 
 
Evans is a realist. She wants her guests to achieve something often
missing even in the very fit: a sense of balance. "When I see
them looking at their watches and checking their pulses I want to
give them permission to come out of the box. I want them to play.
And as for dieting I'd let them go 70/30: If they're watching what
they eat 70 percent of the time it's OK slip 30 percent."
Although the resort has an excellent chef and the calorie-labeled
meals are delicious; and although the staff is cheerful and obliging
and the spa attendants helpful and competent, it's the outdoor expeditions
that guests appear to remember.
Cathy Farneman, a local herbalist, for example, is a self-described
"desert rat who came from Santa Barbara, California and spent
her first 10 years in Utah trying to get back." She finally
embraced the American Southwest, made friends with tribes and learned
how they used desert plants as medicinals. She now takes interested
guests into the desert to demonstrate what she has learned.
 
Boma Johnson, however, leads guests into both the desert and the
distant past. With a Masters in Native American studies and in Archaeology
he has earned the trust of local tribes with his sensitivity to
Indian spirituality over the years. ("It's OK to call them
Indians," he says, "that's what they call themselves.")
He bends over rocks that show the dense black "desert varnish"
of manganese and iron oxide. Chiseled by stones out of the varnish
many centuries ago are the petroglyphs described by Johnson as "story
panels sharing information with viewers in attempts to communicate."
 
 
But perhaps the red rocks themselves communicate.
Asked what does a geologist think as he ponders this land around
him? Puchlik replies, "Our land is fragile. The rocks speak
of unmentionable chaos. They show order is limited and the slate
can be wiped clean at any moment by the wrath of Nature. Life is
precious. We ought to slow down and enjoy it."
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