Last week my wife and I drove across the Sonoran desert from Phoenix to California.

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Author Craig Childs, a naturalist who was born in the Sonoran Desert, has written an encomium to this precious fluid.

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Fed up with the high cost of real estate in San Francisco, Cecil, an art dealer, fled to a secluded 8.3-acre property in the Sonoran desert.

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Once there, you can take hot-air balloon rides over the Sonoran Desert, kayak in the Verde River or tour Frank Lloyd Wright's architectural campus and winter home, Taliesin West.

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It remains to be seen whether the unique intensity of a Miraval experience will translate from the quiet beauty of the Sonoran Desert to the frantic ambience of Gotham.

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Chicago is dealing with a foot and a half of snow, freezing rain is falling in the Northeast and the wind chill is in the 20s here in the Sonoran Desert.

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His group first looked to nature for inspiration, using studies of the biochemistry of organisms that survive without water: 500-year-old Chinese lotus seeds, the hardy resurrection plant of the Sonoran desert and the microscopic tardigrade creature.

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On a recent visit, a guest marveled at Case's hubris: The Sonoran Desert setting is so picturesque, the activities so singular (and space-demanding--the resort spans 317 acres), the staff so large and highly educated, and the variety of activities so extensive that the idea of all this being both exportable and profitable seems counterintuitive.

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There's the Gulf Coast, Texas Hill Country, the Great Plains, Sonoran Desert, Rocky Mountains, Blue Ridge Parkway, Great Lakes, and so on.

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