One need not thrill to the prehistoric, however, to enjoy Santa Fé, especially when the apricots blur the flaming green valley with a rosy mist. All trails from the sleepy little town lead to the perpetual snows of the hills through scented forests of pine, past roaring streams. A good horse will clamber up the bed of a waterfall, leap fallen logs, pick his way, when the forest becomes too tangled, over the slippery boulders of the river, canter over ground too rough for a high-school horse to walk upon, and bring his rider out to the top of some high ridge, where crests of blue notch against crests of paler and paler blue, without end. Near enough to Santa Fé to be reached in a day by motor and somewhat longer by pack-train, lies the enchanting valley locally called “The Pecos.” One mounts the piñon-scented red trail, studded with spring flowers, to the heights above, where to breathe the air of dew and fire is to acquire the zip of a two year old colt and the serenity of a seraph. In this least known corner of our country, the Pecos is the least traveled district, known only to a few ranchmen, and old guides with tall, “straight” stories, and short, twisted legs,--mighty hunters who have wrestled barehanded with bears, and stabbed mountain lions with their penknives. Sportsmen are only beginning to know what the streams of the Pecos produce in trout, and its wilderness in big game. Given a good horse, a good guide, good “grub” and a comfortable bedding roll, a month free from entangling alliances with business, and the Pecos provides sound sleep, mighty appetites, and air two miles high, so different from the heavy vapor breathed by the city-dweller that it deserves a name of its own. Nobody can stay long in Santa Fé, without becoming aware of the Rio Grande’s influence on the dwellers in its valley. It furnishes not only their livelihood, but little daily happenings, “So and So’s car got stuck crossing at Espanola, and had to stay in the river two days,”--“The river rose and tore down the bridge at Buckman, and they say there will be two more bridges down by night.”--“You can’t get out at Pojoaque, this week.” But to see the river in its magnificence, one should drive over the canyon of the Rio Grande, following along the precipitous road to Taos.