again. High above, the sun gleams on proud copper wings. Above the mountain.

Editor's note: There's another northern Arizona saying, "If you think all men are equal, you have never met a Navajo Indian riding a good horse!"

Joan Baéza, a staff writer for White Mountain Publishing, has lived and ranched in Navajo County for thirty-five years, she authored the book Ranch Wife under the name of Jo Jeffers, and is currently at work on two novels.

Additional Reading

The Apaches: Eagles of the Southwest, by Donald E. Worcester, The University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1979. White Mountains of Arizona (thirtieth annual edition), available at outlets throughout the White Mountains or from 610 W. McLellan, Mesa, AZ 85201. $4.00, postage and handling included.

Arizona's Scenic Seasons Remembering with Raymond

In this land of distance and elusive horizons live the Navajos, whose love of their land is a religion. They are inured to the vagaries of the elements. They accept the wind, the Sun, the lack of rain, all the tempestuous quirks of time and weather-with stoic resignation, for all such things are their gods' will.

How that man could write! And Raymond Carlson was at his best chronicling the cycles of summer, autumn, winter, spring. His post as editor of Arizona Highways Magazine, said he, "is more than a job-it is a crusade...." And now, in honor of this legendary editor who died in 1983, Arizona Highways proudly offers Arizona's Scenic Seasons. Subtitled Remembering with Raymond, the 128-page, large format book features 110 full-color photographs, many of them displayed in spectacular two-page spreads. Mingled with the splendid photography are excerpts from Raymond's writings while editor from 1938 to 1971.

Autumn is a new world. The Sublime Stagehand has shifted the scenery. The seasons change. It is time to think long thoughts of the high mountains and aspen groves and the leaves brown and dry and crisp hurrying along the ground before the wind from the north that autumn brings...

That skiing should flourish in a state not ordinarily associated with snow is merely another of those tantalizing contrasts that are to be found here. Visitors to the Sun country can loll about an orange grove in the morning and by noon hurtle a mountainside on a pair of skis.

The desert has many faces, and it shows a different face to each and every person. The beholder, on meeting the desert for the first time, will find it almost drab in its simplicity but on better acquaintance will find it fascinating in its complexity, moody and mysterious in the varied and forever-changing facets of its personality.

Nine by twelve inches in size (the same page size as this magazine), Arizona's Scenic Seasons book is available in softcover at $11.50, and hardcover at $14.50. Prices include postage and handling. Send your check or bank card order today to: Arizona Highways, 2039 West Lewis Avenue, Phoenix, AZ 85009. An order form is enclosed for your convenience. Allow four to six seeks for delivery.