Beautiful sights in Arizona

It is almost guaranteed that in any given issue of the Arizona Highways, there will be one or more pictures of the Grand Canyon, Monument Valley and/or the Oak Creek Canyon area around Sedona. I do have to agree that all of these places, and more, warrant the attention they get from the media. But I am equally impressed with a lot of other areas that are just as beautiful, if not as well known. In the next few posts I will give my impressions of some of these other, less well known, locations throughout the State.

First on my list are Big Lake and Mount Baldy. Located in eastern Arizona, just about midway from the north and south borders, this area known as the White Mountains is spectacular. Mount Baldy is the second highest mountain in Arizona and can be easily climbed by anyone with the stamina to walk up to 11,391 feet. On some lists it is ranked as low as number eight, due to the fact that the San Francisco Peaks, including the highest peak, Humphrey's Peak at 12,562 or thereabouts, have the first seven highest peaks.

Arizona has very few natural lakes. Almost every lake in the State has its origin as a man-made reservoir and Big Lake is no exception. When I have taken people to see this area of Arizona for the first time, almost with out exception, they declare that they had no idea that Arizona had such a beautiful place.

The White Mountains are volcanic in origin and are now covered in thick stands of Ponderosa Pine and Fir, with open meadows called cienegas. Intermixed with the pine and fir are stands of quaking aspen and the fall colors are spectacular.

There are dozens of Web sites that tell the story of the mountains, here are a few of them:

http://azwhitemountains.net/
http://www.go-arizona.com/White-Mountains
http://www.wmonline.com/
http://www.arizonawhitemountains.com/
http://www.biglakeaz.com/Big%20Lake%20AZ.htm
http://www.go-arizona.com/Big-Lake

Check these sites out.

For the beauty of the earth

In 1848, Ce­cil F. Al­ex­an­der, wrote Hymns for Lit­tle Child­ren. Alex­an­der is thought to have writ­ten these lyr­ics at Mark­ree Cas­tle, near Sli­go, Ire­land.

Refrain

All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful:
The Lord God made them all.

Each little flower that opens,
Each little bird that sings,
He made their glowing colors,
He made their tiny wings.

Refrain

The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
He made them, high or lowly,
And ordered their estate.

Refrain

The purple headed mountains,
The river running by,
The sunset and the morning
That brightens up the sky.

Refrain

The cold wind in the winter,
The pleasant summer sun,
The ripe fruits in the garden,
He made them every one.

Refrain

The tall trees in the greenwood,
The meadows where we play,
The rushes by the water,
To gather every day.

Refrain

He gave us eyes to see them,
And lips that we might tell
How great is God Almighty,
Who has made all things well.

Refrain

One of things that God Almighty has made well is Arizona. I am always impressed with the absolute grandeur of the desert, mountains and plateau that make up our wonderful State. At this Thanksgiving season, let us remember He who made us all and Who has made all things well.

Myths of TV and other media

The proliferation of cable TV channels has exalted the myths of TV to a new level. It is impossible to watch almost any channel without seeing pure nonsense in the form of commercials and entertainment. Without conscious effort the viewer is indoctrinated by this constant stream of concepts that have no anchor to reality. First, it is important to understand that I grew up with TV. I watched hours and hours a week, often until end of the Tonight Show. When I was younger, I was outraged by the suggestion made, in the context of a Church meeting, that TV viewing on Sunday was inappropriate. Now in my dotage, I have finally begun to understand the message of the media and I find it wanting.

Myth #1
That life consists of a series of crisis that can all be solved.

Life does not ever resolve. It goes on and on with no real satisfying ending. Although the cast of characters in real life changes slowly over time, the themes, the plots and the stories never end. There are no easy solutions to life's challenges, unlike the TV episodes that would have you believe people never have to shop regularly for food, work all day for a living, ride buses, drive for hours in cars to get anywhere, go through airport security, take regular baths and perform other such bodily maintenance activities and so forth. Even if people die, the rest of us have to go on with our daily routines. TV fails to show this well or at all. No one would really want to watch a real reality show, it would only remind us how real reality really is.

Myth #2
The majority of people look like movie stars.

I started to watch some mindless movie about a huge earthquake in New York. That should have been the giveaway, there has never been a huge earthquake in New York, but I stopped watching when it turned out that all the refugees from the disaster were beautiful people. Now I have been to New York, and the people there look remarkably just like the people anywhere else in the United States and I didn't see one person that looked like a movie star. You know the type, perfect hair, perfect smile, no skin blemishes, no fat, not one paunch in the lot. When TV does show real people they cut away fast so they can get back to the beautiful ones. I believe the number of beautiful people is roughly similar to the percentage of basketball players that make it into the NBA.

Myth #3
All cars are luxuriously manufactured to go fast and smash through things.

If you watch car commercials, the cheapest Ford or GM models are filled with luxury and drive like they could win the gran prix. Every car is shown charging down the empty highway or dashing through traffic at speeds that would usually get the attention of the local police or photo radar. Despite the commercials, all cars made in the world are about the same. The more expensive fast cars are just that, more expensive and fast, not really any better. Cars vary in their size and weight. The only real innovation in automotive design is a figment of the imagination of the ad agencies. If car manufacturers really cared about gas mileage and innovation then more cars would look like and get the gas mileage of a Toyota Prius. Cars are not a luxury, they do not make us happy or rich or popular. They are a huge expense and have a monumental impact on our culture, our environment and our society and that is not all good.

Myth #4
People are not accountable for their actions and any life style is acceptable.

Not only does TV show only beautiful people, they do whatever they want to do without any consequences. Just as in the old movies, all of the people smoked and no one ever got lung cancer, today, nearly all of the TV shows depict people doing immoral, dishonest and wicked things without any consequences. Wickedness never was happiness and depicting evil as good is not acceptable. Everyone will be held accountable for their actions, either in this life or the next. There is no free lunch, every action has a consequence.


Myth #5
No physical possession can make us happy.

TV would have you believe that happiness comes from using the right products or owning the right possessions. None of this is true. Happiness does not come from owning anything. You will not be any happier with a 64 inch flat screen TV than you are today without one. Some of the most unhappy people have the most physical possessions.

More commentary later

Why was the Dutchman lost?

Through the mists of legend, can we discern the truth? Not always. Arizona is replete with stories of lost mines. There are lists, books and Web sites. Very few of the publications acknowledge that no "lost mine" has ever been found.

It always fascinated me that someone could discover a fabulous mineral deposit, spend time tunneling into solid rock and then, lose the mine. Gold and silver are heavy metals. I have a hard time believing that if I had a pile of gold, I could somehow lose it. Even though gold is not easy to carry around, it is so valuable that I doubt I would just leave it lying around. Likewise, if I spent days and weeks, perhaps years, tunneling into the side of a mountain, I probably would remember where it was. As I have pointed out in previous posts, there are over 6 million people in Arizona now, averaging almost 50 per square mile. With all of the hiking, camping, ATVs and other vehicles, it seems almost impossible that there are "undiscovered" mines in the state.

Reality has never been a strong point with those who promote UFOs, Monster Animals or Lost Mines. Lost mines and lost treasures are typical of this type of story. Ship wrecks to the contrary, most of the persistent stories of lost gold and silver involve robberies of some kind or another. (You might note that there haven't been that many ship wrecks in Arizona). The robbers always stash the loot, usually thousands of pounds of gold, in some unlikely spot and then all get killed before they can return and claim their ill-begotten gains. Unfortunately, the stories never tell how a few robbers are able to transport the thousands of pounds of gold to the stash point. It is also absolutely certain, that those who believe cannot be dissuaded by the truth. When I was a lot younger, we had an older desert rat of a man who used to come into the law office where I worked. He returned from time to time and I learned that he was trying to raise money for a mine. He claimed to have discovered the Lost Dutchman Mine. I guess he never got the funding because supposedly the mine is still lost.

Maybe this was the reason that I got started on reading about lost mines in Arizona. For years I researched the mines and read everything I could find printed on the subject. The most famous mine story is that of the Lost Dutchman Mine, supposedly in the Superstition Mountains east of the Salt River Valley. The "Dutchman" was really a German immigrant named Jacob Waltz or Walz. He was reportedly born in 1810 in Wurttemberg and died of pneumonia on October 25, 1891 in Phoenix, Arizona. Likely, the report of a mine came about as a result of a dying man's attempt to explain away his "high grading" activities. High grading was the practice of hard rock miners taking high grade ore and smuggling it out of the mine in sort-off pre-social security system. Coincidentally, a major gold strike was made in the area at the base of the Superstition Mountains in 1892. There were 50 working mines and millions of dollars in gold was mined. If there was a mine near Weaver's Needle in the Superstition Mountains, then it was likely the one found.

More on lost mines later.

Contrast contrasts

I recently wrote about the population of Arizona. This post was in contrast to the earlier posts about wilderness. Arizona is quartered by major Interstate Highways, but off of these heavily traveled roads are highways where it is still possible to drive for a long time without seeing another car. On some of Arizona's dirt roads, it is best to be prepared for trouble. If you break down it could be days or longer before someone happens along. As I have learned first hand, your friendly automobile insurance company will not dispatch a tow truck to help you out of being stuck in sand in the middle of a dry river bed. The contrast between six, eight or ten lane freeways and a dirt road is immense. Not just the technology gap, but the whole outlook on life difference. On the freeway, in most metropolitan areas of Arizona, you can get a traffic ticket for driving too slow. On a dirt road, you can get seriously injured by driving too fast, not to mention turning your tires into macrame.

As you speed along at 75 mph on the freeway, you can often look off to the side of the road and see a dirt track snaking off into the distance. Here is a quantitative illustration of the difference between the two worlds:

Over ten million people per year visit the Grand Canyon.

Sonora National Monument (you may never have heard of this one) has only 20,000 visits per year and it has a major freeway going right through it.

Coal Mine Canyon has such few visitors that there don't seem to be any records of how many people go there. (Now you ask, where is Coal Mine Canyon?) You will just have to read these posts in the future if you want to know.

Arizona, probably not what you thought

Arizona is a land of contrasts and extremes, but it is likely that there are a lot of things you didn't know about this, the sixth largest state.

The U.S. Census Bureau gives some of the following facts:

• Arizona had a population in 2006 of 6,166,318 people.
• The Arizona population increased 20.1 percent from 2000 to 2006.
• Only 4.8 percent of the Arizona population is classified as Native American but 29.2 percent are Hispanic or Latino in origin and 25.9 percent speak a language other than English at home.
  
• The median household income was $43,696 in 2004.
• Arizona averages 45.2 people per square mile out of 114,006 square miles.
  

Arizona's capital, Phoenix, is the fifth largest city in the United States. Only New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston are larger. Eight of Arizona's ten largest cities surround Phoenix in the Phoenix/Mesa Metroplex with a total population of 2,931,004 in 1999.

http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/04000.html

The highest point in Arizona is Humphreys Peak (one of the San Francisco Peaks) at 12,633 feet. The lowest point is near Yuma only 70 feet above sea level. The highest temperature ever recorded was 128 degrees F. at Lake Havasu City on June 29, 1994. The lowest temperature was -40 degrees F. at Hawley Lake.

More later.

Wilderness is in the eye of the beholder

One of the most sublime places is one of the least visited and, for most people, one the least attractive, that is the western deserts of Utah. The area south of the Salt Flats is mostly flat and barren between the low hills and one of my favorite places in the whole world. In reflecting on the attraction of this area, I decided that it is real wilderness. Except for a few sheep herders, no one seems to have found a use for the area. The United States Government has used it for chemical and biological warfare testing, and accidentally killing herds of sheep in the process, but no one else seems to be able to figure out what to do with the huge empty land.

Recently, we have seen an increase in the number of all terrain vehicles and four-wheelers. But the land is so big, that even they have to plan for the distances involved.

Almost all of the areas designated as "Wilderness" possess extraordinary natural beauty like the Grand Canyon, and other places where people have traveled from around the world to visit. I would guess that virtually no one travels from Europe or Asia to the western desert. There are no bus loads of Japanese tourists, no French and German campers, no car loads of Chinese. There is just miles and miles of solitude and beautiful empty desert. There are animals. In the picture above, if you look closely, you can see mounds of dirt. These are ancient ant hills scattered across the valley floor. From their size, it is obvious that they are thousands of years old. There are also antelope, actually Pronghorns. They run in small herds across the plains at speeds in excess of thirty miles an hour. If you do not know where and how to look, they are almost invisible.

Now, what are the chances that some environmentalist group is going to throw themselves in front of the bulldozers to protect this desert. The chances are vanishingly small. Why? Because, for all the hand wringing and angst of the environmentalists, they are only really interested in preserving the outstandingly beautiful parts of the land, the Yellowstones and Yosemites, where there are thousands or millions of visitors. But if you really want to have a wilderness experience, you need to go into the western deserts of the world. Then you can really begin to understand the meaning of the word, wilderness.

Now, don't get me wrong, I am certainly in favor of National Parks and Monuments. I certainly recognize the need to "preserve" the physically attractive places of the world from dams and development. But, that isn't the same as wilderness. In hiking across the Grand Canyon, I probably passed thousands of people. In driving out into the western desert, we might pass a few cars on the road. Off the road, you may never see another person.

More later.