I've been fussing with wood for months now; gathering, sawing and stacking wood, building a woodpile. When the cold and snow arrive I can unbuild it, carrying it log by log into my house to be burned.

In my woodpile I have some pieces of antique wood, some logs that I never seem to burn. They stay there year after year, escaping the fire because they hold memories. Perhaps the day will come when all other wood is gone, the cold will be in my bones, and I will cast sentimentality aside and carry those antique logs to the fire to be consumed.

Once I actually carried one, an old juniper log, into my house, but I couldn't give it to the flames. It sat in my living room until spring arrived. Then I carried it back outside to the woodpile, where it survives. That juniper log came form the Arizona Strip, one of the least populated areas in the continental United States, its southern boundary is the Colorado River as it cuts through the Grand Canyon.

The Arizona Strip is a land of raw beauty and immense space that stretches the imagination and speaks with voices from the past. How I got there was an accident, or perhaps one in a chain of events that were meant to be. Once I'd found my way to the Arizona Strip in 1971, and met Ranger John Riffey, I returned again and again.

Every time I drove the rutted dirt road that led to Riffey's small stone cabin in the Tuweap valley, I knew I was a bound for an adventure. One November day John taught me how to drive the road grader. The rain had fallen for two days. The third day the sky was clear and Riffey announced to the few at breakfast that conditions were right for grading the road and he and I were going to do it. I looked up, cereal spoon in hand. What? Me, grade the road? Soon we were rumbling along, me behind the wheel of the road grader and Riffey beside me giving instructions.

Not only did I learn to drive Scratchy, the grader, and to move dirt from one side of the road to the other, that day I learned to tell the difference between a marsh hawk and a red-tail. I learned about the winterfat brush and how it once covered the valley before all the grazing occurred. " But it's returning ," John told me. "After 30 years of controlled grazing, really returning." He told me stories about animals, ranchers, and earlier days, stories and more stories, all beneath a bright blue Arizona sky as we rumbled down the road.

We spotted a coyote standing at the side of the road. "Dumb Coyote!" John scolded. "Someone is going to shoot him, certain. If he doesn't pay attention." The day before a coyote hunter had appeared at John's door, looking for a place to trap. John turned him away from the park. "It's crazy. The government pays me to protect the coyote and pays him to kill it."

On the way home John told me, "You know, there are only three problems with road grading in this country- too much water, not enough water, or just the right amount, and there never is the right amount." He laughed and I laughed as I tried to keep Scratchy heading straight.

John was a Renaissance man of the West, familiar with everything in his environment. He knew how to call the birds and how to fix the power plant, get a cow out of a cattle guard, and entertain his listeners with stories of ranchers and the Indians who used to live in the valley. He had a sense of time that was more than minutes and hours: it included space, and a sense of himself in that space.

One spring I took my friend Jeff out to Tuweap. I was anxious to have him meet Riffey and to show off the area. We were out at the rim when I finally asked, "What do you think? Do you like it?"

"Well if it would do for me what it has done for John Riffey, I would live here any day," Jeff said.

Does the land change the man or does the man change the land? Riffey knew the land, loved it, became a part of it. He didn't try to change it, but rather was its caretaker, guardian, interpreter and historian. Riffey came to Tuweap in 1942. He came out to spend one night to see if he would like it and ended up spending a lifetime. "I don't think I could have found a better place for me to work and spend my life. When I retire I'm going to live right down the road; a place good enough to work at is good enough to die at." he'd say.

In 1942, Tuweap was part of Grand Canyon National Monument and Riffey's main job was working with ranchers who had grazing permits in the monument. Over the years the job changed as ranching declined and recreational use increased. Later the monument became part of Grand Canyon National Park. In November 1978, a group of "granddaughters," as he called us, gathered at Tuweap to share Thanksgiving dinner with Riffey. It was a wonderful time, filled with stories, turkey, 14 pumpkin pies, and trips out to the rim to look at the river and listen to the roar of Lava Falls 3,000 feet below. Too soon, the time came for me to return home to the Colorado Rockies. I was talking to Riffey about the need to get wood for the coming winter. "I know an area outside the park where we can get some wood," he said. "It's PJ country and it was chained a few years back." PJ? That means peanut butter and jelly.

"Pinion and juniper," he explained. "We could cut some wood in a nearby canyon," John said. He explained chaining. A heavy chain is attached to two vehicles, usually tractors. The tractors move apart so the chain is taut between them, then move forward and mow down all the trees in their way. The purpose is to get rid of the trees in the belief that there will then be more grass for the cattle to eat. In spite of mainly negative results, the practice of chaining continues.

We drove Orange Blossom, my truck, to the canyon that had been chained. It looked like a battlefield, or as if a tornado had gone through the area. The steep hillside was littered with dead trees lying on their backs, black arms reaching skyward, a boneyard of dead trees.

John took out his chain saw and in no time the back of my truck was loaded with wood. I trucked it home to Gold Hill, where I burned it an enjoyed its warmth and smell. As I watched the flames in the fireplace, I thought of my return to Tuweap in the spring.

I did return many times and I still return to Tuweap. It has become part of my life. The juniper log remains in my woodpile and probably always will. Riffey died on the job in July 1980. He is still there guarding the land that he loved. The Park Service made an exception to the rules and allowed him to be buried in the park, just down the road from the stone house that was his home for so many years.

Used by permission of the Grand Canyon Pioneers Society.

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