Audubon

AUDUBON IN ARIZONA

The steel drill eats through the tree and into the heart of time. The children range from age six through fourteen, and they take turns spinning the Swedish tool. The technical names for the work are dendrochronology, core sampling, silviculture. This is the Audubon Family Institute at El Coronado Ranch in the Chiricahua Mountains; but this is not a technical place. Tom Harlan, an expert at tree ring dating, watches the child slowly turn the drill. The steel heats, the scent of seared wood floats in the morning air of the canyon, and the bit drives on through the Korean War, through both world wars, past the Roughriders, past Wyatt Earp, the OK Corral, the great cattle drives, the Apache wars, the Civil War, the Gadsden Purchase, the Spanish settlement days. The drill drives on and on into the heart of the tree by Turkey Creek, into a past still alive, rooted, growing on this cool morning.

The zephyr flowing through the oaks, junipers, and sycamore tastes of the mountain. Four thousand feet above the ranch a green machine of Englemann spruce, Douglas fir and ponderosa pine coats the high peaks and produces a world akin to Hudson Bay only fifty miles from the Mexican line. In the high country, aspen sunflowers and delphiniums erupt on the meadows with gold and blue. Black bears drink at the springs; deer pass through the aspen groves like spirits.

Down at El Coronado Ranch the flavor of the mountain courses down the canyon like a tide. Here forty men, women, and children gather for three days to study mammalogy, ornithology, dendrochronology, geology. The students live and study with professionals trained in the various natural sciences; here the lecture becomes the hike; the book becomes the canyon; the quiz becomes the child turning a Swedish drill into a tree.

Dusk falls on the canyon, and the big ranch building of El Coronado sleeps under a massive pecan tree. Turkey Creek gurgles below, and just off the terrace a small pond absorbs the dying light into the smooth lens of its water. Two horses graze the meadow as the rock walls go from light to dark.

In the big ranch house living room, Neal Krug, a bird guide and schoolteacher from Patagonia, Arizona, launches a discussion of avian life while soft light spills from a giant wagon wheel chandelier.

Krug says, "Most birds let us know who they are by talking."

A baby responds, "Ya, ya, ya, ya."

Stuffed specimens circulate among children and adults in the room. Kids sitting on the floor examine Gambel's quail, nighthawks, roadrunners. They The Audubon Family Institute divides up the children according to age, toddlers through teens. Parents tag along. Everyone deals with garter snakes, cypress leaves, bats, birds, rocks, and sycamore trees.

To study the beaks, learn how the different shapes mean different diets. Krug talks of birdsong, and trills, whistles, and melodies work the calm air of the big room; four stuffed deer and a moose watch and listen. A red cardinal goes from hand to hand.

"So when a cardinal is singing," Krug offers, "other cardinals say, 'Oh, somebody already lives in this area; I'm going to go down the road.'"

A four year old wanders up and grabs the adult by the belt; Krug looks down at his son Sky.

"Can I have some ice cubes?" the boy asks.

This is not school, and someone fetches some ice cubes from the kitchen. The Institute is a family affair. Kids ask questions; adults ask questions.

"Are there any birds in Arizona that mate for life?" one parent wonders.

"Well," Krug scrambles, "golden eagles...."

He holds up a pelican skull.

"That," a kid explains, "is for catching fish."

Small hands caress the soft red feathers of the cardinal, feel the long beak of the roadrunner. sense the magic in the still wings of the hawk. The evening rolls along as a mixture of ornithology, the needs of childhood, the hunger of people of all ages to understand the world called nature. This is the Audubon Family Institute, a place where city people touch the matrix of life that throbs around the planet day and night. Here all the words become flesh, fiber, taste, touch, and smell.

A six year old holds up a small quartzcrys tal she has found on the hillside. “It's like a waterfall,” she decides. The talk ends. Out on the terrace a telescope spears the galaxy and brings it back to Turkey Creek. Below, the bat net waits for the night hunters, and along the creek a black light hike makes the world of nocturnal insects a flash of color.

(ABOVE) Studying life forms and their interrelationships also means taking time to smell the flowers and checking out the shoreline of the pool below the lodge for aquatic specimens.

(RIGHT) The ranch's artificial clear pond helps illustrate the variety of life forms that exist in this mountain cranny, where millions of years ago pressures deep within the earth first spewed out the Chiricahua range.

Black coffee bites the tongue at first light. Krug looks out from the ranch porch and his ears swallow whole the notes of bird life greeting the dawn. There, he says, that's a canyon wren. Listen! A hepatic tanager. The families move through the gray glow, and the group walks down to the creek. Jays, warblers, juncos, gold-finches, and hummingbirds rip through the green walls by the road. A red-tailed hawk wheels overhead while a stream of parents and kids strolls the lane under big trees. Morning light splashes gold off their shoulders. Krug calls to the hawk. A three year old reaches up and holds his father's hand. The child's shoes kick up puffs of dust. Dawn touches the canyon bottom with flame.

A communal breakfast energizes the ranch dining hall with talk and laughter. Bob Scarborough, a geologist with the Arizona Bureau of Geology and Mineral Technology, wolfs his eggs and hash-browns and explains what the rocks out-side the window mean. El Coronado sprawls across the throat of one of the largest volcanos on Earth. Once the rock gullet spoke fire. Twenty million years ago, 1000 cubic miles of material raced into the sky where families now enjoy breakfast. Bob dabs at his egg; outside The Institute is hard to pigeonhole. At dawn, it may mean bird-watching along Turkey Creek, alert to jays, warblers, and hawks. Later, it's netting dragonflies and butterflies at the pond, conscious of colors, shapes, and gossamer wings... or a walk blindfolded across a sea of grass with a partner, alert to sounds and sighing breezes, the crunching leaves, and flower petals.

AUDUBON IN ARIZONA

birdsong wanders the meadow. Ten million years ago, he continues, pressure in the Earth's crust scrunched up the peaks now called the Chiricahuas. Bob leans back and cautions, however, that the Institute tackles more than rocks and eruptions. "Yesterday," he smiles, "we got into a debate on the fine points of criminal law."

Just down the road, Johnny Ringo used to lie on a saloon couch and shoot flies off the ceiling. Then on July 22, 1882, they 'found his body under a tree; they wrote it off as a suicide. Turkey Creek had a postmaster named William Wilgus Smith. One day they found him by the woodpile under a blanket of snow. Apaches had left him. His dog stood vigil over his body. Bits and pieces of history drift down this canyon. Cattle rustling was once a local industry; one woman of the canyon divorced her husband for stealing her own cows.

El Coronado Ranch was patented in 1918 and suffered through many schemes as working ranch, a boys school, a retreat for Army officers, and a dude ranch. In 1965, the headquarters and surrounding acres were donated to the University of Arizona. The place bunks sixty-three people ranch style, and groups keep it booked solid. The ranch house lording over a clear pond by a running stream in a canyon knifing the Chiricahua high country has found its purpose.

Ronnie Sidner strokes the kangeroo rat in her hand. The animal flashes dark eyes and flicks a long tail. The children touch the nervous beast. Sidner, a mammalogist, soon gets to her true love, bats. She wears a T-shirt that shouts: I Love Bats. No one here argues the matter. The kids have no reaction beyond wonder. The Institute has a way of making phobias vanish as the hand touches the rat, the eye drinks in the transparency of the bat's wing. Down below at the pond, a girl holds a snake up to her face; a boy searches the weeds for frogs.

The Institute divides up children according to age, toddler through teenager. Parents tag along with the kids, and everyone feels the slick skin of the garter snake, admires the gold and green of the cypress beetle, and scans the brush for the flash of a warbler. A harvest mouse peers from Ronnie's hand.

"This one's a female," she tells the kids, "and I'll show you the nipples on her. The whole idea of evolution is to stay alive and reproduce."

The children gather round her in a circle; their parents form an outer ring. After the rats and mice, Ronnie stretches the kids out on the terrace with newspapers under their arms. The big pecan tree vaults over the group with a green web of leaves. The parents trace out bat wings to fit their child's limbs. They explore the design changes mammals underwent to escape into the sky.

One mother looks down at her young bat child and frets, "This isn't going to be long enough for you to be able to fly."

"I hope I'm doing this right," a father confesses.

"I think you are," his daughter offers. As the children emerge as winged mammals, Ronnie puts a big brown bat (Eptesicus fuscus) on a twig in the sun. The warm rays heat the animal's blood; the wings jostle slightly. The bat hangs upside down minute after minute. Suddenly the wings beat, and the animal sweeps over the pond.

"I'm sure she heard insects," Ronnie offers.

"Yeah," the kids conclude.

The bat darts, careens, and then plunges into the green wall of the canyon. She leaves behind the memory of her squeaks as she floats off the terrace into the lushness of Turkey Creek while a half-dozen tykes and their parents kneel on the cool lawn of the El Coronado.

Beth Morgan has directed the Family Institute for six years. It was the first such venture in the United States and may be the only place where families can roam the woods armed with a posse of experts. The annual gathering covers a three-day weekend; it may be expanded to several weekends so more families can come. The cost, $120 per adult, $100 per child under ten, includes board and room at the ranch. Those who sleep down the road at a Forest Service campground participate for $60 apiece.

"The Institute," Beth believes, "is primarily a chance for families to get together and be stimulated about the environment in a fun situation. The challenge is in working with young children in the same group as adults; the staff is so good."

AUDUBON ARIZONA IN

The Institute hands out no degrees or diplomas. No one makes the grade here: they touch the Earth.

Marty Eberhardt takes a group of children into a meadow along the creek. Flowers spike the green mat with yellow and white. The grass feels wet and cool. The children form pairs. One partner wears a blindfold, the other leads. The teams walk the tall grass and drink in the breeze sighing through the brush, whooshing across the trees, the birdsong slipping through the forest like an eccentric flute. Small hands touch leaves; small feet feel the ground crunch underneath. The soft petals of a daisy caress the cheek. Blind, everyone now sees. No one speaks. Words tell nothing here. One girl picks up a rock and hands it to her sightless partner. Fingers flick across the pale green lichen thriving on the cool stone. Sun floods the open patches near the tall trees along Turkey Creek. The Audubon Family Institute is in session.

Ask any child.

Author's note: Registration for the Institute is limited to forty-five participants per session. The charge for dormitory accommodations is $120 per adult, $100 for each child age two to nine. This fee covers registration, instruction, services, programs, lodging, and nine meals. One scholarship is available for a family needing financial assistance. A deposit of $25 must accompany each registration and is nonrefundable.

This year the Institute will be held in Peppersauce Canyon, south of Oracle, August 14 through 17. For information, write or phone Ms. Cheryl S. Lazaroff, Director, Audubon Family Institute, 30-A North Tucson Boulevard, Tucson, Arizona 85716; (602) 743-7862.

Charles Bowden is an avid outdoorsman, book author, and newspaper reporter. Jack Dykinga is a Pulitzer Prize winning photographer. Both reside in Tucson.

Arizona Highways Magazine/23

BOOKSHELF

Sun Tracks, emanating from the Univer-sity of Arizona's Department of English, is an American Indian literary series edited by Larry Evers. Now published by the University of Arizona Press, Sunnyside Building, 250 East Valencia Road, Tucson, AZ 85706, this series presently boasts nine distinguished titles (the first five are already out of print), the major focus of which is the cultural heritage of American Indians.

THE SOUTH CORNER OF TIME: HOPI, NAVAJO, PAPAGO, YAQUI TRIBAL LITERATURE. Edited by Larry Evers. (Volume six) 1981. 240 pages. $35.00, hardcover; $14.95, softcover.

Originally published independently in 1980, this volume contains a mostly bilingual collection of narratives, songs, and tales that reveal the depth and breadth of oral and written traditions of four Southwestern Indian tribes. Each section also contains an alphabet, a regional map, black-and-white photographs of the people and their homeland, and additional literature sources.

HOPI PHOTOGRAPHERS/HOPI IMAGES. Compiled by Victor Masayesva, Jr., and Erin Younger. (Volume eight) 1983. 111 pages. $25.00, hardcover; $14.95, softcover.

Having been photographed by Anglo tourists and cameramen for years, the Hopis have now turned cameras on them-selves, taking care not to violate sacred traditions or secrets, yet showing sensitivity toward their cultural heritage and history and the land they inhabit. There is a summary by Erin Younger of a century of photography on the reservation, then the work of seven Hopi photographers, each section prefaced by a short biographical sketch of the artist. Each photograph is an essay, speaking volumes through Hopi eyes and lenses.

HOPITUTUWUTSI/HOPI TALES: A BILINGUAL COLLECTION OF HOPI INDIAN STORIES. Hershal Talashoma, narrator; Ekkehart Malotki, translator. (Volume nine) 1983. 213 pages. $24.50, hardcover; $14.50, softcover.

First published in 1978 by the Museum of Northern Arizona, this charmingly illustrated volume highlights the essence of Hopi folklore.

BEALE'S ROAD THROUGH ARIZONA. By Eldon Bowman and Jack Smith. Flag-staff Corral of Westerners, Route 4, Box 739, Flagstaff, AZ 86001. 1979. 27 pages. $11.00 softcover.

As the main route across northern Arizona, Beale's Road in all its forms, from wagon road, to the railroad, to Route 66, and finally Interstate 40, carried the largest human migration in history. Part of a limited edition series on Arizona and Western history, this beautifully produced handbound booklet chronicles the grueling, little known 1857 road-building expedition across Northern Arizona led by the dashing Lieutenant Edward F. Beale. Bowman and Smith also document in depth the use of camels in road building, and the animals' resounding success in the Arizona desert. In addition to Beale's trek, the book follows the immigrants on the road sharing their trials and struggles along the way. Only the absence of a map mars this work.

LANDS OF THE ARID REGION OF THE UNITED STATES. By John Wesley Powell. Introduction by T. H. Watkins. The Harvard Common Press, The Common, P. O. Box 355, Harvard, MA 01451. 1983. 195 pages. $9.95, softcover.

First published in 1878, this report by Major Powell, then geologist in charge of the U.S. Geographical and Geological Survey of the Rocky Mountain Region, was-and still is-one of the most impor-tant assessments of the arid lands of the American West. So revolutionary was this document, that had its findings been heeded, the face of the western half of the U.S. would now be vastly different. In the main, however, the investigations of the one-armed explorer/scientist/administrator were ignored, even buried. More than 100 years later, we who live in these arid regions are reaping the consequences of not having followed Powell's recommenda-tions. His discussions of arid-land physicalcharacteristics, classification and utiliza-tion, water rights, and rainfall statistics, plus chapters by specialists on water supply, aspects of Utah's arid areas, and land grant donations, are nearly as relevant today as when the report was first compiled. Harvard Common Press is to be commended for republishing this document, vital to all who live in or are concerned with America's arid regions.

THE FIRST HUNDRED YEARS: A HISTORY OF ARIZONA BLACKS. By Richard F. Harris. Relmo Publishers, P. O. Box 1606, Apache Junction, AZ 85220. 1983. 151 pages. $8.50, softcover, plus $1.00 mailing.

Rarely do we catch literary or pictorial glimpses of black Americans who have been a part of the history of Arizona. Harris, a journalist and social worker who has lived in Arizona for three decades, has done considerable research in order to put together an informal history of black citizens and their accomplishments. From approximately 1870, black Arizonans have worked as prospectors, soldiers, cowboys, lawmen, businessmen, legislators, educators, and other public figures. Despite many hardships, discrimination, and segregation, black pioneers have contributed significantly and interestingly to Arizona's history. With photographs, bibliographical notes, maps, and personal reminiscences of early residents, the author adds a fuller dimension to his work.

PRACTICAL & TECHNICAL ASPECTS OF ADOBE CONSERVATION. Edited by James W. Garrison and Elizabeth F. Ruffner. Heritage Foundation of Arizona, P..O. Box. 61, Prescott, AZ 86302. 53 pages. $15.00, softcover.

Originally, the chapters of this publication were individual papers presented at a conference on this subject in Tucson. The authors are specialists well versed in adobe construction, conservation, and preservation. Their chapters address the vital topics of deterioration, rehabilitation, stabilization, archeological concerns, inspection of adobe buildings, relationship of adobe to tree-ring dating and to other materials, and history of adobe preservation. Accompanying photos, diagrams, and an exhaustive bibliography provide additional valuable information. Novice and professional alike will profit greatly from reading this carefully edited compendium on a new/old building material.

YOURS SINCERELY

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With reference to the Santa Fe architect who provided the inspiring thread of ingenuity that helped to weave a continuity to Larry Cheek's excellent article on Arizona's architecture, please acknowledge the omission of credit for Charles Foreman Johnson, our architect of record for our dwelling here in the desert foothills near Carefree.

Forty-five years ago my aunt and uncle, Fay and Glenn Jewell, drove to Arizona from Michigan and toured the area of the Grand Canyon and the Navajo and Hopi Indian reservations.... I was a little girl then, but well remember their fascination with Arizona. They made other trips here from Michigan and subscribed to Arizona Highways for many years. Aunt Fay often said some of her most cherished memories are of Arizona and especially of Monument Valley. She is 93 years old this spring and still receives Arizona Highways. I visited her recently and again listened with wonder to her stories of their travels so many years ago in Arizona. Thank you for keeping Arizona alive for her through Arizona Highways.

Sure love the May issue-dynamite!!!

Arizona Highways' favorite Texan, Good ol' Boy Howard Peacock ("A Texan Looks at Arizona," May, 1984), forwarded some love letters to Arizona he received.

Dear Howard, I read with interest your "yarn" about your visit to Prescott. I was a "transplanted Texan" there for a year. I agree with all the things you said about it. It is one of the great unsung cities of the U.S. I will always treasure my short time there. Subscribing to Arizona Highways is one way I relive the adventure of a beautiful state and a fabulous town.

Dear Howard, I had a transcendental experience at the Grand Canyon. We seemed to be all alone at one of the overlooks, but there was the sound of a voice and a guitar. A girl was sitting on a ledge a hundred or so feet down giving a concert to the Canyon, or more probably joining its visual concert.

In the May issue "The Peacocks of Baboquivari: a Journal," Erma J. Fisk brought out forty years of longing to be back in my homeland in the beautiful Sulphur Spring Valley. It took about twenty-four hours to decide that if Erma J. Fisk at seventy-three could do it, why shouldn't I (at sixty-one)? Here is my address change and I will be back in Arizona before you receive it! Arizona Highways has been bringing me a touch of "home" all these years-can't tell you how grateful I am. Keep up the good work, and may God bless.

As a surprise, my father started a subscription to Arizona Highways for me for Christmas, and now I look forward to each issue. It's a wonderfully constructed magazine, superbly written, with first-rate photographs. I especially enjoyed the May '84 issue, as I had no idea Arizona had so many fine architectural styles to its credit. Thanks Dad!

ARIZONA HIGHWAYS

ARIZONA HIGHWAYS CLASSIC

Herewith is presented the second in an occasional series of Arizona Highways Magazine classics. The ink sketches by the late Ted DeGrazia accompanied the original publication. The paintings are courtesy of the DeGrazia Art and Cultural Foundation, Tucson, Arizona.

Three Apache Women and a Lone White Man

"Mr. Southwest," Dr. Lawrence Clark Powell called J. Frank Dobie in an Arizona Highways profile in June, 1957. "He is one of the most uniquely great Americans of this or any time...cowman, teacher, writer, folklorist, historian, and eloquent spokesman for all that is deep and decent, earthy and beautiful..." Of himself Dobie imparted: "I was born, September 26, 1888, the oldest of six children, on a ranch owned by my parents in Live County, Texas in the brush country towards the Mexican border. That land, my stalwart and upright parents and English literature, to which they introduced me, have been the chief influences of my life." Dobie joined the faculty of the University of Texas as a full professor. Here, in addition to teaching "Life and Literature of the Southwest, he collected legends and folk tales. Later, he authored nineteen books, in which he: "tried to give significance to the natural things of the Southwest and to emphasize its cultural inheritance." Among them are: Apache Gold and Yaqui Silver, Coronado's Children, The Longhorns, The Mustangs, and Cow People. This article for Arizona Highways appeared in the September, 1957, issue. J. Frank Dobie, "Mr. Southwest," died in 1964 at the age of 76.

Differing peoples of differing geographical environments, of differing ways of deriving a living from the Earth, of differing races, languages; religions, impetuses from learning and impetuses from ignorance, have differing manners; but all, irrespective of border, bread, or birth, have similar instincts, similar emotions, similar compassions and other expressions of basic decencies. No man has ever been born in any form of barbarism or in any form of civilization who could not say

TEXT BY FRANK DOBIE ILLUSTRATIONS BY TED DeGRAZIA DeGRAZIA PRINTS

Arizona Highways first presented the work of Ettore “Ted” DeGrazia in 1941, and our association endured until his death in 1982. A number of DeGrazia reproductions remain available exclusively to Arizona Highways readers, while supplies last. Double matted and dry mounted on sturdy backing, the prints are ready to display.

Matted size: 9 x 12 inches-$13 (includes postage and handling) Matted size: 11 x 14 inches-$13 (includes postage and handling) Matted size: 20 x 30 inches-$26 (includes postage and handling)

with Shylock: "If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?"

Twenty-six years ago a historical novel entitled Apache, by Will Levington Comfort, was published in New York. Few readers of the narrative I am about to begin can be familiar with the title, but hardly anybody nurtured on the tradition thatApache and heartless cruelty are synonyms could read that moving novel and thenceforth regard the Apache people as he regarded them before reading it. To change the minds of men is not nearly so hard as to subtract from their prejudices.

Whether Charles H. Green originally nursed a hostility toward the Apaches I have no way of knowing. His granddaughter, Mrs. Barbara Clark Fogel, of Austin, Texas, does not know, and it is from her that I derive all that follows, much in her own words, concerningGreen and his adventure with three Apache women.

He was born on a New England farm, where, except for some time spent working on the Erie Canal, he tilled the soil with his father and also aided him in cutting timber for lumber. Timbering was so much more profitable than farming that they moved to Michigan. Here they found rich stands of timber, but other men were finding it too. Accounts of the great forests of Oregon and northern California kept (ABOVE) "Then the largest of the three bent down, picked him up, and slung him over her shoulder lightly and started carrying him off."

(OPPOSITE PAGE) My Offering, by Ted DeGrazia, 1973, oil. Courtesy the DeGrazia Art and Cultural Foundation, Tucson.

Piling up. The elder Green was now growing old and did not want to move again. Charles H. was at the age of discovery and expansion. He went back east, got passage on a ship, and sailed around the Horn to the Pacific coast. He found what he wanted, but needed capital and came back home. Then he made a second voyage, but on the return trip the ship nearly went down. He was so miserably seasick for so long a time that he vowed never to sail again. The third trip west he went by stagecoach and got across the continent without mishap, though with a lot of misery. He began developing that is, exterminating-a big block of virgin forest that he had acquired.

Feeling certain of financial comfort for his children and their children, he went to San Francisco to celebrate, which was easy to do in that gay and booming city. This must have been about the time the Civil War began.

He had a kind of celebrating nature. His hair had turned white before he was Nineteen years old-probably from a vitamin complex rather than from fright. He had cultivated a moustache and goatee that made him look more rakish than venerable and later on suggested comparisons between him and Colonel William Cody. He had high cheek bones, probably derived from a full-blooded Indian ancestress who had married a New England Puritan. This cast of his face may have had some influence on the three Apache women we are coming to later. When he was in fettle he insisted on a topper hat, a satin-lined opera cape, and gold-headed ebony cane upon accompanying a lady for evening entertainment. He was interested in many things beyond lumber and money. Late in life, and "in the money," he, for instance, bought one of the first shipments of radium from France to this country and presented it as a "loan" to a doctor who happened to live next door to his home in Saginaw, Michigan. He had married his second wife and settled here, it may be explained, before he made the stage trip west.

Whether he took in too much of San Francisco or took in a fly with bacon gravy at some stagestand, he certainly derived an infection from some source before his eastbound stagecoach got into Arizona. This sickness was worse than seasickness. His intestine as well as his stomach were affected. The stage was crowded with passengers. It would have to stop for him to get out. His retching beside a window did not brighten the atmosphere-though he was certainly fulfilling to the letter the primary phase of William Hazlitt's prescription for going on a journey: "out of myself and my house I go." For a long distance the passengers and the stage driver were sympathetic. Stops at the stands for changes of horses and for meals-sometimes not much more than fried salt bacon, greasy bread, and mustard-were a relief. Green might lie down for a few minutes. But the jolting became a torture to his insides. He began running a high fever and to lose control of himself. Then in the Apache country the stage came to a relay station that had been burned, the attendants killed and left scalped, the horses taken away. The stagecoach went on. Now travel was torment to even the well, but relief was ahead. No, the next station had been raided and destroyed also. By now Green was delirious, entirely out of his head, too weak to hold up his head, seemingly near death. Finally all the passengers, their nerves all tattered and torn, agreed that the incubus had as well be put out. They could no longer delay for him. He might stand a better chance to survive anyway if left where he could rest awhile. The stage driver agreed. He stopped the coach in a shadow of a great rock, and here the trouble was lifted out and laid upon the ground, a canteen of water and a hank of jerked beef beside him. The next eastbound stage-due two weeks later-could pick him up or bury him. After he was put on the ground, Green roused enough to sense, however dimly, what was going on. He insisted that his baggage be put off with him. At least he would not die stripped of all his personal possessions. The stage moved on eastward, and he blacked out. About dusk he came into a dim consciousness. It might have been the day the stagecoach left him somewhere in desertland-he never knew exactly where-or the next day. Perhaps a sound roused him. The first impact on his consciousness when he roused out of a state of prolonged unconsciousness was a feeling, perhaps an intuition, that human beings were near him. He did not at first open his eyes. He became lucid enough to remember that he was in a country where the only company he was likely to have was Apache. He was not yearning for that company. Perhaps, he thought, his delirium had been inventing company. Then he distinctly heard the shuffling of feet and feminine giggling. He opened his eyes, and his nostrils seemed to open about the same time. Right by him, bending almost over him, he saw in the clear twilight three distinctly fat, distinctly aromatic in their own way, gaudily clad Indian women. They never did tell him that they were Apaches, and he could not have understood them if they had told him, but they could not have been anybody else. In the old days the Apaches never called themselves Apaches, anyhow; they called themselves a name meaning "the people," very much as contemporary Americans recognize themselves as the most pleasing-to-God of all inhabitants not only of the world but of the "universe." Green stared at the three women. All three stared at him. Then they giggled again. He afterwards had reason to deduce that their giggles came not so much from childlike response to a novelty as from to get out. His retching beside a window did not brighten the atmosphere-though he was certainly fulfilling to the letter the primary phase of William Hazlitt's prescription for going on a journey: "out of myself and my house I go." For a long distance the passengers and the stage driver were sympathetic. Stops at the stands for changes of horses and for meals-sometimes not much more than fried salt bacon, greasy bread, and mustard-were a relief. Green might lie down for a few minutes. But the jolting became a torture to his insides. He began running a high fever and to lose control of himself. Then in the Apache country the stage came to a relay station that had been burned, the attendants killed and left scalped, the horses taken away. The stagecoach went on. Now travel was torment to even the well, but relief was ahead. No, the next station had been raided and destroyed also. By now Green was delirious, entirely out of his head, too weak to hold up his head, seemingly near death. Finally all the passengers, their nerves all tattered and torn, agreed that the incubus had as well be put out. They could no longer delay for him. He might stand a better chance to survive anyway if left where he could rest awhile. The stage driver agreed. He stopped the coach in a shadow of a great rock, and here the trouble was lifted out and laid upon the ground, a canteen of water and a hank of jerked beef beside him. The next eastbound stage-due two weeks later-could pick him up or bury him. After he was put on the ground, Green roused enough to sense, however dimly, what was going on. He insisted that his baggage be put off with him. At least he would not die stripped of all his personal possessions. The stage moved on eastward, and he blacked out. About dusk he came into a dim consciousness. It might have been the day the stagecoach left him somewhere in desert

"In the Apache country the stage came to a relay station that had been burned, the attendant killed and left scalped, the horses taken away...."

humane gratification at seeing him revive. They said something to each other. Then the largest of the three bent down, picked him up, and slung him over her shoulder lightly and started carrying him off. The other two brought along the luggage that he had insisted on having unloaded with his body. "They're taking me to their camp for the men to torture before scalping me," he thought. "I wonder if they'll kill before scalping or afterwards. They may make some use of my clothes in the valises, but those land and lumber papers will be Greek to them." Before long the woman carrying Green and leading the procession began climbing a rise that at first was gentle but soon became very steep. She did not slacken her pace or trouble to shift her burden. The lingering twilight still made visible the mouth of a cave that they came to near the summit of the hill they had ascended. The woman carried him into the cave and deposited him on the ground. The other women deposited his luggage nearby. Then all three left. He was utterly exhausted and, also, by now clearheaded. Within a short time they were back with wood and other things and were building a fire, not big, but sufficient to light the cave. The biggest woman had two blankets, grey from grey wool. She spread one on the ground and lifted him upon it. She hung the other as a curtain at the mouth of the cave. The smoke seemed to go up through a hole in the ceiling. Now a pot with water-he wondered from wherewas put on the fire to boil. One of the women seemed to have full charge of it. She put into it bits of bark, some roots, some leaves, a small quantity of what looked like dried berries. Green watched the proceedings until he smelled the aromatic steam. Then utterly exhausted from the exertion of being moved, he relapsed into unconsciousness or perhaps only into a doze. The next thing he knew a woman with a clay cup, without a handle, was rousing him and offering him a drink from it. He could not raise his head; it was raised for him and rested upon an ample lap. The cup was placed to his lips. Suddenly he suspected that it held a poison that would torture him for savage pleasure before the climax of death. He kept his mouth closed, but a pair of steady hands forced his jaws open and, a little at a time, the tea was dribbled down his gullet. His head was put back on the blanket, and he fell asleep. Two or three times during the night he roused with the increasing alertness that comes after a fever lowers. The fire was being kept up enough to furnish a dim light and by it he saw a woman sitting relaxed on the ground. After this it was seldom that he saw more than one of the women at the same time. They took turns in attending him, supplying him with herbs, water, food. He understood that their camp was not a great distance away. As he gained strength and weight and heard an increasing noise from drums he imagined that he was perhaps being conditioned for a special refinement in torture. There was almost no communication between him and the women. Their kindness was utterly impersonal. The day came when he could walk a little inside the cave. In the dusk a few evenings later the guardian on duty led him to a rock ledge outside and bade him be seated. There he watched fires dotting the earth below and off to one side. The stars seemed more beautiful to him than they had ever been; the smell of sagebrush was sweeter than he had ever imagined it could be. He mended rapidly. A week or so after going out of the cave the first time, he awoke before dawn to find the fire lazing and all three women present, squatting around apparently waiting for him to rise. "The day has come," he thought. "What will the ceremony be like, anyhow?"His "...As his city luggage was lifted aboard and he got in, out here in the middle of the desert, looking fresh as a cucumber and arrayed in fresh linen, the passengers must have been a little curious...."

His attention was called to a large basin of water. They had inspected with wonder his luggage many times but had never taken a thing so far as he knew. Now a woman brought fresh linen from a valise and placed it near the basin. Another drew his gold watch and chain from under her clothing and placed it beside the clean linen. He couldn't swim in the basin of water, but he could wash most of himself and did. He always claimed that the women went outside, beyond the blanket door, before he exposed himself. To a primitive of either sex there is nothing either modest or immodest in the bathing exposure of any individual, only a natural procedure. Anyway, after Green had bathed and put on fresh clothing inside and out, he felt like a new man even if the day of doom was about to dawn. It had not yet dawned when his luggage was brought outCome up. Then from the opposite direction he saw dust, and then something approaching. It was a stagecoach-eastbound. He was right beside its path. It stopped. The driver of the stage that had put him off had said the next one would either bury him or take him on home. As his city luggage was lifted aboard and he got in, out here in the middle of the desert, looking as fresh as a cucumber and arrayed in fresh linen, the passengers must have been a little curious. Charles H. Green got home to Saginaw all right and got lots of satisfaction out of life after that, including marrying a third time and begetting four children, one of whom was the mother of the interesting lady who gave me this narrative of her grandfather.

J. Frank Dobie had perspective, plus a civilized mind, and, as a result, his books were rooted deep in the soils of his land. They truly reflect the way people lived....

You Might Outdraw this Cowboy... but Watch Out for a Ricochet

By Budge Ruffner He had a talent to turn to when his cowpunchin' days were over. He had been a rodeo performer, dude wrangler, working ranch cowboy, fence builder, and cook. Frank Polk's talent was wood carving, and he often sold his small works in various bars of the West. Then he turned to clay and wax, set up a studio, and had his pieces cast in bronze.

His timing was great; he hit the Western art market when it was enjoying the confluence of fad, tax write-offs, and unprecedented prosperity. He was good. He had seen the situations he created. His scale, action, and story all blended into appealing creation. His hands and the rich material of his past brought success and recognition.

But he was still a cowboy, grooved in his thinking and way of going as firmly as a well-broke horse. He filed his business records in the snap-button pockets of his shirt. He signed his contracts with a handshake or nod of the head. He presumed that promises were honest, and debts were paid when due. Frank was a product of an ethic long since eroded.

It is difficult for an old cowboy to be devious. Directness is more his manner, but, when strange situations arise, he seems to have the ability to react in a most imaginative fashion. With this ol' boy dealings were routine; many galleries wanted his bronzes and sold them to a waiting market, paying him as promised.

Then, one day, an art dealer from a California beach town came by Frank's studio and surveyed the various bronzes on hand. The dealer mentioned he was about to open a new gallery and would like very much to purchase a particular piece for the opening.

The sum was substantial, and the dealer asked if a post-dated check would be accepted to permit him time to transfer funds to his gallery account. The artist agreed, and the magnificent bronze went out the front door and into a California car.

The cowboy artist waited three days beyond the check date before he deposited it. Two days later, the bank called; payment had been stopped.

Having heard horror stories of extensive litigation, Frank was reluctant to sue.

Then he remembered an old cowboy friend who lived in California not far from the gallery. Frank called his buddy and told him the story.

"Now, Charlie, here's what I want you to do; all I want is to get my piece back. Wear your wake and wedding suit and your red and black lizard skin boots so it looks like you got money. When you go in the gallery, just browse around a little first and don't go right to my bronze. Then, after awhile, buy the thing and give him your check for it and make sure you go right to your bank and stop payment. Send the bronze back to me, and I'll make it right by you."

Just like in the Friday night movies, the rescue operation went smooth as silk; the good guys won again. When the gallery operator called the purchaser, he was incensed.

"Your check was no good!" he said. "Neither was yours," was the answer. Generally, cowboys have had very little training to cope with a world of rapid change. But never underestimate the ability or ingenuity of the American cowboy to adapt to a difficult situation.

ARIZONI

How hot is it in Gila Bend, Arizona? It's so hot you can make instant coffee from tap water without heating it. In summer, water from the town's two wells comes out of the ground at 107 degrees fahrenheit. But then that's to be expected because Gila Bend is the hottest place in the United States. According to Weatherwise magazine. Gila Bend recorded the nation's highest temperature on sixty-four days last year-more than anywhere else in the country. And although living in the hottest place in the country can be a little rough in summer, in winter no one complains. Or as one old-time Gila Bend native once said, "One hundred fifteen degrees may be hot, but at least you don't have to shovel it off your driveway!"

The Navajo Indians of northeastern Arizona call July Ya'iishjaastsoh, "the month for the planting of late crops." July also signals the time wild fruit and seeds first ripen, ending the lean time of the year.

TURNING OUT THE LIGHTS

Clear atmosphere, high mountains, and negligible light pollution from cities drew the $35-million-dollar-a-year astronomy industry to Arizona. But as towns and cities grew, so did the amount of light they gave off. If they continue to grow, light pollution could soon interfere with the function of the world's largest collection of telescopes at Kitt Peak, outside Tucson, and Lowell Observatory, near Flagstaff, where the planet Pluto was discovered.

The problem is so severe, cities, at the urging of the observatories, have passed legislation regulating outdoor lighting. Some measures that curb light pollution are banning searchlights; requiring top-mounted lights that point down on billboards rather than conventional bottom-mounted lights pointing up; and shielding or filtering security, parking lot, and recreational field lighting. Experts feel through these measures Arizona can continue to grow without threatening the precious night sky.

Zion National Park in southern Utah celebrates its seventyfifth anniversary Tuesday, July, 31, 1984. Zion, a geologic scenic wonderland of waterand wind-sculpted red Navajo sandstone, features wooded canyons beneath towering thousand-foot-high cliffs, riparian areas, and hikes of varying difficulty. The National Park Service plans the diamond jubilee celebration at the new Kolob Visitor Center. The program will include the formal designation of Zion's 310-foot natural arch as the largest in the world. And Secretary of the Interior William Clark has been invited as the key speaker at the celebration. To get to Zion-with an extra dollop of great recreation along the way-take U.S. Route 89 through northern Arizona to Page, and spend at least a day exploring scenic Lake Powell. From Page, take U.S. Route 89 northwest across the state line to Kanab, Utah, and then on to Mount Carmel Junction. From there, Utah Route 9 will take you into Zion National Park. For more information write or call: Zion National Park, Springdale, Utah, 84767; (801) 772-3256.

MOONLIGHT RIDE

It's a summer night in Tucson, and you want to get away from the city and the heat, but you don't want to hassle with driving. In Tucson, you're lucky. There's always the Moonlight Shuttle -an evening bus cruise from the parking lot at Sunrise and Sabino Canyon Road to beautiful Sabino Canyon in the Santa Catalina Mountains north of town. The shuttle runs year-round except January and February, and is reasonably priced. You'll need to bring your own refreshments. For information and reservations call (602) 749-2327.

Before the advent of scientific research, readability tests, computers, and other modern wonders in education, how did anyone learn to read? The Reading Education Centennial Project at Arizona State University will show you how in a display of reading education materials used in Arizona since territorial days. The display, located on the ASU campus will include readers, teachers' manuals, wall charts, exercise books, and more. And it will be open to the public. If you'd like more information or would like to donate materials, time, or money to the Collection write: The Collection of Arizona Reading Education Memorabilia, Reading Education, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287.

QUES

events, and people unique to Arizona and the Southwest.

JULY CELEBRATIONS

Independence Day, Fourth of July, fireworks and barbecues, beer and hot dogs, rodeos and races, parades and pageants, Arizona celebrates the nation's birthday with style. Nearly every community hosts festivities. Some of the more popular:

A tropical storm dumped ten inches of rain in areas of southeastern Arizona last fall causing extensive flooding. Raging waters twenty to fifty feet deep scoured creekbeds and arroyos, ripping full-grown trees from the ground and nearly denuding some of the choice riparian areas of the state. Nature could repair the damage on her own in 100 to 200 years but the Bureau of Land Management, caretaker of most of these lands believes man can help-and do it faster. They organized volunteers from Arizona State University, the University of Arizona, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and the Boy Scouts to aid Mother Nature. The workers transplanted more than 2000 seedlings of native trees in the damaged area. And although only about half of the tiny trees will survive, people will have helped the recovery enormously.On these pages are only a few of the fascinating events scheduled this month in Arizona. For a more complete calendar, please write: Arizona Office of Tourism, 3507 North Central Avenue, Department CE, Suite 506, Phoenix, AZ 85012.