The Desert Year

Undiscovered Country

Chapter Fifteen Undiscovered Country Undiscovered Country In the good old days, it took thirteen to make a baker's dozen. Under our economy of abundance, such amiable cheats have, paradoxically, pretty well disappeared. But a sabbatical year still means fifteen months for a few of the more fortunate college professors . When twelve of mine had passed, it seemed a good idea to spend a part of the dividend or lagniappe away from home, in that high region of sandstone buttes where, years ago, I first felt the fascination of the Southwest's lonely grandeur. Just returned from a seventeen-hundred-mile circuit, my eyes have not yet recovered from the merciless assault of bright colors and bold forms, but I know that memory had 239 UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY not deceived me. There is probably no spot on earth where inanimate nature makes a more stunning display of one special kind of overwhelming magnificence . Once the southern wall of that plateau which covers almost the whole northern half of Arizona has been climbed, a different world appears. For one thing, the altitudes range from about five thousand to more than twelve thousand feet; for another, the topography and the geology are predominantly different . Between the peaks, the most characteristic features are no longer the unbroken expanses of cactus and creosote desert but recent formations of red and white sandstone eroded by wind and water into deep, sheer-walled canyons and isolated "monuments," sometimes a thousand feet high, which stand like the abandoned cities of some race of prehistOric giants. By comparison, the Sonoran Desert seems cozy. Here the earth defies man to live upon it, and for the most part he has not challenged the defiance. In the few miles which lie between the south rim of the plateau and the gash cut by the Colorado River the land is still definitely inhabited, but north of the river a region extending well into southeastern Utah is emptier than most Americans imagine any part of their country to be. Only here and there on the Navajo Reservation an Indian family has built a hogan in the shadow of a monument, and manages mi240 UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY raculously to raise a few sheep from whose wool a woman weaves her blanket on a loom set up in the sand. Off the reservation, it is only here and there that a few farmers, mostly Monnons, have taken advantage of an occasional small stream to establish a homestead, or to run their cattle over vast areas where the beasts manage to find some "browse" though grass is nearly nonexistent. This region is isolated from the north by stretches of seldom-traversed desert in Utah; isolated from the south by the Colorado River which, except for the mule bridge at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, is uncrossable for the hundreds of miles which lie between Navajo Bridge and Lake Mead. Within the region itself there are a few tiny communities to serve the needs of the Indians and ranchers; some of them are connected by good roads, while others lie along meandering routes from which all except the most experienced travelers are warned off. Finally, in the desert to the north, there are hundreds of square miles, roadless and broken, into which no human being wanders for months, perhaps for years, at a time. For a certain kind of traveler, such a region as this offers unique advantages. On the one hand, it is not far away, as the wild places of the earth go, for it can be reached from a center of population in the short space of a day or two. On the other hand, once 241 UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY one has got into it, one could hardly feel more remote anywhere in the world, and it offers a nicely graded series of adventures for the timid hardly to be equaled elsewhere. Without leaving the broad highway, the inexperienced can visit Grand Canyon; then, if they find rather too many other people staring into that stupendous gully, much as they stare at an excavation in New York City, they can turn off into the sand at, say, a point just ten miles north of Cameron, and within half an hour find themselves in what will appear a trackless wilderness. Next time~ grown a little bolder, they may strike a little deeper...