| Show the old settler my aly dear san Jua ners f the desert intrigues me I 1 travel i over it in an ecstasy of rapt contemplation it is not that vague I 1 charm of distance and mirage mirage 5 of silence and solitude the ecru scrubby b thorn bush the drifted sand the tiny warbler and the daring blush of oi 1 the cactus bloom all al that is difficult to define and impossible to appraise in terms of practical value but the gripp nig charm is in the positive challenge of hidden resources reso which men fail to discern because of I 1 their inherent doubts and age old precedents tile the desert has become forbidding and fearsome to all who have not been driven by necessity to seek out and develop its values the generations who have lived in the verdant regions along the streams have pronounced th the e desert a straach of starvation and death it will always be just that to those who accept this dictum and hold timidly to where the water wafer iid the grass is 1 is green continued from page 9 THE OLD SETTLER continued f roni rom page 1 I 1 have found desert country in all our western states more formidable in some places than in others but everywhere a positive challenge to the daring and re source fullness of men As I 1 ride away from the peopled areas 1 I approach civilization again for example traveling southwest from st george the cultivated areas become fewer and smaller a town a ranch an eating house by a lone waterhole water hole and then the dry solitude from which men have been taught to recoil in in fear las vegas abruptly on the scene but it is an oasis where men hover around a little water not a place where they have dared the desert from tucson to wickenburg to winslow to gallup to shiprock and cortez the contrasts of desert and mountain garden and wilderness is most thought pro oking from gallup to window rock and on westward through the reservation is a country to ki kindle in dl e the altitudes of thought though t the navajos cavajos are not farmers yet what they have been compelled to do or die in their rockbound rock bound concentration cent ration camp is 13 well worth considering by people who have always lived in ease near the water they have tried to use every little spring and seap every place where the ground moisture is in speaking terms with the surface then you go to the hopi people pl who have been shove d out into the desert the cavajos navajoa have some mountains the hopis chopis have none A people who loved peace and hated war they accepted breir stern stem assignment to the most undesirable part i of the world climbed ap and fortified themselves among its big rocks and went courage bosly with their rude hoes to dig their bread from the drifted sand hills they had to find it that way or die they die they braved the I 1 savagery of their merciless enemies while they nursed com j fields where nothing was supposed i to grow they got fruit trees into thrifty bearing where the desert sand grass had fought for a perilous ex istance drive today from Moen copy through the hopi villages to kearns keams canyon and see how many farms and orchards are flourishing in the kind of desert country of which the orthodox and pampered thel multitude is afraid sample the fruit and thir the melona elon the vegetables and the corn growing there among the big rocks and drifting sand and then consider what can and will be done with our modern appliances and conveniences when men get courage to face the desert with its ita wealth of hidden resources ALBERT R LYMAN |
