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Drawn to THE DESERT After several decades away, a Tohono O'odham returns to Baboquivari Peak and a 19th-century way of life

visit with Ed Kisto in the shadow of Baboquivari Peak feels like a journey to the 19th century a return to a time and place where people lived closer to the moon, the stars, the desert breeze and the omnipresent sun. Especially the sun.

Kisto, an elderly rancher, lives deep in the Sonoran Desert on the Papago (Tohono O'odham) Indian Reservation, some 80 miles southwest of Tucson. You cannot see another house from the saguaro-ribbed ramadas shading his house. Surrounded by mesquite and paloverde trees, deep dry washes and hills covered with giant saguaros, the rough terrain makes a horse the preferred means of transportation.

Two elements in particular both central to the life of the indigenous Tohono O'odham - dominate everything else: the blinding sun and the towering cliffs of Baboquivari Peak, home of the creator l'itoi. Hardly anything separates Kisto from either the sun or l'itoi. The house, by choice, contains neither air-conditioning nor evaporative cooling. "Even in the summer, it feels just fine to me," says Kisto.

With a warm breeze wafting across his ramada, he looks to the southeast to the Quinlan Mountains and Baboquivari Peak. Below the peak lies a cave the O'odham believe to be l'itoi's home.

l'itoi, the O'odham say, appeared when the darkness rubbed up against the water, and then he in turn created humans out of clay and gave them the gift of the crimson evening. In the O'odham creation story, l'itoi told the people to stay on the land where they were and where they remain. It is a thirsty land of rolling desert and volcanic mountains covered with cactuses and small trees.

When the evening light softens in the hills that form an undulating carpet from Kisto's ranch to the mountains, one understands why he missed the place so much when he lived in Los Angeles.

"L.A. was a very lonely place for me," he says. "I missed my animals. I had a dream that I would come back, build a nice little home and corral and get a few head of cattle. Now I have all that, and every day I ask l'itoi to give me a good day, and in the evening, before I go to bed, I thank him for a good day."

Kisto is about 78, which means he was born in the 20th century, yet aspects of his life seem like a story from an earlier time. Uncertain about when he was born or where, Kisto guesses it was in Tucson or on the wagon route his parents rode between Tucson and the reservation. He has a baptismal certificate from Mission San Xavier del Bac, dated November 20, 1925, and says he was old enough to remember the experience "so I was probably around four years old at the time."

He nods toward a painting hanging above the mantel of his stone fireplace. The painting shows a couple in a horse-drawn wagon traveling through the desert.

"That's the only picture I have of my parents," Kisto says. "I described them and the wagon to the artist, and that's how I have a picture of them."

The painting, a child's memory, remains one of the few vague connections to his early life. Both his parents died before he turned 12.

"I didn't know my father well," Kisto says. "He was always away on these trips, trading chickens, going to Tucson, selling them, buying dry goods, bringing them back out and trading some more. He was also a medicine man. I can remember times when we were on the road to Tucson with the wagon, and some guy would come by and pick him up. We would stay there all night with the horses and wagon, and they'd take him away to medicine the people. They'd bring him back the next day, and we'd be on our way again."

After high school at the Phoenix Indian School, he joined the Navy in 1941 rather than return to the reservation. "I didn't want to go back to the reservation. I didn't want to live in an ocotillo shack with a kerosene lamp. I wanted to have a light switch on the wall," he recalls.

After serving four years on a destroyer during World War II, he settled in L.A. and found work at a sprinkler company, a job he kept for 15 years. He began drinking alcohol in the Navy and continued drinking until 1958 when his only brother, who had a serious alcohol problem, committed suicide in South Tucson. That became Ed Kisto's wake-up call.

In 1966, Kisto came home to Arizona, leased 40 acres from the tribe, built his small, attractive home facing Baboquivari Peak and started buying cattle. He also immersed himself in tribal affairs, serving 22 years on the tribal council.

"When I stopped drinking, that's when I started to think more about l'itoi," Kisto says. "We all have to believe in a higher power, and we need to teach our kids to be proud of who they are. That's our problem. Right now on the reservation they say everything is education, you know, teach them the Papago [Tohono O'odham] language. There's no way you're going to speak the language if you don't have a reason to stay on the reservation.

"But what are they going to do with that education on the reservation? There are no factories here, no McDonald's, no jobs. They're going to leave. But that's a situation we should be able to do something about. We need to give them something to hope for, some reason to stay here."

Like a 19th-century Indian living too far from everything to think about help from strangers, Kisto places his faith in the people who are closest, his fellow tribesmen: "I've got some politicians from the tribe coming out here tonight. I'm going to have to talk to them about this again. This is something we've got to do for ourselves."