Editor’s Note: If you were with us last month, you might have noticed, and maybe even read, Nancy Newhall’s excellent story about Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. It was the first in a series of flashbacks we’ll be doing to celebrate our centennial. Although we’re best known for our photography, we’ve also featured some wonderful writers in the past 100 years. Ms. Newhall is high on that list. And so are Ernie Pyle, Marvin Weese, Joyce Rockwood, Jonreed Lauritzen, J. Frank Dobie, Terry Tempest Williams, Charles Bowden and our editor emeritus, Raymond Carlson. One of the latter’s favorite subjects was the changing of the seasons. “We have often been asked,” he wrote, “by many well-meaning and truly interested and serious askers, what we feel is the most delightful month in Arizona. Our answer is a simple one, but one that leaves us slightly out of breath. It is this: januaryfebruarymarchaprilmayjunejulyaugustseptemberoctobernovemberdecember.” He once said of his effort to chronicle the seasons of Arizona: “It’s more than just a job — it’s a crusade.”
A new guest has moved into the guest house. Her name is Summer.
She wears that old, old look. Paris shears have not altered the hem of her skirt nor changed the line of her bodice. Bespectacled little chemists, stirring the brew in their odorous dye pots, have concocted no outlandish colors for her to go swishing about in. Slick and glossy fashion editors of slick and glossy fashion magazines seldom call on her for an interview. She carries no appointments for sittings before high-powered cameras operated by high-powered young men. She’s just as plain as can be. Her plainness is the essence of poise and dignity.
Don’t think for a minute, though, that she’s just an old hat. She wears a green gown, and it is mighty becoming. It isn’t a monotonous green, mind you. It is the gray green of the saguaro, the silvery green of ripening grain, the dark green of the pine, the bright green of the sycamore, the light green of weeds on a canal bank, the green of olives with a faintly bluish cast, the just-right green of new-mown grass. In her gown are gracefully blended all the greens of growing things.
How little, indeed, she needs the services of the bespectacled chemists and their little dye pots. There never was a dressmaker who could match the fragrant simplicity of her gown.
And she has the nicest manners. She’s real ladylike with gentle ways and not in the least demanding. Now that hussy, Spring, who just moved out! If she wasn’t a sight and a caution! It’s true she was as pretty as a baby lizard and as gay as a grasshopper in love, but she was always singing and dancing about, making more noise than a squalling calf, flirting with all the boys, causing no end of trouble, and without one serious thought in her giddy little head. Hmm!
Life isn’t all just parties and pretty flowers and dancing and carrying-on! Someone has to wash the dishes and shake out the carpets. It was about time Spring was sent packing. And didn’t she leave the place in a shambles when she moved out.
Our new guest in the guest house is entirely different. She’s mild-mannered, even-tempered and as gracious and charming as she can be. She’s gay, too, but in a quiet sort of way, the kind of person who prefers the waltz to the jitterbug.
She’s composed, serene and smiling, and carries herself as if she were somebody, which, in truth, she is. She’s so cool and calm in her lovely green gown, and she has the loveliest name. Her name is Summer.