Sky Determines

Ross Calvin was born in Illinois in 1889, graduated from Indiana's DePauw University in 1911, and went on to Harvard where he got his doctorate in English. In 1920-21 he attended the General Theological Seminary in New York City. Poor health forced him west shortly thereafter, and from 1927 to 1942 he served as an Episcopal priest at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Silver City, New Mexico. During his off hours, Calvin hiked the surrounding country and eventually traveled all over his adopted state. He loved talking to people-ranchers, cowboys, miners, old-timers, biologists, historians, Pueblo Indians, Hispanic farmers-and each one of these conversations further buttressed his growing conviction that climate dictated everything in New Mexico. When not roaming the countryside or tending his congregants, he wrote for religious and scholarly journals and also produced four books, the best known of which are "Sky Determines" (1934) and "River of the Sun: Stories of the Storied Gila" (1946). He died in 1970.