It has been reported that J.J. Hart is the first, and possibly only, writer to have walked the entire length of the state of Arizona, south to north, accompanied only by a female Labrador retriever and a male mallard duck. These same accounts describe Hart as the grizzled outdoorsman who founded the Wild West Scouts, some eighty-five years ago. Other reports, however, describe Hart as the young, female field botanist for the Forest Service who is credited with discovering a new type of arid-country mushroom in California’s driest desert. Yet other journalists have described Hart as the prolific, award-nominated author of more than thirty books (under a different name), a stock car racer from the Great Smokey Mountains, a rural emu rancher, or a publishing executive in a major metropolitan area.