INTRODUCTION

Mountains ring the edges of Arizona and rise in its interior, some floating like mirages in low desert valleys, others adorning the high forested plateaus. They gather clouds and beget rivers that flow out into cactus country, cow country, timber country, and copper country. Nowhere else can you find more diverse mountain landscapes than in this state.

In this exhibit, taken from the Arizona Highways book, The Mountains Know Arizona: Images of the Land and Stories of Its People, author Rose Houk and photographer Michael Collier explore this endless, fascinating diversity. From ten mountain ranges across the state, they share what they see and contemplate from those heights.

Traveling more than 30,000 miles over two years, the pair let serendipity guide them much of the way. They followed in the footsteps of pathfinder Jacob Hamblin around Mount Trumbull, watched for bighorn sheep in the Kofas, listened for the howl of wolves in the White Mountains, and luxuriated in fields of desert wildflowers around the Four Peaks.

Says Michael Collier: “Photographing Arizona for this book felt a lot like coming home
. . . .To walk with my camera has been to witness the beauty that still shines in this world.”

Rose Houk writes: “My first sight of the San Francisco Peaks some thirty years ago...impressed upon me the power of mountains, how they draw you in, how they define a particular geography...why they are regarded as the sacred homes of the gods.”

Photographs in this exhibit were taken on the ground with an Arca-Swiss view camera through Rodenstock, Schneider, and Nikon lenses. Aerial photographs were taken with a Pentax 645. Fuji Velvia film was used both on the ground and in the air; ground images were recorded on 6x7cm or 6x9cm roll film; aerial images were all 6x4.5cm . The prints were made electronically, digitized in an Imacon scanner and printed on an Epson 2000P printer with semigloss paper.

Biographies

Michael Collier received a BS in geology at NAU, an MS in structural geology at Stanford, and an MD from the University of Arizona. He rowed boats commercially in Grand Canyon during the late 1970s and early ‘80s. Collier lives in Flagstaff and practices family medicine in Williams. He has published books about the geology of Grand Canyon, Death Valley, Denali, and Capitol Reef National Parks, and more recently, about the Colorado River basin and the glaciers of Alaska. As a special projects writer with the USGS, he has written and photographed books about the San Andreas Fault, downstream effects of dams, and climate change. Collier received the USGS Shoemaker Communication Award in 1997 and the National Park Service Director’s Award in 2000.

Rose Houk is a freelance writer and editor specializing in natural history, history, archaeology, and travel, with many works for national parks and monuments. She came to Arizona in 1979 to work as a ranger at the Grand Canyon, and ended up staying to serve as publications assistant for the Grand Canyon Association. Rose is a frequent contributor to Arizona Highways magazine and KNAU Radio’s Earth Notes series. She received the Special Achievement Award from Southwest Parks and Monuments Association and the 1997 Copper Quill Award from Friends of the Flagstaff Library.

FOUR PEAKS

A Colorado cowboy had to point out to us Arizonans that the Four Peaks are pictured on our state’s license plate. It was a little embarrassing, given that we had just come down from the heights of those mountains, but we’d failed to notice their purple profile emblazoned on aluminum on the back of our bumper.

The cowboy pulled over in his big white pickup truck at the Salt River bridge on New Year’s morning. He stuck out his hand, introduced himself (“Howdy, Johnny Green’s my name”). Seeing Michael’s camera, he wanted to know if we had any pictures with us, “old pictures,” he said. We allowed that we didn’t have any, then explained that we were working on a book about Arizona mountains, at which time he called our attention to the artwork on our license plate. I said I was interested in old pictures too, especially ones showing construction of Roosevelt Dam in the early 1900s. Darn if he didn’t know of some, on the wall of a cafe down the road.

Our new acquaintance had steered us right, for the cafe’s walls were decked out with wonderful black-and-white enlargements of the men who hauled the freight and cut the stone to build Roosevelt Dam, the first dam on the Salt River and one of the first in the federal government’s fledgling program to “reclaim” the nation’s dry lands.

At the foot of the Four Peaks are strung four reservoirs. The mnemonic S-C-A-R spells their sequence as they stairstep up the Salt River--Saguaro, Canyon, Apache, and finally the silver waters of Roosevelt Lake, the largest. The lakes were formed by dams that have stanched the river’s flow for the time being and enclosed the words Salt River in parentheses on the forest map.

The Four Peaks, incisors of old quartzite gnawing at the sky, draw a dramatic conclusion to the south end of the mighty Mazatzal Mountains. With the Mazatzals to the north, and the Superstition Mountains pinching in on the south, the Salt River threads through the “eye” of a geologic needle on its way west into the Sonoran Desert.

This quartet of peaks, and the quartet of lakes now encircling their base, have profoundly shaped Arizona’s cultural landscape. For well nigh a century, these lakes have provided the water for fields of cotton, groves of oranges, and hedges of oleanders, not to mention the millions of people living in the state’s largest--and ever-expanding--metropolitan area.

PHOTOS IN THIS SECTION:
Saguaro, cottonwoods and mesquite 2000
Poppies and gilia, Stewart Mountain 2001
Agave in the Sierra Ancha 2002
Saguaros and cottonwoods, Armer Ck 2000
Lupine in Usery Mountains 2001
Maple leaves on Aztec Peak 2000
Salt River at Horseshoe Bend 2002
Agaves and the Four Peaks 2000

In the summer of 1909 a bright young forester fresh out of Yale made the two-day wagon trip from the railhead in Holbrook to the headquarters of the newly created Apache National Forest in the White Mountains of eastern Arizona. His name was Aldo Leopold.

On horseback, Leopold spent his first summer mapping and cruising timber in the lush forests. Referring to the region in the singular, he declared that this “White Mountain” was a “horseman’s world. . . .the county-sized plateau known as ‘on top’ was the exclusive domain of the mounted man: mounted cowman, mounted sheepman, mounted forest officer, mounted trapper, and those unclassified mounted men of unknown origin and uncertain destination always found on frontiers.”. . .

In their highest reaches, the White Mountains are the natal home of several of Arizona’s most important rivers. The Little Colorado rises from a spring on Mt. Baldy--at 11,590 feet the second highest point in the state. The East and West forks join into a defined Little Colorado, which flows north and west to join the mainstem Colorado deep in the Grand Canyon. The Black, the White, and the Blue rivers are born in these mountains too. At Three Forks, a trio of tributaries meets and enters a steep-walled rocky canyon as the Black River gains force. It meets the White deep in Apacheland, and together the two weave southwestward to form the Salt River. The Blue River begins in the Sierra Azul, or Blue Range, on the east side of the White Mountains, then heads south to add its waters to the Gila.

For Aldo Leopold, the White Mountains were paradise. They remain so today. But they’re different from most Arizona mountains. The first and lasting impression is that a person is not so much on these mountains as in them. Their summits and knolls and domes roll away in the distance like big blue ocean breakers. They cradle immense meadows, grass-filled bowls brightened in summer with harebell, primrose, and daisy. Kestrels hover over exhilarating expanses of golden grama, and herds of elk flow across the meadows like brown rivers. The drooping branches of spike-topped spruce rim the meadow coves, an alpine forest of gnomes and elves. Small lakes and moist cienegas fill the swales. At dusk, bugs hatch, fish rise, and ospreys hunt over the silver waters.

PHOTOS IN THIS SECTION:
Crescent Lake 2000
Reflected sunset at Crescent Lake 2000
Potentilla at K.P. Cienega 2000
Aspen at Paddy Creek 2000
Aspens along Tool Box Draw 2000
Ponderosa and aspen above Greer 2002
Springerville Volcanic Field 2000
Sunset above Rudd Knoll 2000

HUACHUCA MOUNTAINS

It’s Easter Sunday in Garden Canyon in the Huachuca Mountains. A few families have arrived early to get a picnic table. Michael and I drive up the road as far as we can go, then get out and start walking. In about a half mile, we see a trio of women crouched low, scanning the trees along the creek. They’ve spotted something, so we keep our voices down and, ever so subtly, join in their discovery.

“There he is!” they exclaim, training their binoculars on the branches of a large white-barked sycamore. The object of their excitement is a bird. We hear the weird call, like a barking dog, the sound of a male elegant trogon. Decked out in beautiful green back, red breast, and long coppery tail, he adds an exotic touch of the subtropical here. Michael had never seen this splendid bird, and this was only my second sighting. I’m thrilled with our good fortune so early in the day.

Elegant trogons. Lucifer hummingbirds. Yellow-billed cuckoos. Gray hawks. Barking frogs. Long-nosed bats. Coatimundis. Coues white-tailed deer. Jaguars. Water umbels. Lemon lilies. All these animals and plants make the Huachuca Mountains a piñata of biological treats. The Huachucas and neighboring mountains of southeast Arizona--the Chiricahuas, Santa Ritas, Dragoons, Whetstones, Mustangs, and Mules--are known as “sky islands.” From a distance they do appear to float like dark green, wooded islands out of oceans of desert and grassland. Because of each range’s isolation, and the inability of some animals to cross those valley barriers, species tend to specialize: for example, the handsome Apache red squirrel is restricted to the Chiricahuas; the Arizona gray squirrel is in the Huachucas and Santa Ritas; and the endangered Mount Graham red squirrel lives only at the top of the Pinalenos.

The steep slopes of the mountains are thickly clothed with agave; beargrass; manzanita; sumac; a perplexing number of stiff-leaved, evergreen oaks; and four different kinds of pines. The forests are like those in the Sierra Madre in Mexico. Where this so-called Madrean woodland spills into southern Arizona, it meets three other major natural communities--the Rocky Mountains reach their farthest southern extent here, while two major North American deserts, the Sonoran and the Chihuahuan, overlap from west and east. With elements from all four big biomes coming together and mixing, biologists proclaim this sky island region “a center of mega-diversity” on the planet.

PHOTOS IN THIS SECTION:
San Rafael Grasslands 2001
Maples in Miller Canyon 2001
Maples and lichen, Chiricauhua Mtns 2001
Miller Creek 2001

KOFA MOUNTAINS

Arizona is a land of extremes they say, and nowhere are those extremes more pronounced than in the state’s southwest corner. In this far reach, within fifteen miles of each other rise the sunstruck face of the Kofa Mountains and the satin-soft waters of the Colorado River, the starkest desert in the country and the Southwest’s mother stream.

The austere mountains rear up out of the desert without preface, their burnt ochre color bespeaking their fiery volcanic origin. Their highest peak reaches only about 4,800 feet, and they are bereft of water, except for ephemeral tinajas or artificial tanks built by hunters to lure bighorn sheep. The Kofa’s rugged, snaggle-toothed crest offers no soft edges, no invitation to saunter in their sylvan glades. Entry into them is formidable, save for the occasional burro or sheep trail or bushwhack up a deadend wash. As Martin Litton wrote in a 1951 issue of Arizona Highways, he’d take an “outlander guest” to them first. “I’d give you your big dose of desert all at once. I wouldn’t lead up to it gradually. I wouldn’t fool around with the small fry at all. I’d take you straight to the King.”

The “King” is the King of Arizona Mine, whose initials K-O-F-A gave the mountains their name.

In 1862, discoveries of gold and silver unleashed the great Colorado River Rush. A herd of prospectors and miners thundered into the Kofa Country, congregating in rough and tumble camps and towns. On the California side, there was Tumco in the Cargo Muchacho Mountains and several diggings in the Picacho area. Among other famous names were the La Paz, Fortuna, Red Cloud, Clip, numerous endeavors of Colonel Jacob Snively and Herman Ehrenberg in the Castle Dome district, the North Star, and of course the King of Arizona.

In 1899, with a source of permanent water and temporary resolution of lawsuits, the Kofa was going full blast. At its peak, some 750 people called the Kofa home and there was even an elementary school for sixteen students. The general manager, said one report, “hires mostly Cornish miners from Cornwall, England. They have brought their families with them, so Kofa tends to be a quieter mining town than usual.”

But by 1907, the King of Arizona Mine was on a downhill slide. The ore played out, and the mine shut down for good in 1910. Today, the remains of the Kofa and neighboring North Star and Polaris mines are accessible in the south end of the range--mostly crumbling buildings; tailings piles; mounds of broken crockery, blue glass, and rusted tin cans; and signs on private property warning “Stay on Designated Roads and “Danger Cyanide.” The sound of the wind rules the place.

PHOTOS IN THIS SECTION:
Algodones Dunes 1 (Vertical) 2000
Algodones Dunes 2 (Horizontal) 2000
Debris at the Polaris Mine 2001
Colorado River at Ehrenberg 1991
Ocotillo at Kofa Queen Canyon 2000
Castle Dome Mountains 2001
Mudcracks at Martinez Lake 2002
Colorado River at the Sea of Cortez 1996
Colorado River within Martinez Lake 2002

HUALAPAI MOUNTAINS

If a person wanted to go somewhere in Arizona and not see a soul for forty days and forty nights, the upper reaches of Burro Creek could be the place. At least that’s what Bob Hall, public affairs officer for the Bureau of Land Management in Kingman, suggested to an acquaintance who wanted to mark the fortieth year of his life in this way.

The man followed Hall’s suggestion, put on his backpack, and started walking. But it was winter and the sun doesn’t warm the banks of upper Burro Creek much at that time of year. Still, the man managed to sustain his dream by staying out thirty of the forty days, and he never did encounter another human being.

The wilds of Burro Creek are only a small part of the region under Bob Hall’s purview--in all there are about five million acres of public land in northwest Arizona, from the Grand Wash Cliffs at the western end of Grand Canyon, south to Alamo Lake on the Bill Williams River, and west to Topock on the lower Colorado River. It includes the Black, Cerbat, and Music mountains in the north, the Rawhide, Poachie, Arrastra, and McCracken ranges in the south and southwest, and the Hualapai Mountains rising in the center. Elevation ranges from 600 feet above sea level at Topock to 8,417 feet on Hualapai Peak, from low desert, to foothills, to forested highlands. Such a vast difference means precipitation varying from six to as much as 24 inches a year.

In certain places in and around the Hualapais, there exists an astounding juxtaposition of two major North American deserts--the Sonoran and Mojave. That happy situation is evidenced where the Sonoran Desert’s signature saguaro cactus grows within the arms of the Mojave Desert’s trademark Joshua tree.

Coursing through this amazing desert country are three rivers--the Big Sandy, the Santa Maria, and the Bill Williams. Knight and Trout creeks join above the little roadside town of Wikieup to form the Big Sandy. The river lazes down through the valley on the east side of the Hualapais; after Burro Creek joins, the Big Sandy meets the Santa Maria to form the Bill Williams at the south end of the range. That confluence now is under the waters of Alamo Lake.

We took the Signal Road one April day as the desert was putting on a stupendous once- in-a-decade-or-two floral show. Heading west, we forded the Big Sandy at a couple of shallow places. We backtracked to camp for the night in a spot agog with wildflowers. Near sunset, I sat on a boulder amid brittlebush, lupine, buckwheat, tackstem, and a plant I’d never seen before, a pale delphinium. Back in the camper, birds kept me awake a good part of the night. It was breeding season, and they must have been working ‘round the clock. I could have sworn some were saying “come here, come here, come here.”

The next morning, the warm honey calls of doves played soothing background music. I walked along the old road on a quest for the perfect mariposa lily--delicate lilac petals atop frail stems, the inner sanctum of the flower marked with deep purple spots. This, one of nature’s most exquisite creations, is only one of many riches secreted in the Hualapai Mountain country.

PHOTOS IN THIS SECTION:
Buckwheat at Lake Mead 1990
Barrel cactus at Union Pass 2000
Claretcup Cactus, Cerbat Mountains 2001
Saguaro and Palo Verde, Aubrey Hills 2002
Oaks along Potato Patch Loop 2001
Datura, Hassayampa River 1994
Hibernia Canyon 2000
Cholla along the Santa Maria River 2001

NAVAJO MOUNTAIN

The van’s wheels spun in the sand and stopped. We piled out, stashed water bottles and cinched up straps on our packs, eased the loads onto our backs, and started to walk. Past a Navajo hogan and a sheep pen with a scarecrow, we saw the monumental stack of rocks, the cairn marking the head of the trail around the north side of Navajo Mountain.

It was a clear April Monday with a cool breeze, perfect hiking weather. For the next five days, eleven of us on an Arizona Highways photography trip, would be in the constant presence of this imposing mountain the Navajos call Naatsis'aan, Pollen Mountain, the head of a reclining female.

The blue dome of Navajo Mountain floats on the horizon, visible from nearly 100 miles away. “It is quite solitary, without even a foothill for society, and its very loneliness is impressive,” wrote geologist Clarence Dutton. Rising to 10,388 feet above sea level, and forested with ponderosa, spruce, fir, and aspen, Navajo Mountain straddles the Arizona-Utah border. On talus slopes near the top, groundwater surfaces as springs, where locals make pilgrimages to get “sweet water.”

Our path took us around the base of Navajo Mountain, through a maze of sandstone canyons, ending at Rainbow Bridge. We were awed into silence at the sight of the regal span, and at the same time we hesitated to accept the reality of civilization that accompanied the sight of the boat dock and the encroaching waters of Lake Powell. We caught whiffs of the perfume of the sightseers who had just arrived by boat and who strolled up from the dock a hundred yards or so, snapped quick pictures of the famous natural bridge, and turned to go.

As we boarded the boat, our eyes remained riveted on snow-capped Navajo Mountain framed perfectly by the glorious curve of Rainbow Bridge. We left with the special knowledge of the privilege we had just shared, living within these glowing walls for a time, walls tapestried with threads of desert varnish, walls that can change a person’s life. Essence-of-canyon-country days. Days amid swirling sandstone. Turquoise sky. Lizards. Green trees. Song of canyon wren. Hot sun. Rippling water. Rustlings. Whispers. Memories

PHOTOS IN THIS SECTION:
Yucca in Piute Canyon 2000
Cliffrose at Betatakin 1999
Mudflats in Cathedral Wash 2001
Oak Canyon 2001
Grand Canyon above Unkar Canyon 2000

CHUSKA & LUKACHUKAI MOUNTAINS

Perched on the crest of a sand dune, I turn my back to the wind as it hurls blistering grains against my skin. A veil of virga sweeps over the top of Mexican Cry Mesa. Some of the raindrops begin to reach the ground, dimpling the dune’s surface. Just as I’m about to seek shelter beneath a lone juniper, a rainbow arcs across the sky. Then, another fainter bow appears above it. Each band of the color spectrum is clear and distinct--red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet--garnet, emerald, amethyst, opal.

I recall the Navajo creation story of Changing Woman and her twin sons, Monster Slayer and Born for Water, whose job was to rid the land of alien monsters and giants. Monster Slayer used rainbows to fasten protective blankets of clouds and fog over his mother’s house until a violent storm passed and she was assured the intruders were gone.

The rain skirts by, and I stay until the sun eases down to the horizon. Beams of light stream from behind the clouds and paint the swirling sandstone spires called Los Gigantes in gold. I begin to understand why the Navajos call this the Glittering World. This is their land, and they speak often of walking in beauty--their word both for beauty and harmony is hózhó. It is a complex idea, central to their worldview. One should strive to walk in beauty, and if one strays he must seek healing ceremonies to restore harmony. A rainbow is the path to follow, and a break in one is a serious impediment to that journey.

This field of sand dunes nestles against the north end of the Lukachukai Mountains. The Lukachukais are the northern extension of the larger main mountain range, the Chuskas, which ride the border of northeast Arizona and northwest New Mexico. Their dark, brooding mass stretches for nearly a hundred miles south to Window Rock, capital of the Navajo Nation.

Roads, mostly dirt, lead up into the Chuskas where the view to the north stretches across the infinite Four Corners country, punctuated by Sleeping Ute and the La Plata Mountains in western Colorado and riven by the San Juan River. The east face of the Chuskas drops precipitously into the San Juan’s sun-seared basin in New Mexico, out of which the imposing volcanic plug of Shiprock pierces the sky. To the south bounds Beautiful Valley, a mesmerizing swath of colorful badlands, to the small town of Ganado, where Hubbell Trading Post reposes under graceful cottonwoods beside Pueblo Colorado Wash. To the west, Canyon de Chelly and its major tributary, Canyon del Muerto, are sequestered in the wooded dome of the Defiance Plateau. The artifacts of industry--oil rigs, sawmills, uranium and coal mines--exist alongside old mud hogans and fields of bushy corn.

For the Diné, as the Navajos call themselves, this land holds sacred places, sacred plants, stories of their origins, and their gods. Monster Slayer journeyed here, readying the earth for the five-fingered humans. The real rivers and mountains of this country mark his travels and define a sacred geography to the Navajos.

PHOTOS IN THIS SECTION:
Los Gigantes 2000
Big Gap in Rock Ridge 2000
Aspen in the Lukachukais 2001
Hasbidito Sand Dunes 2000
Shiprock 2000

SANTA CATALINAS

From Windy Point halfway up the Santa Catalina Mountains, the giant orange globe of the sun sinks toward the Tucson Mountains. Families pour out of the back of Broncos, sweethearts smooch, teenagers catcall to their buddies, climbers spider up the vertical granite boulders. It’s quite the scene on a late Sunday afternoon, as Tucsonans flock to savor the spectacular view and the aroma of pines in this mountain sanctuary. At dusk the sky grades from peach to violet, and the lights of the city, 3,000 feet below, wink on like stars in a bowl lined with black velvet.

Between the Santa Catalinas and the Tucson Mountains, the Santa Cruz River once flowed north past Tucson. Looking south from the Catalinas, I think about Spaniards, following this lifeline in the 1600s and 1700s into southern Arizona which was then, in the words of historian Tom Sheridan, “a world perched on the periphery of a periphery.”

To save native souls and defend against Apaches, Spanish priests and soldiers built missions and presidios along the Santa Cruz--Tumacacori, Tubac, and San Xavier del Bac. Notable among the priests was the indefatigable Jesuit Eusebio Kino, who rode on horseback across Pimeria Alta establishing missions along the Santa Cruz and other major rivers of southern Arizona. It was Father Kino, looking north from near San Xavier in 1697, who named the massive blue mountains in his language--Santa Catarina--perhaps because it was St. Catherine’s Day when he gained that first view. To the native Tohono O’odham the range was Babad Do’ag, Frog Mountain.

Though Father Kino enjoyed good relations with the native people, others offended with some of their high-handedness. In 1751, Pima chief Luis of Saric led a revolt, in which the small village of Tubac, about forty miles south of present-day Tucson, was destroyed. A year later, in June 1752, the Presidio San Ignacio de Tubac was established. With fifty leather-jacketed soldados stationed there, under the command first of Captain Juan Tomas Belderrain and later Juan Bautista de Anza, Tubac became the first permanent Spanish settlement in Arizona.

At the state historic park at Tubac, four centuries of complex cultural overlays are in evidence--Indian, Spanish, Mexican, and Anglo. At the site of a small Pima village, the Spaniards built a fortified house for the commandante, presidio headquarters, a church, and a one-room adobe school. I walk the grounds, studying melting adobe walls and trying to reconstruct in my mind’s eye what it was like here in the 1750s--the elegant home where serious governmental affairs were negotiated and festive holiday fiestas were held; the air seductive with the scent of corn tortillas and oiled leather; and caged birds singing in the soldiers’ homes.

A stairway leads underground to a fascinating archaeological display, revealing a cross-section of the footings and other parts of the old presidio/captain’s home. The exhibit label says that three chicken bones can be seen in the dun-colored adobe. Although I squint through the Plexiglas, I fail to detect them, a small thing compared to the larger significance of this historic place.

PHOTOS IN THIS SECTION:
Cottonwoods in Aravaipa Canyon 2001
Grasses in Molina Basin 2000
Bear Wallow, Catalina Mountains 2001
Owl Clover, Kitt Peak 2001
Sycamore in Turkey Canyon 1995
Vekol Wash 1997
Sycamore leaves in Redfield Canyon 2001
Pusch Ridge above Tucson 2001
Seven Falls, Bear Canyon 2001

MOUNT TRUMBULL & THE UINKARETS

On a steamy day in August, Sister Welch greeted us out on the front porch of the Jacob Hamblin home in Santa Clara, Utah, and invited us to sit down on a bench inside the dark, cool living room.

“Do you have plenty of time, or do you have to go soon?” she asked courteously. We allowed that we did have time, so with a map as a visual aid she began to recount the life and travels of Jacob Hamblin, Mormon missionary and trailblazer.

South of Hamblin’s home in Santa Clara extends a vast territory, nearly five million acres of some of the emptiest, most remote land in the Lower Forty Eight. It’s known as the Arizona Strip, the northwest corner of Arizona by virtue of political boundaries but undeniably a part of Utah geographically and ecclesiastically.

The brooding Uinkaret Mountains and their highest peak, Mount Trumbull, rise up on the southern edge of this great expanse, overlooking the Colorado River as it writhes through the lower Grand Canyon like a brown dragon. The mountains drop down to the sagebrush-filled Toroweap Valley to the east, and the land swells again to more than 9,000 feet on the forested Kaibab Plateau. Stairstepping down to the west are the dramatic Hurricane Cliffs, the Shivwits Plateau, Main Street Valley, and the escarpment of the Grand Wash Cliffs that define the western edge of the Colorado Plateau. The Virgin Mountains and the Vermilion Cliffs demarcate the Strip to the north.

It’s all high, wide, lonesome country. Where you can drive 200 miles and never touch pavement, where the only trace of another human is a whirl of dust far in the distance or the forsaken muffler abandoned in the middle of the road. Where the population of rattlesnakes, jackrabbits, golden eagles, and mountain lions outnumbers that of people.

On a visit to the Uinkarets, my thoughts turn to Jacob Hamblin and the improbable scene of him wrestling a wooden boat over this wild land to reach the Colorado River. Hamblin realized that he could save several days’ travel by crossing the Colorado at the mouth of the Paria River in a boat. In an effort commanding huge doses of faith and imagination, a skiff was loaded on a wagon that was wrangled up and over the Kaibab Plateau until it became mired in sand. Without the boat, the party continued on to the crossing, where they fashioned a makeshift craft of “floatwood fastened together by withes.” This tenuous raft got the people across but not their animals or supplies.

In 1864, a determined Hamblin was back at the riverbank. With materials brought for the purpose, he wrote, “we constructed a small boat, in which we conveyed our luggage across.” This was typical understatement, for this event heralded the first authentic crossing of the Colorado at that location. It would soon become known as Lees Ferry.

PHOTOS IN THIS SECTION
Colorado River below Toroweap 2000
Hurricane Valley Juniper 2000
Wild Band Mesa 2000
Aztec Sandstone in Cottonwood Creek 2002
Vermilion Cliffs 2001

SAN FRANCISCO PEAKS

A visit to the San Francisco Peaks on a clear autumn day is a treasured annual rite. In late September, from my home in Flagstaff, I gaze toward the mountains to see if the aspens are turning. For a closer look, I head out on a forest road that circles the north side of the Peaks.

To reach the glittering groves, I start my morning stroll on the Bear Jaw Trail. At the trailhead, I pick up a downed aspen branch, break off the ends and fashion a fine, light walking stick to keep me company. The forest is soft and silent, the trail carpeted with dusky needles from the fir and spruce.

Gaining elevation, I come upon aspens, changing from summer’s green to fall’s fiery yellow, orange, and bronze. The leaves quake and chatter on their stems. Bracken ferns, crisped by nighttime frosts, fringe the trees’ alabaster trunks.

The wine-rich smell of fallen leaves evokes an aching nostalgia. Memories swirl up like dust on the road. The short, sweet summer of the northland is closing--I’ve already pulled up the dry bean stalks from the garden, put seed in the bird feeders, and helped Michael stack our winter firewood. After two consecutive years of miserly moisture, like everyone else I’m eagerly anticipating the first dusting of snow on the mountains.

Black bears have been seen on this side of the Peaks. With the drought driving the bears to range more widely for food and water, encounters with people tend to be more frequent. If I’m lucky enough to see one here, I wonder if I’ll have the fortitude to stand my ground and challenge the bruin by making lots of noise. Or will I betray the advice of experts and turn tail and run, leading the animal to view me as juicy prey?

The view north from the trail is splendid. Through the trees I see elegant cinder cones, a handful of the 600 or so in the 1,800-square-mile volcanic field that surrounds the Peaks. Shimmering in the mid-distance are the muted pastels of the Painted Desert and Navajoland. Beyond stretches the rim of the Grand Canyon, giving no clue of the great defile that slashes the plateau. On the farthest horizon, nearly a hundred miles away, floats the dim blue dome of Navajo Mountain.

Though I didn’t see a bear on my hike that day, their fresh claw marks were scrawled into the bark of several aspens. But I did revel in glorious groves of aspen in full fall splendor. Their patchwork of colors blazed against a seamless blue sky, gilding the air. Another autumn, another pilgrimage into the beautiful San Francisco Peaks that anchor my life and define my view of the world.

PHOTOS IN THIS SECTION:
Maple and ponderosa, Fry Canyon 2000
Lomaki and the San Francisco Peaks 2001
Clouds above Hart Prairie 2000
San Francisco Peaks 1996
Aspen in Lockett Meadow 2000
West Fork, Oak Creek 2001
Sunset on the San Francisco Peaks 2000
Fry Canyon 2000
Spruce and aspen, Mt. Humphreys 1997
Mt. Humphreys 2001
Ponderosa on the Coconino Forest 2001
Maple leaf on basalt, Fry Canyon 2000
Oak Creek Canyon 2001
Kinder Crossing, East Clear Creek 2002
Dry Lake aspens 2000