An educated person is
one who can view with interest and intelligence the
phenomena of life about him. Like people elsewhere, the people
of the Southwest find the features of the land on which they
live blank or full of pictures according to the amount of
interest and intelligence with which they view the features.
Intelligence cannot be acquired, but interest can; and data
for interest and intelligence to act upon are entirely acquirable.
"Studies perfect nature," Bacon said. "Nature follows
art" to the extent that most of us see principally what our
attention has been called to. I might never have noticed rose-
purple snow between shadows if I had not seen a picture of
that kind of snow. I had thought white the only natural
color of snow. I cannot think of yew trees, which I have
never seen, without thinking of Wordsworth's poem on
three yew trees.
Nobody has written a memorable poem on the mesquite.
Yet the mesquite has entered into the social, economic, and
aesthetic life of the land; it has made history and has been
painted by artists. In the homely chronicles of the Southwest
its thorns stick, its roots burn into bright coals, its trunks
make fence posts, its lovely leaves wave.
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