Explore Arizona from Rim to River with Tom Zoellner

When: 2 p.m., Monday, March 20, this event has reached capacity

Where: Western National Parks Association, 12880 N Vistoso Village Dr, Oro Valley, AZ

In this free and open to the public event, Tom Zoellner shares stories from his book, Rim to River: Looking into the Heart of Arizona. He interweaves his hike along the Arizona Trail from Utah to Sonora with stories about the history and culture of the state. Will he find the Arizonac ranch for which the state is named? What does he learn about the Grand Canyon? Zoellner is a fifth generation Arizonan and author of eight nonfiction books including The Heartless Stone, Uranium, Train, A Safeway in Arizona and Island on Fire, which won the 2020 National Book Critics Circle Award.

About the book:

Rim to River is the story of an extraordinary journey through redrock country, down canyons, up mesas, and across desert plains to the obscure valley in Mexico that gave the state its enigmatic name. The trek is interspersed with incisive essays that pick apart the distinctive cultural landscape of Arizona: the wine-colored pinnacles and complex spirituality of Navajoland, the mind-numbing stucco suburbs, desperate border crossings, legislative skullduggery, extreme politics, billion-dollar copper ventures, dehydrating rivers, retirement kingdoms, old-time foodways, ghosts of old wars, honky-tonk dreamers, murder mysteries, and magical Grand Canyon reveries.

Book excerpt:

Here it was at last. I would be hiking across the Kaibab Plateau, down and out of the Grand Canyon, past the cinder cone of Humphreys Peak, across Anderson Mesa, down the Mogollon Rim, through the Mazatzals and the Superstitions, across the Black Hills of Pinal County, and then up and over four major ranges in succession: the Catalinas, the Rincons, the Santa Ritas, and the Huachucas to the Mexican border and then—hopefully—the spot in the valley that poured forth silver for about a week and from which the state had taken its beguiling name.