the magazine y - Desert Magazine of the Southwest

Qu5t Between l/ou and Mi
readers have written expressing the hope that
the Desert Magazine was not ser ously damaged by
the earthquakes which visited Irrperial valley May
18. I appreciate the interest of these loyal friends, and I am
glad to assure them our new building ;ind printing plant
came through practically unharmed. I w^s camping on the
Vallecitos desert that night, many miles from the Andreas
fault, and did not even share in the excitement. As far as I
am concerned old Mother Nature's blitzkreg was a complete
dud.
Some of my neighbors were not so fortunate however. But
they are rebuilding—more substantially thai before. San Francisco,
Santa Barbara, Long Beach and other California communities
have been through quake disasters—and out of the
ruins have created cities more beautiful and more permanent
than those which existed before the catastrophe. Imperial
valley will do no less.
When we consider the fury of the mai-made storm that
has been unleashed on continental Europe we must conclude
that after all, Nature's upheavals are mile! indeed compared
with the murderous destruction that man brings on himself
and his brother.
The best yarn this month comes from Gus Eilers of Date
Palm beach on the north shore of Salton sea. The rising waters
of the sea in recent months have submerged part of Gus'
desert domain—and he's been :rying to fir d who's to blame.
Since no one else offered a plausible theory—he concocted
one of his own. "That sea is swarming with mullet," he explains.
"The last couple of years they have been increasing
by the millions. The law prohibits seining, and being vegetarians
they won't take an ordinary hook. So they just live
there and grow fat.
"Figure it out for yourself. Each fish displaces so many
cubic inches of water, and the bigger they grow the more
space they take. Multiply that by 100 mil ion—and it is no
wonder the sea is spreading out.
"Goofy? Sure! But that idea is no crazier than some of the
others that have been suggested."
Hot? Yes, it is hot in the desert lowlands these days. But
what of that? Florida has its hurricanes Kansas its dust
storms, the Dakotas their wintry blizzards. Few places on the
face of the earth have climatic conditions that are always
temperate.
It is fortunate for human beings that this is true. Normal
By RANDALL HENDERSON
man needs extremes of physical environment to keep his
adaptive functions active. Do not complain about the heat, or
the cold or the winds—be thankful we have them. Without
them we would grow sluggish and degenerate.
* * *
On a recent trip to Arizona I spent an afternoon at the old
Governor's mansion in Prescott visiting with Sharlot Hall.
As a girl she rode range on her father's ranch in daytime and
wrote poetry by lamplight at night. Later she was an active
associate of Charles F. Lummis in editing The Land of Sunshine
and Outwest magazines.
This was my first acquaintance with Miss Hall—and now
I know why she is loved and honored by every Arizonan.
She is a true daughter of the frontier—who calls a spade a
spade, and leaves no doubt as to what kind of a spade it is.
But don't misunderstand me. I have never met with more
genuine courtesy than I found in the home of Sharlot Hall.
I have a great admiration for Lummis and Miss Hall and
the editorial staff of the magazine which more than a half
century ago began the pioneering task of popularizing the
desert Southwest. It was a tremendous undertaking—and I
would be very happy indeed if I could feel that the Desert
Magazine measured up to the standard of accuracy and literary
excellence attained by its original predecessor in this
field.
* * *
I have been reading / Found No Peace, autobiography of
Webb Miller, United Press correspondent who met a tragic
death in London a few weeks ago. As a boy, Miller was shy
and unprepossessing. He had none of the attributes of a reporter—except
a studious mind. At the time of his death he
was recognized as one of the greatest American foreign reporters
of this generation.
FYom early youth and continuing through his life, Miller
derived strength and inspiration from the philosopher Thoreau.
It is a philosophy that would be good tonic for other
Americans of this period. Miller summarized it:
"Thoreau's philosophy I conceived as follows: You
make yourself rich by making your wants few; you can
insulate yourself from the shocks of life to a certain extent
by occasional solitude; human beings have relatively
few essential material needs and these few are
easily filled; you can be happy if you have the mental
resources to feel pleasure and ecstasy in nature and natural
things. Such a philosophy comforted me and ought
to appeal to millions in these days of economic and political
stress."
44 The DESERT MAGAZINE