The Valentine State

By Bennett Owen

100 years ago yesterday, Arizona became the 48^th state, the last piece of the puzzle in the contiguous US.

Credit: Paul Funderbird“The Grand Canyon is carven deep by the master hand; it is the gulf of silence, widened in the desert; it is all time inscribing the naked rock; it is the book of earth.” - Donald Culross Peattie

Credit: military museum"Fort Yuma is probably the hottest place on earth…A wicked soldier died there, once, and of course, went straight to the hottest corner of perdition, - and the next day he telegraphed back for his blankets.” - Mark Twain, Roughing It

Credit: triplepundit.com "There is a muscular energy in sunlight corresponding to the spiritual energy of wind." 
- Annie Dillard   

“They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars – on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.”
                                                - Robert Frost

Credit: Maryland Weather“Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
and waste its sweetness on the desert air.”
                                       - Thomas Gray

Credit: Gatley.blogspot“May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome dangerous, leading to the most amazing view…
May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.”
                                                                                       - Edward Abbey

Credit: tripadvisor