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Show Who could be stupid enough to call this a desert? Father scoffed. Partly to prove his point he became a "volunteer observer" for the U.S. Weather Bureau. He received a rain guage and a pad of forms. Although unpaid he regularly reported such phenomena as Precipitation, Wind, Temperature, Cloud Cover. Naturally he sent in his reports of snows and rains with much more enthusiasm than any other occurrences. He wanted to prove that the maps with our valley labeled "Desert" were wrong. He wanted to prove the Mormons with irrigated fields along the mountains to the east were wrong in prophesying failure of our efforts. We could see their game, we thought: they did not want us to take their winter range, for they grazed sheep by tens of thousands in the Escalante in the snowy season when browse was wet and snow substituted for drinking water for the flocks. In our second year at Nada, nature lied outrageously. She made Father send his most glowing report to J. Cecil Alter, head of the weather bureau in Salt Lake City. For once those clouds that often formed around Blue Mountain did not deceive. That saddle-shaped peak was high enough to serve as more than a landmark for travelers and stockmen. It could lift the prevailing westerly winds so that clouds would condense with delicious dark promise. Father would longingly watch them form almost every afternoon. Usually the wind drifted them past the peak and shredded them with no more than a sprinkle, if that. But once the miracle happened. Over Blue Mountain the clouds towered up huge and black. They overspread our valley, not just Frisco Peak to the northeast. Father was working with Steve Strmysek, a Polish homesteader who often worked on our place, building a storage shed for kerosene and store supplies. They didn't pause even when huge drops splattered them and the lumber. Finally though the shower settled into a deluge. It became a "sod-soaker, a gulley-washer," as one homesteader from the Ozark hills termed it later. The two carpenters and I gathered under the partly completed roof to rejoice in the thunder |