1954 TRAVEL FILM

once this was all wild country now there's a pretty ribbon of a road that'll take you most any place if you have a mind to see what i've done with tools like wind and rain and a lot of patience why come out grand canyon's easy enough to find just keep driving until you come to a hole in the ground like they say you can't miss it you can start here at the western rim of the canyon while you're at the lodge you can have hotel accommodations or cabins all through this country you'll find public campgrounds housekeeping tents cabins and lodges well here she is from the lot an easy trail into the gorge but going into the canyon without a guide is like going to a ball game without a program if you don't know the country it's best to take advantage of the guided trips offered by the national park service trained naturalists will show you signs of the earth's beginnings point out the scars of the seven times america's been submerged by the ocean and rose again facts alone however will not give you the complete story of the canyon any school boy can tell you that the grand canyon's nearly 300 miles long up to 18 miles wide and a mile deep but you won't know the feel of the country until you climb on a burrow and face the immensity of it i put a thousand colors here some of them invisible to the naked eye and unnamed but they'll make themselves felt they'll stay with you long after you've completed your first pack trick they'll take with you two a feeling of the years gone by perhaps wonder if the small space mortals occupy in time your first look was just an appetizer you'll want to see more i know because along these roads i've seen visitors wander for a month a year for a lifetime held by the powerful magic of grand canyon from the next observation post you'll look down to a reddish colored stream plunge down a mile and meet the colorado great red river of the west those who know it's 700 miles of churning waters those who know it best fear it most for it's savage and unpredictable the rip roaringest outlaw of all rivers running from perpetually snow-capped peaks to the stifling deserts below sea level it cuts the deepest and truest cross section through the continent there are spots however where the river calls it truce camping sites and boats are available if you want to be your own explorer and suddenly you'll find that the same river that has not allowed a single large city to grow on its banks can be a warm and playful friend the canyon has its secrets some of them i've buried in rock piles such as this tuition ruin at yaki point the basket weavers who once lived here are gone now no one will tell the complete story other secrets i've whispered to the children of canyon country children who cannot tell now and who later will not remember here's a familiar sight a truck carrying a group of geologists come to make replicas of rock formations i hope you don't mind if i'm a little grumpy with these people they found out much more than i intended they should in the name of science they come out here and stain my rocks well i'll blow that away in a few years if it's colors you want i've got colors that have never been captured by any artist consider what i can do with flowers one minute they may be stiff gray cacti and then with the right combination of weather and a little rain in the early spring i can change a desert into a lush garden with over 700 flowering plants well where to now i've got a canyon full of surprises for you so just follow the circle take your car south about 100 miles good roads will lead you to beaver creek where you can see a castle built about 700 years ago along the way you'll see why i call this my playground montezuma castle five stories high and lodged 75 feet up the side of a cliff arizona cow puncher once traded his horse for this castle later he swapped it off for two horses and then went on his way they've made a national monument out of the petrified forest just to show off some of my works the petrified forest is about a hundred miles north of your last stop you've been in arizona up till now but as you start to swing north you'll find that the forest straddles arizona and new mexico never did pay any attention to those state lines by the way this fellow we've been following around comes out here every summer eavesdropping on him and other experts i've heard many explanations on how to turn a tree into stone of course there's more than one way to petrify a tree but here's the best way bury a big tree in soft mud based with ground waters adding a pinch of silica bake for two million years or until done wash away the mud gently with rain water and there you have it a petrified tree i don't know how he figures it but that's the way i've been doing it these are some of my best getting back to the kind of color i use out here i want to show you a place where i really went wild with a paint pot the painted desert only 20 miles north of the forest i've sprinkled the earth with colored clay with wind and rain i shift the sand so that the pattern is continually changing further north is an indian reservation always indians have lived in the canyon in color and design no land so dominates its people no people are so attuned to their land through it they found peace and a way of life leave them to their ways and take your car northwest to monument valley i carved out some fancy shapes in the valley solid and about 800 feet high here's a bridge i blew out with a little wind and sand rainbow bridge you've almost completed the circle now and you're in arizona heading southwest toward your starting point still you haven't begun to see the wonders of the canyon for one thing it contains every shape in the world you might say it's a stage with sets for every dynasty religion legend and drama known to man it's a book too the world's largest and oldest it tells the history of two thousand million years of course some of the chapters are missing others are written clearly for those who can read them above all it's a place that gives of itself its serenity and its strength to those who seek the next time someone asks you where the time is going tell them tell them i'm out here in canyon country you