So it is with Veda's face, her hands. She's like the land, weathered, strong and beautiful.

If chance takes you to Veda's garden, you can see: She's 90 years old, shelling peas on her front porch after tending to squash that sits hard by the gladioluses, the corn she's "venturing" on this year in hopes the deer won't get at it.

Veda Behunin. Born on Boulder Mountain, instructed by a ranching family of 14 that worked like hell every day. The kids rode horses five miles to school at a time when the world consisted of log cabins, cattle, hunting and fishing, raising children and stopping from time to time to dance.

Except for a few years in Wayne County, Veda has lived in Boulder all her life. "I'm just kind of isolated," she says. "I don't care about what this world does."

Veda married Max Behunin in 1934, and they bought her dad's ranch up on Boulder Mountain. They worked side by side seven days a week, tending their children and their cattle, bringing all down to town for the winter and back up for the summer. Like all the men, Max hunted, but Veda preferred just to fish.

Max died 14 years ago, and Veda lives alone in their home in town. Her son Farlan helps out, but Veda knows how to take care of things.

Kelly Wallace lives up the Burr Trail from Veda, and she puts it this way: Whenever she feels overworked and weary, she drives by the garden and Veda's out there rototilling.

In one breath, Veda will say hers "has been a drab life. I've not had anything exciting. We all have our trials and tribulations, our good days and our bad days."

A little later, she talks about the best things in life: "Riding a horse. I like to fish, and I like to ride. It's just been a lot of work, but we've enjoyed work. So that's what made life go on."

There are only about 160 or so souls in Boulder, many of them lifelong residents, some newcomers like Eric Scott and Cynthia Low, proprietors since January of the Hills & Hollows general store.

"We came here on vacation and went home and packed," says Eric, like Cynthia late of Sedona, Ariz., and a longtime devotee of the organic life. They're slowly adding organic foods and goods to the store, which sells sleeping bags, bug juice, hats, T-shirts, ice cream, beer, snacks, toiletries and a little Indian jewelry.

"The whole town is built on an [Indian] archaeological site," Cynthia says. "You can feel the energy without getting religious. You can feel that, how people have cared for this land, and appreciated for just generation after generation. Anyone who comes here, you become overcome by this feeling of grace, of humbleness.

"We asked ourselves the question, well, how can we serve the people in this land by being here? Well, help bring good healthy food to the people, and wool blankets, wool rugs. Anything that people would need to live comfortably without all the extra added frills. Just basic."

Lovely as it is, there's more to Garfield County than Boulder. Head south on State Highway 12 and within minutes you'll find yourself on the Hogsback, a stretch of two-lane blacktop that snakes along the spine of the world. As in a bad dream, Escalante canyon bottoms out nearly 1,000 feet below; it's said that some visitors simply stop along the road, too terrified to go on.

The road leads south to Escalante, a town of about 800 people situated in a broad valley. When Arnold Alvey was a boy, there were maybe 40,000 sheep and half that many cattle. Alvey, now 76, remembers how the sheepmen decided cows would be less trouble, so they sold off their stock and went to cattle, and also how the environmental movement ultimately put an end to all but a smattering of the ranching business here.

The environmentalists, he says, "just fought us and fought us. It's all right, but we've got all of this open country here that isn't good for anything if it isn't good for some grazing." And then there's talk of draining Lake Powell, which Arnold thinks is foolish. How can you replace the electricity and water storage?

"You know, everything we use comes out of the earth," he says. "And that's the reason we've got to take care of it. But if you just shut it off, and get nothing from the earth, then what good is it? What [are] we going to live on?"

Arnold says it was in the 1970s when the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management started reining in their grazing permits, and he and his father had to make a decision about what to do with the 1,000 or so acres they owned.

"I said, 'Sell it,' " Arnold says. "He said, 'That's fine for me, but what will you do?' And I said, 'I'll go to breaking colts.' He said, 'God, you'll starve to death breaking colts.' And I said, 'Well, we're starving to death anyway, so it won't be any different.' "

Soon Arnold was breaking colts for ranchers throughout the western United States, work he continued until he retired 11 years ago. He says he never kept count, but at, say, 50 a year, that means he did the early training on some 1,500 horses. With a teacher's perspective on each animal's personality, he used a gentle and patient hand.

"Every colt's different. You break this one this way, and the next one the next way. Even colt brothers and sisters," he says. "They're just nothing alike. They're just like people."

Right across the yard there's a big, handsome barn that Arnold's father built in 1910. These days, Alvey dreams of making a museum that will showcase the cowboy life: chaps, spurs, bridles, horseshoes, an old wood stove, feedbags and harnesses. And he wouldn't charge anyone to come in.

"I call it junk. But these tourists, that's what they want to see," he says. "There's not a thing wrong with tourists. If they come to see something, they want to see everything. I don't think you have to charge people an arm and leg . . . entertain them for nothing. It does me good to have people leave feeling good about what you did for them."

Tourists, in fact, are the real economic engine in Garfield County, graced as it is with Bryce Canyon National Park, parts of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Canyonlands and Capitol Reef national parks and the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area. To the north of that is the Burr Trail, which winds into what seems like an empty place on the map but holds a sweep of desert canyons and ridges and cliffs as spectacular as they can be deadly to the unprepared.

Panguitch, the county seat, is a way station for travelers, and on a Friday night pretty much every motel room is taken. But away from U.S. 89, it's a pretty little Utah town, sweetly scented tonight after a brief downpour.

Its population of about 1,800 has stayed fairly stable over the years, but as in any town some of the younger people will stay and some will go. Amy Poll, 17, is bound for Utah Valley State College in Orem. She was a cheerleader and ran track at Panguitch High; her team took the state 1-A title this year.

Locals call Panguitch "Titletown" for its athletic excellence, and whenever a championship team comes home, Alex Nay and his firefighter buddies take the engines to the edge of town and escort the winners home.

Alex is one who's staying put. Twenty years old and just married, he works for his father at Joe's Market (motto: No lady carries out her own groceries) as well as for the fire department, and mows lawns in the evening and works construction on Sunday.

There's hunting and fishing and camping all within a few miles, and friends and family. "It doesn't get any better than this," Alex says. "I love it."

A glimpse at Garfield County

Coyote Cemetery

There are babies in the old Coyote Cemetery in Escalante, and old men and women. Their names are those of the people who live in town today: Griffin, Alvey, Lyman, Spencer, and on and on.

Those who rest here were loved and mourned; some headstones are etched with visions of the hereafter - "In my father's house are many mansions" - and endearments. Beth, daughter of Al and Lizzie Roundy, born June 3, 1915, died Jan. 1917: "A little time on earth she spent till God to her his angels sent."

For Charles E. Griffin, born May 10, 1836, died July 17, 1900: "A honest man's the noblest work of God."

Then there are those who scarcely have a name at all: Tommy Indian Baby, Abbie Indian, Unknown Indian Lady. Their dates of death are unknown, except for one: Unknown Man Shot, 1918.

Land of adventure

Ute (pronounced Oo-ta) and Reinhard Schumacher, of Espelkamp, Germany, had in mind a six-week trip through the United States with their four children. They looked into renting a motorhome here, but that was just too expensive, so they just put their Mercedes-Benz RV on a ship and flew to Baltimore to pick it up.

Camped at the Calf Creek Recreation Area with laundry hanging like signal flags, they trace their journey from Baltimore to Memphis, Oklahoma City to Amarillo, Texas. They're headed next for Bryce Canyon National Park, then to Yellowstone, Mount Rushmore, and on eastward across the northern states.

"When we planned this trip, we wanted to do the things you can't do in Europe," Ute says at a picnic table covered with a stars-and-stripes tablecloth and dozens of drying socks. "It's a land of adventure."

Residency requirements

Here's how the people of Boulder establish residency: You're a visitor for the first five years, and after that you're a part-timer, and after 10 years you might, might, be considered a local.

That's what Sherri and Gary Catmull were told when they arrived eight years ago, and they've worked together ever since, seven days a week, to make their address permanent.

The Catmulls' main job is managing the bed and breakfast at the Boulder Mountain Ranch, but, as Sherri says, "you have to be willing to do anything."

So they learned how to build fences. "We never built a fence in our lives before," Gary says. "I never dug a posthole.

"They say this used to be called Paradise, until they started farming and digging holes, and that's why they call it Boulder."