Editor’s Note: In March 1946, a few months after V-J Day, Editor Raymond Carlson made his return to our magazine. “With this issue,” he wrote, “the under-initialed returns to the editorship of Arizona Highways after nearly two years’ service in the Pacific with the 6th Infantry Division. If anything could be further removed from editing the artistic magazine Arizona Highways has become, G-l’ing in such sticky places as New Guinea and Luzon is it. Having been away from home, one finds Arizona more attractive in every way — the skies bluer, the desert dreamier, the distant hills more purple, the lure and call of the lonely places more real and poignant. He who once said absence makes the heart grow fonder was as wise as he was poetic.” For Mr. Carlson and all of the other men and women returning from the war, spring in 1946 would have been a wonderful rebirth in both a seasonal and a metaphoric sense.
There was spring last year, the year before last and the year before that. But spring is different this year. Peace has come to our people, and once again as spring enters upon the scene we can pause and note the season’s change, loiter with spring by the wayside, woo her in all her moods, merry or melancholy, across the broad, rich lands.
We can play truant from care and raise our eyes to the far horizons and the tantalizing vistas of earth and sky wrapped in spring’s flossiest lace. Clouds of war, sacrifice and tribulation have passed. We can seek anew the beauty of the smiling land, discover the charm of the distant places, follow spring wherever she beckons, for there is magic and sorcery in her invitation to each and all of us.
Spring comes early to our desert. While people in less sheltered climes lean shiveringly against the biting wind and winter’s blast, the touch of spring is a real, vibrant force in the desert. You can sense it in the evening air, warm and fragrant. It is in the rustle of the gray-green plants sending forth their blooms. It is the cactus, usually a forlorn-looking fellow, heralding the season with clusters of brightest hue.
No florist could fashion a bouquet as gay as that of the paloverde in spring dress, yellow sunshine dancing before the soft wind. And the ocotillo, slender and long-limbed, pays tribute to the season with nosegays of delicate purple, homage of a cavalier to his lady.
Spring treads lightly and gently throughout the land, pausing in the foothills to bring the season’s caress to the plant life dwelling there. There is work, too, in those hills. The smoke of the brand fires, drifting lazily skyward, marks the scene of the spring roundup. Winter has gone now, and it is time to get busy. The calves are young and frisky, and there is a shipping schedule to be met. It’s spring, and you have to ride hard and long on the range. But your domain is far away and over the hills, and spring is with you everywhere.
The season is a song, not pages in a calendar. It is the whispering of the young leaves in the sycamore and the cottonwood, the merry lilt of the mountain freshets breaking their bounds in the snowbanks. It is the quiet of evening at Monument Valley, the bark of a dog at a lonely Navajo hogan up in the Indian country. It is the deep rumble of the Colorado plunging through the chasm that is Grand Canyon, bulging with the spring flood released by waning winter from the high Rockies so far away. The river becomes vibrant and virile, exultant in the strength and life the season has given it. Yes, there is music in spring ... a personal song for each person’s taste.
To each of us spring, in this the smiling land, is an exciting adventure. It may be a billowy cloud loafing around a mountain peak. It may be a lizard a-sunning on a rock, the blue of a canyon lake against red cliffs, a saguaro blossom, a cowhand sitting on a corral fence, or the turn of a desert road when the season beckons. It might be just loafing in the sun, or a walk up a sandy wash. It might be the spell of the night sprinkled with moondust, or the peculiar twinkle of the stars lucky enough to people these Western skies. Spring is little things, many friendly little things.
This spring, for the first time in a long time, we can turn again to the land, marveling as we always do at its vastness and beauty, seeking the distant places beyond the horizon, following the vagrant paths, rediscovering the charm that comes with spring.