SPRINGTIME in ARIZONA Wildflowers, Baseball
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EXPLORE SPRINGTIME IN ARIZONA Wildflowers, baseball ... even Interstate 17 stands out in March MARCH 2018 ESCAPE • EXPLORE • EXPERIENCE Lees Ferry Grand Canyon National Park Flagstaff Interstate 17 Wickenburg Mazatzal Mountains 2 EDITOR’S LETTER 24 INTERSTATE SECRETS 48 THE SENSORY NATURE OF SPRING PHOENIX At 75 miles per hour, it’s important to An Essay by Kelly Vaughn Tucson 3 CONTRIBUTORS keep your eyes on the road, especially Bisbee March on I-17, which winds through the moun- 4 LETTERS 52 SCENIC DRIVE tains between Phoenix and Flagstaff. Douglas Rucker Canyon Loop: There’s beauty The trade-off, unfortunately, is that POINTS OF INTEREST IN THIS ISSUE 2018 5 THE JOURNAL all along this scenic drive in Southeast- some of the most scenic landscapes ern Arizona, but the payoff is Rucker People, places and things from around are out the side windows — or hidden Canyon, where the views of tall grasses the state, including a look at white- altogether. So, in the interest of public surrounded by peaks and hills are as nosed coatis, which are related to ring- safety, we sent our photographer out to beautiful as any you’ll find in Arizona. tails and raccoons; Zane Grey’s affection show you what you’ve been missing. By Noah Austin for Lees Ferry; and a Q&A with photog- A Portfolio by Joel Hazelton rapher Jacques Barbey, who caught a Photographs by Jeff Kida GET MORE ONLINE lucky break in Bisbee. www.arizonahighways.com 36 THE ADVENT OF SPRING 54 HIKE OF THE MONTH An Essay by Ruth Rudner 16 PILGRIMAGE INTO SPRING Barnhardt Trail: Despite a few curve- /azhighways balls from Mother Nature and the effects A story originally published in the 40 A TOTALLY DIFFERENT BALLGAME of a fire in 2004, the rugged mountains @arizonahighways February 1955 issue of Arizona Highways. It’s called baseball, but the players don’t and spectacular panoramas of the By Joyce Rockwood Muench wear gloves, the pitchers throw under- Mazatzal Wilderness are as impressive hand, and the outfielders are allowed as ever. ◗ Clouds hang over the snowcapped San Fran- to let the ball bounce before making By Robert Stieve cisco Peaks near Flagstaff at sunrise. This view an out. Those are just some of the dif- is from the summit of Apache Maid Mountain ferences at the Copper City Classic, an 56 WHERE IS THIS? to the south. Joel Hazelton exhibition baseball tournament played CANON EOS 6D, 1/8 SEC, F/10, ISO 100, every spring at Bisbee’s historic Warren 200 MM LENS Ballpark. FRONT COVER: Bluedicks (Dichelostemma By Noah Austin capitatum) grow amid grasses near Sunset Photographs by Jacques Barbey Point, a stop on Interstate 17 between Flag- staff and Phoenix. Joel Hazelton CANON EOS 6D, 1/50 SEC, F/18, ISO 320, 16 MM LENS BACK COVER: Surrounded by sego lilies (Calochortus nuttallii) and fairydusters (Calliandra eriophylla), the blooms of an Engelmann’s hedgehog cactus (Echinocereus engelmannii) begin to open in the Mazatzal Wilderness near Payson. Paul Gill CANON EOS 5D MARK III, 1/20 SEC, F/22, ISO 100, 100 MM LENS 2 OCTOBER 2015 www.arizonahighways.com 1 editor’s LETTER CONTRIBUTORS RUTH RUDNER Ruth Rudner is the wife of legendary photog- Ruth Rudner returns to the pages of Arizona High- MARCH 2018 VOL. 94 NO. 3 rapher David Muench. And David’s late mother, ways this month with The Advent of Spring (see Joyce Rockwood Muench, was one of our fea- 800-543-5432 page 36), an essay about spring snowmelt. It’s a tured writers in the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s. She, too, www.arizonahighways.com familiar topic for Rudner, who wrote the following was a poet. And decades later, her words still GIFT SHOP: 602-712-2200 in her 1978 book, Forgotten Pleasures: “One day the read like rhapsodies. ice breaks up, the melting snow swells the begin- In a piece she wrote for us in February 1955, PUBLISHER Win Holden nings of streams that pour foaming and new down one we’re resurrecting this month, she used The EDITOR Robert Stieve the sides of mountains, transforming gentle brooks Canterbury Tales as the basis for a story about ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER, into swift rivers, paths into streams and woods into I was 9 when the river broke DIRECTOR OF its bank and trespassed into my backyard. In springtime in Arizona. “My Canterbury would SALES & MARKETING Kelly Mero swamps — a great, wild rush of life. … A sleeping hindsight, the big flood is just a footnote to my be Arizona, a land vaster than all of England,” MANAGING EDITOR Kelly Vaughn world awakes; everything on Earth is born.” Rudner, an accomplished nature writer, is the author of more childhood, but at the time, it was eventful, and she wrote in Pilgrimage Into Spring. “No need to ASSOCIATE EDITOR Noah Austin than a dozen books, some of which are collabora- it reinforced the power of water I’d seen a year wait for April: Spring comes long before then in EDITORIAL earlier, in The Poseidon Adventure. this enchanted land, awakening at the feet of ADMINISTRATOR Nikki Kimbel tions with her husband, photographer and longtime Arizona Highways contributor David Of course, a surging river isn’t as dramatic as a 90-foot tidal wave, but purple desert ridges; spreading farther with each PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR Jeff Kida Muench (whose mother, the late Joyce Rockwood Muench, also is featured in this issue). for a few weeks in 1973, my brother Jeff and I watched anxiously as the passing day, into lifting mesa lands; to arrive on CREATIVE DIRECTOR Barbara Glynn Denney The two recently sold their property in New Mexico and now live full time in Montana. water crept unabated toward our back door. First past the tire swing, then schedule in mountain meadows, where forest- ART DIRECTOR Keith Whitney the clothesline, then the bird feeder. Around the time it got to the back covered slopes and rocky pinnacles mark out MAP DESIGNER Kevin Kibsey patio, the high water had also flooded the mile-long dirt road that leads to ‘distant shrines’ against the deep blue sky. There PRODUCTION DIRECTOR Michael Bianchi our home. Other than the river itself, that road was our only access to the would be other wayfarers like myself, seeking a WEBMASTER Victoria J. Snow outside world. Sensing an opportunity, Jeff and I hoped the isolation would cure for ills of the minds we prison away from liberate us from going to school. It didn’t. Instead, our father used one of our healing breeze; from reviving scents of flowers CIRCULATION DIRECTOR Nicole Bowman fishing boats as a ferry, with a car parked on either side of the flood. Dads. and trees; and long looks over open land and FINANCE DIRECTOR Bob Allen Growing up, the river delivered all kinds of adventure to my brothers chiseled panorama of cliff and mountain top.” OPERATIONS/ IT MANAGER Cindy Bormanis and me. There was always something going on, but springtime brought the Mrs. Muench never met Joel Hazelton, but snowmelt. he follows in the footsteps of the wayfarers she CORPORATE OR The Wisconsin River runs for 430 miles from the Lake District in the referred to. He’s a vagabond, a photographer who TRADE SALES 602-712-2018 northern part of the state to its confluence with the Mississippi. Our house roams in directions others won’t go. So, when SPONSORSHIP SALES is about 300 miles south of the river’s origin. In that span, especially in the we needed someone to wander up and down the REPRESENTATION On Media Publications Todd Bresnahan spring, the river picks up and drops off all kinds of treasures for youngsters interstate with a camera, we called Joel. 602-445-7169 to discover. Fishing lures, bobbers, Styrofoam coolers, lawn chairs, wooden “J.K.,” I said to Jeff Kida, our photo editor. “I oars ... most of what we found along the shore would be considered rubbish have an idea. How about a portfolio on I-17? I just LETTERS TO THE EDITOR [email protected] by even the most generous assessors. To us, though, it was precious loot, and drove down from Flagstaff, and I’ve never seen 2039 W. Lewis Avenue those scavenger hunts are some of my best memories. it so green. I mean, it’s really green. It looks like Phoenix, AZ 85009 The river, the exploration, the discovery ... that was our definition of Ecuador. Maybe we can get Joel out there. Before spring. For Ruth Rudner, the meaning goes deeper, and it’s more poetic. it’s too late.” GOVERNOR Douglas A. Ducey “I take spring personally,” she writes in The Advent of Spring. “The four Fortunately, Joel was able to hit the road the DIRECTOR, DEPARTMENT children in my family, all cousins, were born in the spring. Four of us repre- next day. And the day after that and the day after OF TRANSPORTATION John S. Halikowski senting the birth of the world, four of us believing that we and spring, and that. Ultimately, he’d spend several weeks on JOEL HAZELTON therefore all of life, began together. We held spring closely, delighting in the project, which turned into one of the most Arizona Highways® (ISSN 0004-1521) is published month- For this issue, photographer Joel Hazelton tackled what might be his most challenging the smell of the damp Earth, the first green shoots, the leafing-out of trees. unlikely portfolios we’ve ever published. And ly by the Arizona Department of Transportation. Subscrip- assignment for Arizona Highways: springtime along Interstate 17 between Phoenix and tion price: $24 a year in the U.S., $44 outside the U.S.