EDITOR'S LETTER

People. Places. Things.

One man, one dog and a three-quarter-ton pickup named Rocinante. Those are the main characters in Travels With Charley, one of the best pieces of travel writing ever written. Or maybe it is the best. It doesn't have the life-and-death drama of Mawson's Will or Into Thin Air, but the prose in Travels With Charley is so much better. “This is a book to be read slowly for its savor,” Edward Weeks wrote in his review of Charley for The Atlantic Monthly in August 1962. “The eager, sensuous pages in which [Steinbeck] writes about what he found and whom he encountered frame a picture of our human nature in the twentieth century which will not soon be surpassed.” Believe me, we weren't foolish enough to think we could re-create those sensu-ous pages in our cover story. No matter how good our writers are and all three of them are superb there's only one John Steinbeck, and we didn't have 246 pages to work with. Still, that's what we were going for. Travels With Charley, Blue Highways, On the Road... We wanted our road trips to capture the people, places and things along the way. And they did.

There are three trips in all: Payson to Springerville, Portal to Patagonia and Prescott to Flagstaff. Normally, for something like this, we put our writers and photographers together in the same car (or three-quarter-ton pickup), because we want parallel experiences. But not this time. For this, we wanted divergence. We wanted as many people, places and things as we could get. And we got what we wanted. In fact, all three writers asked for more words, and all three photographers turned in enough images, individually, to fill 246 pages. Karen Shell is one of those photographers.

I've been admiring Karen's work for a long time, and so has Photo Editor Jeff Kida, but this was her first assignment for Arizona Highways. It's a shame it took us this long to get her into the magazine. She's exceedingly talented, she's creative and she delivered exactly what we were looking for. Her shot of Wayne and Kenyon Peters with their big rig at a gas station in Spring-erville is a great example. It's a moment in time ordinary people, doing what they do. The Payson Rodeo photos have the same effect. And then there's the shot of Moriah, the little girl splashing in the waters of Christopher Creek. Initially, Moriah was afraid of the camera, but as you'll see, the curly-headed pre-schooler loosened up. A lot. That's what great photographers do, and Karen's on the list of great photographers.

That shot of Moriah, by the way, was made in late-summer. Obviously, things are pretty quiet in Christopher Creek this time of year. The drive is still beautiful, though. Like all of our road trips, it's enjoyable any time of year. Just keep in mind that what you see in winter may not be what you see in summer, and check the weather and road conditions before heading out. Right now, there's a good chance you'll see some snow between Payson and Springerville. If not, Van Odegaard is probably going stir crazy.

You don't know Van Odegaard. He's a musher, and he's not the only one. “Sled-dog racing in Arizona is a surprisingly popular hobby,” Barbara Yost writes in Dog Days of Winter. The sport took off here in 1977. That's when Odegaard moved to Flagstaff from Minnesota, where he raced Siberian huskies. Today, Arizona is the southernmost state with a significant sled-dog population, and the state's premier race takes place this month in the White Mountains. In our story, you'll learn about the men and women who endure the cost, the hard work and the often-inhospitable climate to play in the snow. You'll also learn about the huskies, malamutes and Samoyeds that can't wait to get harnessed up and hit the trail. As Barbara writes, “they were born to run.” Horses, by comparison, aren't always so enthusiastic, especially on Hollywood movie sets. That's where our cowboy king met Steve McQueen.

J.P.S. Brown is indeed a cowboy, and he might have been the prototype for “the most interesting man in the world.” He's done it all — boxer, marine, journalist, prospector, whiskey smuggler — but he's a cowboy at the core, which is why he was hired to teach Steve McQueen how to rope a horse in a corral for the movie Tom Horn. The job came and went, but their close friendship lasted until the actor's untimely death in 1980. On Location With Steve McQueen is another in our series of wonderful essays by Joe Brown. Read it slowly for its savor, and then get yourself a three-quarter-ton pickup and hit the road. People, places and things are waiting.