AT HOME IN THE WOODS

Twentieth century America was having its midlife crisis. Every shift in the cultural wind shook the foundations of Archie Bunkerism. From the Beatles to Woodstock to the moonwalk, from the pill, miniskirts and folk singers to race riots and war protests, mainstream America was exploding in a psychedelic spasm. As Bob Dylan understated it, “the times they are a-changin’.” Not everyone wanted to change with the times. I was looking for what I had always looked for: a simple life among good people in a beautiful place. I found it in the White Mountains of EastCentral Arizona in 1964. I was 33, single again, with no plan.

Maybe my childhood in Minnesota left me with an affinity for trees, lakes and wildlife. Maybe it goes back to my great-grandmother’s Bavarian ancestors or my great-grandfather’s dark Swedish forests. Whatever the source, I have always felt at home in the woods.

Arizona’s pine belt was familiar tomy folks, who, attracted by the steady rumble of American cars on Route 66, had bought a motel and gas station in Holbrook in 1950. For special occasions, my mom, my dad and I would have dinner at Charlie Clark’s Steak House in Pinetop-Lakeside or the Paint Pony Lodge in Show Low. On Sundays, we’d pack a picnic lunch and drive to the mountains in our gas-guzzler, keeping count of how many deer, elk and turkeys we saw.

In 1954, I graduated from Stanford University with a degree in English literature and a hankering for adventure. I came home, explored the country, wrote some stories for Arizona Highways and married a rancher. Eight years later, I left. No excuses, no regrets. That’s how I was.

In early November 1964, I threw some warm clothes and my cow dog into my Ford Galaxie and headed to what Holbrook folks called Up Country. At an altitude of 8,200 feet, Hawley Lake was already bracing for winter. Friends had loaned me their summer cabin and left a stack of firewood. I stopped to get gas at Indian Pine, drove through the humming sawmill town of McNary, passed a loaded lumber truck, then turned off onto a dirt road to Hawley Lake on the Fort Apache Indian Reservation.

I could look out the window of my cabin in the morning and see a herd of 30 or more elk grazing in the meadow below. Ospreys circled the lake, a wintering bald eagle perched on a snag, coyotes sang their night song, my dog was drunk on wild scents, and I was all alone with the sound of silence.

When reality set in, I bought a cabin in the center of Pinetop-Lakeside from a cheerful real estate agent named Pearl Penrod, who knew all 600 people in town. Businessman Lon Hoffman described Pinetop-Lakeside as “a quiet, peaceful little town with a two-lane highway and lots of friendly people.

Everybody knew everybody. We were all sort of a family. We had a lot of fun."

My new home was an uninsulated frame cabin with a living and dining room, brick fireplace, beamed ceiling and sleeping porch. I borrowed a down payment from my dad. The house, lot and trees cost $8,000. It took me four years to pay off the mortgage. The first day in my new house, my neighbor's little girl, Sandy Turnbull, brought a cake she had baked for me. I knew I was home.

I applied for a secretarial job with Bob's Realty, the only job opening in town. After all, I was a writer; I could type. Bob told me in exasperation one day, "You're the worst secretary I ever had." Nevertheless, he paid me $50 a week, right on time. Their corporate headquarters was a log cabin at one endof my street. Outdoorsman Bob Fernandez had begun to develop Pinetop Country Club through a complex land exchange with the U.S. Forest Service. White Mountain Country Club was already in business on the site of a former Civilian Conservation Corps camp.

My new home was surrounded by an open meadow where meadowlarks auditioned. There were ponderosa pines, weeping willows, boxelders and aspens, and a handful of other cabins on Stephens Drive. The street was named after George Stanley Stephens, born in a freight wagon between Fort Apache and Pinetop-Lakeside in 1909. A handsome fellow, he could sing, yodel, and play the guitar, banjo and fiddle. On Phoenix radio station KOOL, he was known as Mountain Steve.

At the other end of the street was the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forests. Town and forest were separated by a three-wire fence that needed fixing. It still does.

Arizona Highways was responsible for my next career move. In 1966, I wrote a story called Not So Lonely the Life of a Lookout . It was about a couple who manned a fire tower at Lake Mountain east of Pinetop-Lakeside. I enjoyed my visits over cups of cowboy coffee made on an old cast-iron stove. I loved life in the forest so much, I applied for a lookout job the next year. The upshot was that I worked on different towers about 20 fire seasons over the years, with a family of bears for neighbors and the sound of silence for company. It was the perfect place for a young woman with an affinity for trees, lakes and wildlife.

Life on the mountain was pretty close to perfect for kids, too. Schools closed during bad storms, and boys could make money shoveling snow off roofs. School was also closed the opening day of deer season.

Kids played outdoors until dark in summer. We had a big vegetable garden, chickens and turkeys, all of which had to be fed and watered. Kids learned to work and take care of animals. I'd put them up against anybody for their fishcleaning speed. Not many kids today can actually go fishing after school for their supper. Friends gave us elk for the freezer. My stepdaughter, Paula, and I sometimes confronted bears when we were picking wild grapes in the fall. Play was rough-and-tumble, with Annie the Australian shepherd as wide receiver. And it was creative. Yes, kids smoked cigarettes down on Billy Creek, but they didn't do heroin or even know what it was. If kids had grievances, parents usually stayed out of it and let the kids settle their own fights. Teachers paddled boys for using naughty words. Nobody was rich, but nobody was hungry.

I can't say that life is better for kids in the White Mountains today than it was 50 years ago, but it is different. Today, kids have endless opportunities to learn, to grow, to be who they want to be. In the meantime, they get to wake up every morning to the same natural wonders that have been attracting good people since long before 1964.