We drove home across the desert through a world transfigured. The afternoon sun in that pure air scattered prismatic stains over gray mesquite and sage, and colored the translucent hills in gay pinks and blues. Superstition Mountain loomed clear and cold on our left. But what caught and held our eyes in this pastel land was a riot, a debauch of clear orange-gold. Born overnight of a quick shower and a spring sun, a million deep-centered California poppies spread a fabulous mosaic over the dull earth, fairy gold in a fairy world, alive, ablaze. A sunset was thrown in, and a crescent moon in a Pompadour sky helped us thread our way home through arroyos and over blind trails. Still in search of a “dood ranch,” we trailed all over the Salt River Valley. Some of the ranches where we sought board and lodging were surrounded by orange groves. The hosts made a point of the privilege allowed guests to pick and eat all the oranges they liked, but at the prices charged we could have procured the same privilege in any hotel in New York. Arizona prices do not, like the ostrich, hide their heads in the sand. The completion of the dam made Salt River Valley realize that the climate she had always possessed, crowned with fruit and flowers, made her California’s rival. She began to cultivate oranges, pecans and a professional enthusiasm for herself. One Native Son of Phoenix of whom I was buying post-cards almost sold me a triangular corner of his ranch, at $300 an acre. If it had been irrigated, he said he would have had to charge more. The longer he talked the more eager I was to secure this Paradise whose native milk and honey would keep me in affluence and spare tires the rest of my days. Toby, however, who had been strolling about during the exhortation and had not been splashed by his golden shower of words, advised postponing purchase till we saw the land. We drove out, and looked at it. One thing he had claimed was true:--it _was_ triangular. It was frankly desert, but not even pretty desert. Except for a deserted pigsty in the immediate foreground, there was no view. We drove back to Phoenix. Now Phoenix has paved streets and electric lights and a Chamber of Commerce, a State House and a Governor. But somehow, Phoenix had no charm for us. Phoenix may be Arizona, but it is Arizona denatured. All Salt River Valley seemed denatured. It had taken its boom seriously, and the arch crime of self-consciousness possessed it. For the first time since the Aztecs one can find Arizonans trying to do what other people do, rather than what they dam-please. And it set, oh, so heavily on Phoenix and the Phoenicians and on the Easterners and Californians who had come there to be as western as they dared. Finally we heard of a little ranch away up in the country north of the dam, where we need not dress for dinner, and there we hied us.