Gale Burak

Gale Burak of the Grand Canyon For the Love of Wilderness...

Brown-skinned children ran along beside the black stallion that Gale Burakto-be had borrowed from the mail carrier for the ride from the little Indian town of Supai to the automobile road at Topocoba Hilltop, fourteen miles away. They waved and called, "Come back soon! Come see us again!"

"I will! I will!" Turning in her saddle, Gale looked at the children's mothers, standing in front of Supai's combination post office and general store. They waved, too, shapeless in their long Mother Hubbard dresses. She had ridden with them, swum with them in the deep turquoise pool below Havasu Falls, had endured, without liking it, the reeking steam of a sweat house covered with green cowhides. "I'll be back!"

But would she, with the whole spaciousnessness of the West still lying ahead?

Space. New England, where Gale had grown up, daughter of a concert pianist and a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, had been different...tidy.

Membership in the Appalachian Club had helped satisfy her love of the outdoors, but had not prepared her for the wild rush of light, uncompromising as a razor blade, that had greeted her in the spring of 1942 when, twenty-four years old, she came west to visit a friend who had moved to Arizona.

It wasn't just a matter of scenery. The mesas, buttes, and surrealistic mountains that stretched beyond sight spoke also of an expansion of personal freedom. When the time came to end her visit, she could not break away. Inevitably, it seemed in retrospect, she gravitated toward the Grand Canyon, supporting herself by working in various Fred Harvey establishments and spending her spare time hiking the trails that plunge down from the Canyon's rims.

On meeting two young schoolteachers from Supai, she gladly accepted their invitation to visit that loveliest of gorges, brick-red Havasu, its torrid bottom cooled by green cottonwoods and a creek as blue as though a ribbon of the Arizona sky had been dropped by a passing spirit.

All too soon the time came to end that visit, too. Then, unexpectedly, the cook at the Havasu Lead and Zinc Mine, five miles away in Carbonate Canyon, became ill and the distraught manager prevailed on her, without much trouble, to take on the job. More time to swim, to ride, even to wriggle down through the lacy travertine caves beside Mooney Falls and then bushwhack through tangled grapevines and willows to the muddy Colorado River itself. Perhaps she learned too much independence. She took the side of the Indian ore packers in a dispute with the boss, and, after three months on the job, she was on her way to Topocoba Hilltop and the outside.

Come back!... But the West was still too wide. She drifted on to the Sierra Nevadas. On what started as a solo backpack trip through the Yosemite high country, she encountered Tom Burak, who became her husband. Their three children were born in Sonora, in the California gold rush country. For the sake of their schooling, and of the grandparents, they returned to New Hampshire. But children grow up. When Gale was fifty-five or so, she felt the tug again. Come back! Tom didn't mind. His garage and gasoline station hummed in the summers, and in the winters they could meet for new honeymoons in their camper, drifting wherever they willed. I'll be back!

For a while she worked as a volunteer on various projects along the South Rim. In 1974 she began helping ninety-threeyear-old Emery Kolb, pioneer photographer and river runner, put his pictures and papers into shape for their final home at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. That done, she went to work for the National Park Service as a seasonal ranger, first at the Phantom Ranger Station near the Colorado River, then at Indian Gardens. After initiating the Wilderness Ranger Station at Hermit Creek, she moved across the Canyon to Cottonwood Camp on the North Kaibab Trail beside Bright Angel Creek.

That was where I first met her, wheel-barrowing mortar and laying a flagstone floor in the breezeway between the two brown-stained little buildings of her station. Sixty-five years old, give or take. No one had asked her to do this job. But when thunderstorms struck, campers scuttled for shelter under the breezeway's roof. A mixed blessing. Runoff drained through the opening, creating beds of soft mud, and so Gale remedied the situation by building an elevated floor. Not goose feathers exactly, but it keeps the campers dry and the breezeway neat.

Each year between May and November, the months when the North Rim is open, tens of thousands of hikers travel the spectacular trail beside Bright Angel Creek. Many of them, supposedly having made reservations in advance, camp for a night or two at Cottonwood. Toward evening Gale checks their tags and imposes mandatory fines on those who are trying to bluff through without authorization. She listens to their sputterings and then explains why crowding has made these limitations of personal freedom necessary. Trouble? Not often, and when you notice her eyes, which at times can resemble blue marble, you know why.

In the evening she holds sore-feet clinics, showing sufferers how to bevel the edges of moleskin pads for blisters already formed and how to guard against more by lacing boots in a way that helps prevent the foot from slipping. Then, as campers gather on the rocks outside her cabin-and if they want to lister-she tells her favorite stories of the Canyon while the creek frets and splashes in the darkness.

On her days off, she walks seven miles up the trail to enjoy her books in her cabin on the North Rim. Other breaks come in the form of backpack patrols along some of the Canyon's seldom used, unmaintained trails. She has kept fit; her heart, lungs, and legs are strong, and her rolling gait devours distance.

She snorts when asked if such walks aren't dangerous. Adrenalin flows better when you are alone, she says; you are more careful, more aware. The vast gorge is not hostile; that trait is reserved mostly for humans. And if you follow the limits that the Canyon and your own body impose, it is not risky: watch where you put your feet and hands, never stretch too far, carry enough water to replace what the sun is relentlessly sucking out through your pores.

Above all, she advises, don't go hunting a message. Just walk, or sit, seeing beauty in your own way and, presently, without your being aware of how it happened, the serenity of timelessness arrives. Ultimately, that is what she came back to-the rightness she finds best in the sun-smitten Western earth.

David Lavender has written more than twenty-five books on the American West and is currently at work on a history of river running in the Grand Canyon.

Nearly everyone eventually visits the Grand Canyon, including Bil Keane's "Family Circus." The real life experiences of the Keane family, Arizonans since 1959, are the basis for the popular cartoon feature. Faithful readers especially look forward to the Keanes' summer vacations, when the daily installments of "Family Circus" become like postcards chronicling their travels and antics. The Keane children are grown with children of their own now, and Bil relies on visits with his grandchildren to inspire his sensitive wit. "I guess I'll have to take the grandchildren to the Canyon this next time," he says, adding, "the Grand Canyon still remains to me the prime place to take visitors when they stay with us." Keane, a member of the National Cartoonist's Society was named Cartoonist of the Year in 1983. His syndicated feature "Family Circus" appears in 1100 newspapers worldwide.

"After we see the sunrise, THEN Can we all go back to bed?"

"This is like a church, Mommy. Everyone's whispering."

"Reminds me of the rainbow layer cake you made for my birthday."

"Stop eating potato chips, Jeffy. We're trying to hear the river."

"Gee! This is too much like SCHOOL!"

"It smells like Christmas here."

"Why does Mommy hafta be alone to medicate?"

"Daddy's pictures will be better than these 'cause we'll be in them."

"That's gonna be a hard act to follow."