Zane Grey country

Between trying to get things done down here, restoring personal energy spent on the trip (made tougher by an interesting detour through Arizona backcountry), and writing on that manuscript, I earlier mentioned, I have had a hard time getting anything here. It's not that I don't have desert photos to share but more what gets in the way of sitting down with them.

First of all there are the immediate household tasks which means to take all the furniture out of the three bedrooms (made easier by their small dimensions) before the carpet layers arrive Wednesday morning. Farm Boss has been trimming back freeze damaged plans to determine what is salvageable, and I have chosen the replacement plants for those we lost. I am thinking next time not only will I make sure the plants are freeze resistant (as well as unpopular with bunnies) but also that we have some protection available to put around them when the temperature drops.

Despite not personally liking to spend time in malls, this trip necessitated some of that since I managed to forget my sandals. This is strange because I wear sandals a lot but most of this year, with our Oregon winter being wet and cold, I've pretty much lived in boots, Uggs and tennis shoes. I was wearing the tennis shoes when we left; so they weren't possible to forget. I decided if I had to buy some, they'd have to be ones I didn't already have waiting at home; so that meant mall time. Sandals for me have to be comfortable first, easy on the feet, moderately attractive, and not the kind to sprain an ankle.

Despite my desire to finish typing in, along with some editing, one my manuscripts (with which I am making progress), I do have a couple of things I especially wanted to share about Arizona's backcountry.

I love high pine country anywhere and everywhere. Arizona has prime pine country in the middle of the state to the NW corner and the Grand Canyon as well as on many of what are called mountain islands throughout the state. Love it? Yes, I do.

We really hadn't planned we'd even get there this trip until we changed our plans driving toward Needles. Instead of going directly south from there, we turned east into Arizona and spent that night in Williams, which definitely qualifies as Arizona high pine country. It also is less than a hundred miles south of the Grand Canyon but going that direction didn't have the appeal this trip-- gorgeous though it is.

From Williams we headed for Flagstaff and then took a back road out of it to the southeast and heading toward Strawberry, Pine and Payson. Our destination was Zane Grey country with no specific idea exactly where.


We stopped to view the Tonto Natural Bridge which is now a state park. It's not the kind of bridge seen in Utah but more like one in Montana where not wind but water has formed a hole under a land bridge.


For anyone who didn't grow up reading Zane Grey stories, the land below the Mogollon Rim probably wouldn't be so meaningful. The rim is a tall escarpment that separates Arizona into one of its many sections. Below that rim used to be Zane Grey's hunting, fishing and writing cabin before it was destroyed by the dry lightning caused Dude Fire of 1990. Not only did it destroy his cabin but a lot of other buildings and killed six firefighters. [YouTube Tribute to the Alpine Hotshot Crew].

Twenty years later, you only see traces of the damage that fire did to the region.

I am lucky enough to have been to his cabin twice when it was still there. The first was when our children were small. We were camped with a small vacation trailer down along Tonto Creek. My desire was to get up to the cabin I knew should be on the mountain. We expected to be able to drive to it from the campground (couple of miles on a gravel road), but the road was closed due to storm damage.

There was no way I'd let that stop me and we all started walking. I was wearing sandals, a backless halter top, and bright pink stretch pants. What an outfit for a hike up a gravel road in warm, May weather. It turned out to be a fine choice as two young rangers came along and when they found out where we were heading, offered us a ride to the cabin in the back of their pickup.

That visit the caretaker was there, and we were able to go inside, to get the feel of the wood on the walls, the big stone fireplace and even a possible writing desk which he may or may not have used but would have been the right sort. I also purchased a couple of his books in paperback, not because I didn't have them, as I had them all, but because I wanted them to be from there.

Grey, who preferred tents, rarely if ever slept in his hunting and fishing cabins (he had one on Oregon's Rogue River also). They were big rooms made for gatherings of friends,hunting partners, or shelter from particularly bad storms. They also would have provided good places to safely write and keep his handwritten manuscripts which was how all of his stories were written-- before being edited by his wife.

The second time I was there, we were able to drive up, but the caretaker wasn't home which meant we only could look in through the windows and stand on the porch. Our kids were teens, and we all enjoyed the pristine setting.

Our third trip back we could still drive to the cabin's location, but it had been totally destroyed by the Dude Fire with only the chimney standing if I remember right. Fortunately the ranch below, not as much in the tall pines, had been saved.

This trip, we spent the night at Kohls Ranch, situated along Tonto Creek and below the road up to the cabin site. It is typical of the old style of Arizona for motels, built of logs, a main building in a chalet style with a nice lobby. It may not stay as it was this time as it was purchased by a major Arizona land developer and who knows what he'll do with it. Will he see its value as it is? It was lost by the family who had owned it during the downturn and construction of a four lane highway above leaving it on an off road. Seeing those parts of Arizona lose their unique personality is really heartbreaking but it's how life goes, I guess everywhere.


The next morning we drove up toward the cabin for what would have been the fourth time. We found the general area, but the last hundred feet to the burned out cabin had been dozed to make it no longer show up as a road. The road to the old ranch had a big gate on it and a lot of no trespassing signs compliments of the Zane Grey's Homeowner's Association, whatever that is. They even blocked parking at the turn around under threat of being towed. Friendly not, but we did at least get to the land near the cabin.

A replica of the cabin has been built in Payson on a city park with a lake behind it. From the outside, it looks exactly as I remembered the original. It's now part of a museum honoring him and the pioneers of the region. I had no interest in taking a tour as I'd seen the real thing and the setting mattered more to him and to me than the building itself.

Zane Grey was a youthful inspiration to me about values and character. He wrote about strong men and women. He was the first real romantic western writer and a big influence on both those who love nature and romantic adventure stories. A lot of women romance authors have talked about the influence his stories had on their own creativity. Those stories and the films spawned from them helped create the mythology of the old West.


His books aren't timeless in that the stories could not be set in today; but, you know, some stories really are meant for their time. They often have an attitude that might not be called politically correct for today. In the case of Grey, the language is almost poetic as it describes its era and the people as they were then. Because Grey was an outdoorsman, he knew the country and wrote about it as lovingly as he did the characters. Really, I think the stories were just vehicles for him so he could write about what he truly loved-- the land of the West.