CELEBRATING THE SEASON DECEMBER 2007 SPIRITUAL JOURNEYS By Linda Ellerbee, Craig Childs & Charles Bowden Spiritual Journeys december 2007 10 Coming to Arizona 44 After-Christmas Special Departments Chicago is a great city, and life at one of its universities is With the holiday season come the holiday 2 DEAR EDITOR safe and relatively sane. So, why would somebody chuck sales. And while department stores have a lot it all to become a writer in a place where everything to offer, they can’t match what you’ll find on 3 EDITOR’S LETTER that matters is in peril? Only the writer knows for sure. the Navajo Indian Reservation, where the art 4 VIEWFINDER online arizonahighways.com BY CHARLES BOWDEN is spectacular and the lines are a lot shorter. Rediscovering visual icons. BY ROSEANN HANSON PHOTOGRAPHS BY JERRY JACKA Simply put, the landscapes of Arizona inspire, and there’s no 5 TAKING THE OFF-RAMP better time than December to take a moment and enjoy nature’s 22 Canyons Don’t Care Arizona oddities, attractions and pleasures. gifts. This month we offer our gift to you — a slideshow of Scenic beauty, thrilling adventure, a sense of 48 Christmas Miracle awe-inspiring landscape photographs at arizonahighways.com, accomplishment . rafting the Colorado River has a Amiel Whipple isn’t a household name, but his 52 HIKE OF THE MONTH contents where you’ll also find some of the state’s most unique shopping lot to offer, but there’s more than the obvious. There’s act of kindness toward an Indian girl in 1849 The Anza trail in Southern Arizona venues and a host of holiday happenings in our Online Extras. also a lesson in life, and whether you’re young or helped avert a massacre on Christmas Eve 1851. offers hikers a chance to walk in the old, the Grand Canyon forces everyone to learn it. BY LEO W. BANKS ILLUSTRATION BY STEFANO MORRI footsteps of a Spanish captain. WEEKEND GETAWAY Enjoy the spirit of Christmas BY LINDA ELLERBEE in the frosty mountain retreat of Flagstaff. 54 BACK ROAD ADVENTURE EXPERIENCE ARIZONA Plan a trip with our calendar of events. The restoration of Fossil Creek is the main 34 Farewell at Canyon Creek event on this scenic drive in Central Arizona. Special places hold special memories. For one writer, the place was Canyon Creek, and the memory was of FOGGY FOOTHILLS Snow-tipped saguaro cacti thrust upward into rare his father. It was their place, and when it came time Photographic Prints Available winter fog settled around the foothills below Finger Rock in the Santa to say goodbye, they went together one last time. Catalina Mountains near Tucson. See story, page 10. ROBERT G. MCDONALD n Prints of some photographs are available for purchase, as BY CRAIG CHILDS n To order a print, see information on this page. designated in captions. To order, call toll-free (866) 962-1191 or visit arizonahighwaysprints.com. FRONT COVER Stillness reigns over virgin snowfall in ponderosa pine forestland near Northern Arizona’s San Francisco Peaks. DAMON G. BULLOCK BACK COVER Flocked with snow, ponderosa pine and Douglas fir trees in the Coconino National Forest near Flagstaff wear winter well. TOM BEAN FRUITFUL FUN Kids of all ages dash for sweet treats during the “Fruit Scramble” event at the 4th Annual Natoni Horse Race on the Navajo Indian Reservation. See story, page 16. TOM BEAN FRONT COVER Navajo hoop dancer Tyrese Jensen, 7, competes in the 16th Annual World Championship Hoop Dance Contest held at the Heard Museum in downtown Phoenix. See story, page 32. JEFF KIDA BACK COVER A hiker amounts to a Tiny Tim on the window "sill" of Los Gigantes Buttes Arch near the Lukachukai Mountains on the Navajo Indian Reservation. See story, page 24. TOM TILL n To order a print of this photograph, see information on opposite page. Homesick in Omaha My husband and I grew up in Arizona, and went to the When we asked Charles University of Arizona. Unfortunately, after college we DECEMBER 2007 VOL. 83, NO. 12 Bowden to write about his editor’s letter moved away, but every year my parents give us a most memorable journey in Publisher WIN HOLDEN subscription to this beautiful magazine. I think they’re Arizona, it led straight to Editor ROBERT STIEVE the Sonoran Desert, not far subtly trying to lure us home, and your amazing photos Senior Editor RANDY SUMMERLIN from Tucson Mountain Park. Managing Editor SALLY BENFORD and great articles do make it tough. Someday it would be RANDY PRENTICE Book Division Editor BOB ALBANO wonderful to take just one issue and spend a month going Books Associate Editor EVELYN HOWELL to all of the beautiful and interesting places in Arizona Editorial Administrator NIKKI KIMBEL Highways. Thank you. Editorial Assistant PAULY HELLER Director of Photography PETER ENSENBERGER dear editor Heike and Adam Langdon, Omaha, Nebraska Photography Editor JEFF KIDA Art Director BARBARA GLYNN DENNEY Lip Service winter visitor and have traveled all over Deputy Art Director SONDA ANDERSSON PAPPAN The September 2007 article about Willow Arizona during the past 12 years, and I can Art Assistant DIANA BENZEL-RICE Map Designer KEVIN KIBSEY Valley [“Narrow Passage”] was very nice. always find another place to visit by However, I must point out that the “water reading your magazine. I’ve even found Production Director MICHAEL BIANCHI Promotions Art Director RONDA JOHNSON hemlock” plant pictured on page 11 is your gift shop on Lewis Avenue. So, Webmaster VICKY SNOW toxic from top to bottom, not just the congratulations to all of you at Arizona Director of Sales & Marketing KELLY MERO by Robertby Stieve roots. I might be wrong, but it seems that Highways for this superb issue. Circulation Director HOLLY CARNAHAN arizonahighways.com several years ago someone hiking in West Francis W. Warren Jr., Stow, Massachusetts Finance Director @ BOB ALLEN Oak Creek Canyon used a piece of water Information Technology CINDY BORMANIS hemlock to make a reed whistle and died That’s Bisbee CHARLES BOWDEN CAN WRITE. In Chuck’s essay, he writes about his transition from the editor Inquiries or orders Toll-free: (800) 543-5432 from touching it to his lips. The plant is As Richard Shelton wrote in his excellent Or visit arizonahighways.com Exhibit A: “This part cannot be comfortable world of teaching history at the University of very toxic, and hikers need to be able to memoir, Going Back to Bisbee, an often- slighted or the blackness will take over, Illinois in Chicago to the harsh realities of being a writer and identify it and all other poisonous plants in used local saying (“That’s Bisbee”) is For Corporate or Trade Sales (602) 712-2019 and then the reel begins playing in the wanderer in the Sonoran Desert. Although there’s a literal the wild. perhaps best exemplified by Greg Pike and Letters to the Editor [email protected] mind, that hideous tape that nothing element to the essay — his drive from the Midwest to Arizona 2039 W. Lewis Ave., Phoenix, AZ 85009 Dave Rudolph, Portola, California his loveable dog, cat and mouse that were seems to erase or edit or alter, the tape — his piece is more about the figurative transition from feeling featured in your September issue [“Caught Governor that zooms in and out of scenes so trapped to coming alive. Or, as he writes, doing “something JANET NAPOLITANO BRANDON SULLIVAN Kind of Ironic in the Act on Bisbee’s Main Street”]. No Director, Department of Transportation swiftly the body feels vertigo, and the eye that matters to me rather than something that matters to a I really enjoyed Jo Baeza’s article [“Soul of tourist comes to Bisbee that doesn’t go VICTOR M. MENDEZ focuses in disbelief on a pin, a small metal grenade pin, and the world I want to leave.” Linda Ellerbee’s journey is along the the Mountain,” July 2007] on the White back home without favorably commenting ARIZONA TRANSPORTATION BOARD entire universe — yes, all of it — wrenches to a halt to consider same lines. It’s an awakening, of sorts. Mountains. Having moved to Anthem about our many unparalleled attractions, Chairman Joe Lane one simple question: Is that pin straight, or is that pin bent?” The literal expedition is a rafting trip with six kids through Vice Chairman S.L. Schorr from Park City, Utah, I’m always ready to including Greg and his friends. All I can Members Delbert Householder, Robert M. Montoya, That’s a sentence from a piece Chuck did for Esquire in the Grand Canyon. The figurative journey is the change in get back up into the high country. However, say is, “That’s Bisbee.” Felipe Andres Zubia, William J. Feldmeier, 1999. A few years later, when Esquire was digging through its attitude experienced by the children after 226 miles in a world Barbara Ann “Bobbie” Lundstrom I couldn’t help but note that near the end of P.J. (Pete) Herrmann, Bisbee archives to come up with the “70 greatest sentences” in the as foreign to them as the surface of the moon. Among other the article, one paragraph read, “. the top International Regional Magazine Association magazine’s illustrious history, that sentence made the cut, things, they learn there’s more to life than lip gloss; and life, U.S. Postal Service 2006, 2005, 2004, 2002, 2001 Magazine of the Year of Baldy is closed to all but native people,” STATEMENT OF OWNERSHIP, MANAGEMENT, AND CIRCULATION along with lines by guys named Steinbeck, Fitzgerald and like the Canyon, is bigger than all of us.