TRAVEL

BY: Charles Bowden

Where they still talk about the grizzly BLUE RIVER COUNTRY

The mail arrives as it always does three times a week at the tiny post office at Blue, Arizona, and Leola Parks sets to sorting it. She serves 18 heads of household, and 63 people up and down the valley. Harold and Hessie Whitmer haul the mail 20-odd miles down the dirt road from Alpine, and they always get through. They've been carrying the sacks downriver now for more than 50 years. Of course, it's not like the old days when there were no bridges, and the Blue had to be forded 52 times. Back then, Harold remembers, outlaws would camp on the upper Blue, and they'd leave a fiveor ten-dollar bill under a rock by the road, and he'd drop off groceries for them. They were polite outlaws, as it happened, and would inquire of Harold's brand, take careful note, and never rustle his stock. Harold, now 80 years old and a Blue Riverman since age five, thinks the world has gone to Hell since those sterling days. The people of the Blue River have never been big on change: as early as 1870, Arizona pioneer Sylvester Mowry was complaining about the name change from the Spanish Rio Azul to the English Blue River, and his resistance to newfangled things set the tone for the place. The small river heads up near Alpine and sputters down the eastern border of Arizona until it flows into the San Francisco, which courses by Clifton and Morenci, then finds the Gila, and snakes across the state to the Colorado. Or so the maps say.

BLUE RIVER COUNTRY

The Blue always has been populated by people trying to leave the maps. The hamlet sits at around 6,000 feet, below the towering Douglas fir-clad peaks of the twomillion-acre Apache Sitgreaves National Forest, and it always has attracted folks bent on escaping the notice of the world. Postmaster Leola Parks and her husband John, for example, are refugees from Phoenix. Some think Coronado wandered through here looking for those seven cities of gold, but, when whites arrived in the 1880s, the valley was empty. Apparently, Native Americans used it as a travel corridor more than as a home.

The settlers were of three basic streams: Mormons flowing down from the settlements of the Little Colorado to the north, Texans drifting west with cows from the Staked Plains and Panhandle, and outlaws coming from Hell, itself, and descending on the Blue because it ran right against the Arizona/New Mexico border and offered the possibility of bouncing back and forth between two jurisdictions. What all three found were a huge coniferous forest, deer, elk, black bear, wild turkeys, mountain lions, and the last stronghold of the grizzly bear in the American Southwest.

The Blue has been more a state of mind than a fixed point one can stab a finger at on the map. People say Blue River, or Blue River country as if the phrase contained all that can be said. Last night we camped above the river in groves of aspen and fir. Deer cluttered the high meadows and cow elk drifted through the grass at dusk.

The Forest Service posts warnings about black bears at every trailhead - don't hike at night, make lots of jolly noise when you are walking around, and so forth. Of course, most people never get to see a bear. In 30 years of stomping around Arizona, I've caught a glimpse of just one of the secretive beasts. When I asked the seasonal Forest Service workers, who spend every day in the woods hacking out trails or fighting fires, about the bears, they all pined to see just one. When we broke camp at first light and headed down the trail of KP Cienega, what we did see were two bull elk standing like statues in a sea of ferns. A wild turkey nibbled at something, and trees stood around that were about the size of a long elevator ride. The New Mexican locust was in bloom with lilac-like spikes of flowers, and the holes along the creek sheltered cunning native Apache trout. Penstemons fired up red columns of blossoms, and Indian paintbrush was about to burst forth. Wild strawberries carpeted the ground.

I lay under a big fir at the junction of KP and its North Fork and listened to water tumble down a 10-foot fall. I began to understand what Blue River country means. It is not a hard-edged concrete thing but more like a bundle of different colored yarns, and if you grab one strand it twines into another that in turn leads to another. All this was driven home to me the next day when I watched Harold and Hessie and Leola sorting mail down at the hamlet of Blue.

Sitting on the porch with them by the pots of petunias was Katherine Lee, widow of Clell Lee, who, along with his brother

WHEN YOU GO

Getting there: There are several ways to get to Blue River. From Phoenix take State Route 87 to State 260 at Payson to U.S. 60 at Show Low. Continue on to Springerville. From 1-40 take the U.S. 666 exit at Sanders, Arizona, proceed 82 miles to Springerville where you hook up with the section of U.S. 666 called the Coronado Trail, which takes you to Alpine. Stock up on supplies at Springerville, the last big town with a number of stores. At Alpine take U.S. 180 to Forest Service road 281 (graded gravel with bridges), and for the next 30-odd miles you'll follow the Blue. At the intersection of Forest Service road 567, you'll hit Blue Crossing with a campground. The Blue post office is 10 miles or so farther on.There are no restaurants, stores, or accommodations on the Blue.

What to see and do: The valley is dotted with small ranches, so help is always nearby. If you exit by ForestService road 567, you'll climb up to the peaks along 666. Head south along that road about 10 miles, and you'll come to Hannagan Meadow where deer and elk graze.

Where to stay: The Hannagan Meadow Lodge, more than 60 years old, has a restaurant, store, cabins, and rooms ($50 to $65). Telephone (602) 339-4370 or write Hannagan Meadow Lodge, P.O. Box 335, Alpine, AZ 85920 for reservations. There are also accommodations in Alpine. InAlpine stop at the Forest Service headquarters for a map detailing the many fine roads into the forest and the 24 area lakes, 400 miles of streams, and the numerous camping spots.

The trick to exploring the Blue is to look for nothing in particular it is all around you. If you like to fish, be sure and bring gear the trout are biting. In the winter, Hannagan Meadow is a hotbed of cross-country skiing and snowmobiling.

In the summer, figure 85° F. as the absolute high with lows in the forties. If you plan to go south, consider U.S. 666, one of the most beautiful and lonely roads in the West. Along the 69 miles to Clifton/Morenci there are no facilities, lots of hairpins, and breathtaking views. When the snows come, U.S. 666 south of Hannagan is allowed to drift shut until spring.

Dale, were the most famous lion and bear hunters in the American Southwest. Katherine arrived here in the mid-'30s, settled, married three times, and kept to her ranch. "I go with the ranch," she says. But before the Lees ever followed a baying hound, the Blue was home to yet another hunter, Ben Lilly, the man considered by some to be the greatest killer of lions and grizzlies who ever lived. Harold knew Ben Lilly "a fine gentleman." Lilly was a little peculiar. He never rode a horse; he ran on foot with his dogs, and it was said that mounted men could not keep up with him. He never hunted on Sunday, and if he treed a lion say at dusk Saturday, he'd sit under that tree until Monday morning and then shoot it. Which leads us back to KP Cienega and me laying under a Douglas fir listening to water tumble down the falls. On April 3, 1913, Ben Lilly, then 58, struck fresh grizzly tracks on Foote Creek at the western edge of the Blue's drainage. By his own account, he caught up with the bear near Paradise Park and Grant Creek and fired three times, hitting the animal in the hip as he ran. Lilly and his hounds roared up KP, right where I was resting, and then raced two miles uphill onto Hannagan Meadow. Lilly was tired and very hungry; he had not eaten in three days. (When he did eat he tended toward parched corn.) On the fourth day, he tumbled down into Fish Creek and drove the big bear to its den. As Lilly went up to the mouth of the den through five feet of snow, the bear came out to greet him, and Lilly put five rounds from his Winchester .33 into the animal. Then he reloaded. Still very much alive, the grizzly crashed downhill through the brush, and Lilly kept pouring lead into it, but the bear did not stop. And then it closed. The man stepped behind a small pine, the bear came around, the rifle fired once more into the animal's jaw, but still the beast, though injured badly, stayed on its feet. Just then one of the dogs grabbed the bear's hind leg. The grizzly paused, and its big jaws snapped shut on the hound. Lilly, who valued his dogs, got kind of mad. He dropped his rifle, which had not been a lot of help up to this point, and pulled out an 18-inch knife from the scabbard on his back. The bear noticed this shift in weaponry, dropped the dog, and took a swing at Lilly, but missed. Lilly plunged the blade into the bear's chest up to the hilt. And then man and beast went tumbling down the slope in an embrace. Lilly hugged the bear so as to avoid its claws, and he kept twisting that blade hop-ing he'd find some vital spot. Finally, they came to rest, the bear made one last weak effort at murdering its companion, then quit and died.

Big country around Hannagan Meadow. Hikers also might see such endangered birds as the American peregrine falcon, the spotted owl, the southern bald eagle, and the olive warbler.

Lilly then hiked 25 miles to get his pack horses. A government hunter, he recorded the kill. "I took careful measurements of this bear," he noted. "He measured 9 feet from nose to tail, 96 inches around the chest, stood 5 feet 8 inches at the shoulder, and his hind foot was 12 inches long and 7 inches wide. His claws were 5 inches long and, at the base, were thicker than a man's finger. The skull was 18 inches long. He was the largest bear and made the largest tracks of any I know of having been killed in the Rocky Mountains." As Lilly later explained the incident to a friend: "That bear sure had his hump up, but when he caught my best hound, I got my hump up, too, but now everything is mighty fine!"

And that is the Blue. The grizzly is gone, of course, the last one slaughtered in the '30s about the time Ben Lilly died in an old folks home near Silver City, New Mexico. There's talk from time to time of bringing them back one of those rare ideas that terrifies both ranchers and backpackers. In fact, grizzlies, setting aside their occasionally testy personality, base 90 percent of their diet on plants and would hardly cause much trouble to the cattle industry.

But the idea of having them around does raise the hair on the back of our necks. Harold once spooked a grizzly up close, and he recalls that he "sure was scared." At the Blue post office, the mail is about all sorted now, and Harold, sitting on the porch with his brass-headed cane, is fired up to go home. Leola Parks' husband John comes by. He was a friend and fellow hunter with Clell Lee, Ben Lilly's successor, after a fashion. He leads me into his house, which is filled with bear rugs and stuffed mountain lions. He tells me that he once spent 18 months here without going into town. I don't ask why because the answer is as obvious as a bull elk standing by a stream at first light with a swirl of ferns washing against its legs.

Katherine Lee, Clell's widow, presses a book on me: Down on the Blue, 18781986. The text is a wonderful hodgepodge of local people recalling and inventing their past. An earlier settler remembers how the Forest Service came in and ruined every-thing with its rules and regulations. An old man remembers his school days: how the teacher whipped an unruly student, and then the next time the teacher rode down the Blue, the whipped boy shot the teacherdead. Clell Lee recalls the big flood; ranch ladies remember with pleasure berry-picking season. Harold's in there, too, explaining how he almost lost a horse and the mail to a flood. The Blue rides easily in the book, a place without definition, a place that is a kind of consciousness. It was the Blue River country that prompted the great conservationist Aldo Leopold to note in his book, A Sand County Almanac, "It must be a poor life that achieves freedom from fear." It was also Leopold who noted the extermination of the grizzly from Escudilla, one of the neighboring mountains: "When you see it, you no longer think of bear. It's only a mountain now."

Today, Blue River fills one with quiet satisfaction and vague unease. It is the place to get away from what we are and hear the whispers of what we were. The elk fill the meadows, and at night the coyotes howl. A big black bear track fills the path, columbine blooms by the trail, and some of the trees are older than our nation. Ben Lilly's dead, and maybe the grizzly will return to teach us we are not and never can be the lords of these mountains. If you go there, don't look for some exact point. It will be all around you, floating in the air. As Katherine Lee once wrote, "This country gives one such a sense of freedom and being a part of nature."

I remember walking down KP Creek and coming upon a bull elk. It lifted its head and just stared at me for a moment as if I were out of place. I know the bull was right, but I figured if I worked on the matter, maybe I could belong, too. Then the elk moved slowly up the slope and disappeared into the forest.

Additional Reading: Among the good books about the area is Down on the Blue, 1878-1986, $30.00, from Blue River Cowbelles, Box 84, Blue, AZ, 85922, or at the Blue post office.

Travel Guides: For those who want specific guidebooks to places in Arizona, Arizona Highways has published a series intended to meet most traveler's needs. They include Travel Arizona, a compendium of oneto three-day tours throughout the state, A Guide to Fishing and Hunting; A Guide to Camping; A Guide to Hiking and Backpacking, and The Back Roads. For more information or to order, write Arizona Highways, 2039 W. Lewis Ave., Phoenix, AZ 85009, or telephone toll-free 1 (800) 5435432. In the Phoenix area, call 258-1000.

BLUE RIVER COUNTRY Travel with the Friends of Arizona Highways

The Friends of Arizona Highways, the magazine's volunteer auxiliary, conducts tours to exotic Arizona locations. Here is a partial schedule of those trips:

Photo Tours

Top Arizona Highways photo contributors lead threeto five-day field workshops for advanced amateur photographers. Tours include: March 8-10: Visit the cacti and desert wildflowers of Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument with Jerry Sieve and Arizona Highways Picture Editor Peter Ensenberger.

April 17-19: In the fabled Superstition Mountains, star-stalker Frank Zullo demonstrates techniques for photographing the glittering nighttime skyscapes.

May 2-5: Share the expertise of photojournalist Christine Keith on an 11-mile trek through Aravaipa Canyon Wilderness, a rare and beautiful desert riparian area.

July 25-28: The unique scenery of the Petrified Forest National Park and the Painted Desert is the backdrop for a photographic seminar with Dale Schicketanz.

For complete information and reservations, telephone the Friends of Arizona Highways Travel Desk (602) 271-5904.

Scenic Tours

Twoand three-day tours, held in conjunction with the Arizona Automobile Association, are scheduled regularly to the Grand Canyon and Lake Powell. For addi-tional information or to make reservations, telephone the AAA at (602) 274-5805 in Phoenix or 1 (800) 352-5382 statewide.

For information about longer scenic tours, call the Friends' Travel Desk at (602) 271-5904. One such tour highlight will be: May 6-10: Senior Arizona Highways author and photographer Ray Manley will escort a four-day four-day exploration of northern Arizona's fascinating Indian country, with overnight stays at historic Gouldings Trading Post and Lodge in Monument Valley and at Thunderbird Lodge in Canyon de Chelly.

Shutterbug Safaris

For the casual snapshooter, Southwestern photographers lead one-day excursions from Phoenix or Tucson to destinations within a 125-mile radius of each metropolitan area. Safari members aim their cameras at such locations as the Apache Trail, San Xavier Mission, and the Catalina Mountains. For complete information, telephone (602) 271-5904.