28 DEPARTURES TRAVEL WINTER ESCAPE Desert Sanctuary Amid a wondrous desert landscape, Tucson is the unsung jewel of the American Southwest, with indulgent residential spas, worldclass golf and burgeoning cuisine. by Brian Noone THERE ARE 350 CLOUD-FREE NIGHTS each year in Tucson, an hour north of the Mexican border in Arizona, and on this particularly velvet-skied evening the Milky Way seems to be swallowing up our hilltop setting. “The moon just glows, doesn’t it,” purrs our stargazer-in-chief, as she leads me to the telescope. As an astronomy agnostic, the sight of the shadows on the moon – the sheer clarity of the rugged lunar terrain – is unexpectedly moving. Suddenly alone with the moon for the first time, I find myself unable to repress a childlike awe. It’s this sense of otherworldly wonder and displacement, the rewiring of perception, that has long attracted artists – like flower Two layers of pools at Miraval overlooking the majestic landscape master Georgia O’Keeffe, minimalist Donald Judd and German surrealist Max Ernst – to the supernatural beauty and almost eerie isolation of the American Southwest. And now increasingly, thanks to an expanding roster of creature comforts, sybarites too are opting for a dose of the desert sublime as a way to recentre themselves instead of heading to the more usual serene island paradises or mountaintop eyries. The arrival in Tucson is majestic from every direction: stark mountain peaks and the cactus-studded hills of a national park ring the city, offering sublime panoramas – and, eventually, hikes – in every direction. But the man-made tapestry of charms is what makes the city unlike any other de-stressing destination in North America. Take Canyon Ranch (canyonranch. com), the grande dame of American residential spas, where the atmosphere of the Old West has comingled with medicine-led “pre-hab” (the gentler, preventative cousin of rehab) since 1979. Doctors, nutritionists, exercise physiologists and spa therapists work together to craft personalised, allinclusive stays that are rivalled only by its cross-town competitor, Miraval ( miravalarizona.com). A more contemporary incarnation of the stayall-week spa, it is less medical and more glamorous, emphasising its JAMES BAIGRIE
