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A LOOK INSIDE THE ARCHIVES AT ONE OF OUR CLASSIC ISSUES FROM 91 YEARS OF NEW MEXICO MAGAZINE.
October 1940
In reading your good magazine each month, I sometimes feel the urge to chuck everything overboard and go right out to New Mexico to live. That’s how nicely you sugarcoat the capsule, or paint the lily, or hand out the bushwah, or whatever it is you do to cast the spell upon us Easterners to make us feel like that. Maj. Tom Sterrett Erie, PA
Yucca by H.D. Walter
Mudheads of Zuni By Ruth F. Kirk
A EVEN AN OLD-TIMER at watching Pueblo Indian Dances is surprised when he sees his first Zuni dance. Zuni has mudheads, dun-colored creatures with huge distorted masks. Mudheads alternately act foolish and wise. In the same breath, they utter profundities and say the most senseless things. They are clowns of Zuni, yet the most sacred of all the katchinas.
BRUPTLY from the plain the Shiprock lifts Its spires of stone enwrapped in misty blue; A straying cloud with fleecy segment drifts Above the spires, tips each with purple hue. The sun’s hot lances pierce the arid height; Mirages shimmer ghost-like on the plain, Bedazzle eyes that scarce believe the sight— A floating ship afar from ocean main. The Navajos through ages long have known That pools of water lie on Shiprock’s breast. But we, a lesser faith than they have shown, Must wait till science put our doubts at rest. A temple on the desert plain it stands With turrets carved by Nature’s mighty hands. —Rose Jasper Nickell
FORTY-THREE years ago Joe Cannard was told that he had only two years to live. … Today, at the age of 75, Joe outwalks all the fishermen and hunters in the parties he guides in the Red River region. … Cannard climbs Red River pass when it is covered with snow, hikes to Taos, twenty-four miles away, and arrives there by noon. He lives in a cabin which he built at 9,000 elevation, and sometimes the temperature reaches 30 below zero at his home in winter. “But, by golly, I don’t wear an overcoat, no matter how cold it gets!” Cannard guides fishermen to Lost Lake, Blue Lake, Middle Lake, to the heads of Cabresta, Red River, and other streams. He shows them where they can catch trout from 18 to 22 inches long, but first the dudes have to catch their guide, for he out-walks them on the mountain trails. “I’ve hooked trout so large I had to lead ’em six or seven hundred feet before I drug ’em out,” he said, talking of the high altitude lakes. “These young men can have their fancy flies, hooks and poles, but I fish the common old way—with grasshoppers.”
VOLUME 92, ISSUE 10 New Mexico Magazine (ISSN 0028-6249) is published monthly by the New Mexico Tourism Department at 495 Old Santa Fe Trail, Santa Fe, NM 87501-2750. SUBSCRIPTION PRICE: $25.95 per year, $45.95 outside the United States. Periodicals postage paid at Santa Fe, NM, and at additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to New Mexico Magazine, PO Box 433148, Palm Coast, FL 32143-9881. Copyright © 2014 by New Mexico Magazine. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. The magazine is not responsible for unsolicited manuscripts, photographs, or artwork.
72 NEW MEXICO | OCTOBER 2014