A Word for the West
Vista Boothe
Don't be surprised at anything that I might say, for I am just an Eastern Greenhorn of a Tenderfoot, who is enjoying the West immensely, and wondering what it is all about. Perhaps you'll say that Missouri is not an Eastern state. But, at any rate, it is far enough east that I don't know that a herder's tent and a teepee were the same thing, nor western enough to keep me from calling Socorro "Sock-a row," with especial emphasis on the "sock"--nor to keep me form calling Prairie Dogs perfectly adorable little "pets."
But here "I are," just like the Spring Time; "SO GREEN." But, being serious just for a while, I want to tell you what I think of the West.
I think that Arizona has been favored by God's hand with a natural beauty that could not be found, in the same ruggedness, and "untouched by man," elsewhere.
Towering above everything else, tall, sloping - some peaked, some rounding, resembling almost any imaginable object - stand the mountains, putting forth a cordial welcome to the West.
There is something rather fascinating, something sort of "great" that grips you when you look at those great heaps of earth, so beautifully arranged. Somehow, they remind me of a stately old gentleman-kindly and intelligent-looked up to by all the rest.
A rock! Yes, just a rock. Before I came to Arizona, a rock did not mean much to me. But I say-and mean it-what has more natural beauty than an oddly-shaped, huge rock partly covered by moss and tinted with dull, yet pretty colors? And what is more thrilling than to drive along a well-built road, on the side of a towering mountain, and see over your head a large, impending, majestic rock, which looks as though it might crush you at any moment? Yet, this same old rock has been there for thousands of years, and probably shall be there to give our great-great-great grand children the same thrill, or perhaps it will laugh at them as they fly leisurely about it in an aero plane over its head.
Malpias Rock must own its mossy grace,
Or else be nothing but a stone.
Then comes the evening, with its quiet, except for the soft twittering of a bird in a distant tree-top. The sun is sinking in the West; slowly down past the horizon, proclaiming the "end of a perfect day," with the most gorgeous sunset in all the world. The me, each sunset is different. Some are delicate, changeable colors, while others are of the most vivid red, which, seemingly, sets all of God's world into blazes. Excuse my crude manner of describing it-but it impresses me that Arizona sunsets are the be felt and not described.
There is a blue shy that hovers over Arizona, and a bright moon that shines. Then, last but not least, there is a warm smile, a hospitable manner, and a tender heard that welcomes you into the "Homey Little Grey Cottage in the West."
Out where the hand-clasp's a little stronger,
Out where the smile dwells a little longer,
That's where the West begins.
Where there's more of singing and less of
sighing,
Where there's more of giving and less of buying,
That's where the West begins.