built his ranch house around a fireplace, flanked by shelves
of books. His observations are of the outside, but they are
informed by reflections made beside a fire. They are not
bookish at all, but the spirits of great writers mingle with
echoes of coyote wailing and wood-thrush singing.

_Sky Determines: An Interpretation of the Southwest_, by
Ross Calvin (New York, 1934; republished by the University
of New Mexico Press) lives up to its striking title. The
introductory words suggest the essence of the book:

In New Mexico whatever is both old and peculiar appears upon examination
to have a connection with the arid climate. Peculiarities range
from the striking adaptations of the flora onward to those of fauna,
and on up to those of the human animal. Sky determines. And the
writer once having picked up the trail followed it with certainty, and
indeed almost inevitably, as it led from ecology to anthropology and
economics.


Cultivated intellect is the highest form of civilization.
It is inseparable from the arts, literature, architecture. In any
civilized land, birds, trees, flowers, animals, places, human
contributors to life out of the past, all are richer and more
significant because of representations through literature and
art. No literate person can listen to a skylark over an English
meadow without hearing in its notes the melodies of Chaucer
and Shelley. As the Southwest advances in maturity of mind
and civilization, the features of the land take on accretions
from varied interpreters.