Genre, Methodology and Feminist Practice: Gladys Reichard's ethnographic voice

The rainy season is not quite over although it has nearly spent itself. I drive leisurely along five miles of roller coaster highway, down and up, up and down again as I drink in the grandeur of the sunset. I come to the 'big hill', around and over which the road twines narrowly. From its summit I see at my left a deep purple canyon, green at the bottom with irrigated fields. At my right the sun is setting across a wide valley, the shadows replaced by roseate gold interrupted by the white resplendence of chalk cliffs. As if this were not sufficient, a light female rain like that which falls constantly over the home of the Corn gods, drops between me and the sun. I gasp in my inability to comprehend the sight fully as I turn my head forty-five degrees to behold a complete rainbow and behind it the thinnest slice of a new moon. (Gladys Reichard, 1934:122)