The young geographer would tell strangers he was hunting uranium. In 1952, that explanation seemed more understandable than the truth about what he was doing in the desert.
Who would believe the broad, flat rocks called pediments had led this slender man, 98 pounds, into Arizona’s San Pedro River Valleyto map remote country under a blazing sun? At night, he camped out in a beat-up Ford coupe, and read by Coleman lamp until, tired, he pulled down the seats and slept with his head by the steering wheel, his feet stretched back into the trunk.