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Join the Canyonlands Field Institute for a guided rafting trip along Utah’s San Juan River, where emotional connections are made between the kids, the water and the land. Utah guide organizations have gained national prominence in adventure education, offering multi-day youth programs that traverse Southern Utah’s iconic rivers, ancient canyons and cultural landmarks.

The Canyonlands Field Institute (CFI) has gained prominence as an adventure educator, offering multi-day youth programs that traverse Southern Utah’s iconic rivers, ancient canyons and cultural landmarks. "I just love working with CFI,” says Brandi Atene, a CFI program guide who is also Navajo of the Bitter Water clan and grew up in Navajo Mountain, Utah, “because it's education-based and we follow a lot of cultural aspects. I'm grateful for my creator and I believe my creator is Mother Earth.”

The geology of Southern Utah is an inspiration to all. Exploring Southern Utah lets you experience landscapes that have existed for millions of years. The arid landscape gives life on all scales the chance to grow. Anne Kaferle, a plein air painter, explains how southern Utah's geology has influenced her art and changed her life.

Anne Kaferle, a plein air painter based in the up-and-coming art hub of Helper, creates dreamlike surreal landscapes. For the past seven years, she’s taken daily hikes, observing changes in light, cyclical changes, weather and subtle color variations with a painter’s eye. “The balance of color, value and line in the desert landscape has a serene power, and this is what I’m trying to communicate in my work,” Kaferle says.

Anne Kaferle, a plein air painter based in the up-and-coming art hub of Helper, creates dreamlike surreal landscapes. For the past seven years, she’s taken daily hikes, observing changes in light, cyclical changes, weather and subtle color variations with a painter’s eye. “The balance of color, value and line in the desert landscape has a serene power, and this is what I’m trying to communicate in my work,” Kaferle says.

Artists in Utah, while creating vastly different work, are forming strong creative communities. This attempt to capture and understand the sublime comes from engaging directly with the distinct landscapes and wildlife that surround each artist. Throughout the state, there is a female renaissance happening in Utah-anchored art.

There's real solitude in ranching. Cowboys like Adam Redd and Chase Murray were raised on the wide-open lands of San Juan County and daily experience the kind of solitude and beauty that people from the city yearn for. Head out on the Indian Creek Corridor Scenic Byway of Bears Ears National Monument for a glimpse of the storied lands and lifestyle of southeastern Utah ranchers. It all started for Redd with the arrival of his great-great-grandfather and great-grandfather by way of Utah's famed Mormon pioneer Hole-in-the-Rock Trail, a path blazed through hardship and sheer will. Murray says something gets inside you that makes you like his way of life. "It's hard to explain," he says, "But it's something that gets in your blood."

Carol Talus calls southeastern Utah her ancestral home. Living on the Navajo Nation, just outside of Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park, she welcomes visitors to her home using the Airbnb Experience platform. Talus shows what it’s like to visit a Navajo, or Diné, family at their home site. She also shares the land’s beauty. With a guide and extra time to appreciate a place, according to Talus, beauty emerges from all around: before, behind, beside, below and above. There's also a story behind the scenery and the place. Follow Talus to hear the story from some of the earliest people of modern-day San Juan County.

Spanning high-elevation peaks, wild plateaus, deep canyons and towering sandstone, Bears Ears National Monument is at the heart of southeastern Utah. These lands are imbued with layers of culture — layers of life. The only way to understand the depths of this landscape is to listen to the locals who connect with the land in their own distinct ways. In the four-part "Voices of Bears Ears" series, you'll meet: 1) Carol Talus, Navajo and Airbnb Experience Host; 2) Dustin Randall, Guide and Adventurer; 3) Adam Redd and Chase Murray, Cowboys; and 4) Nate Thomas and Jonathan Till, Archaeologists.

Layers of history and culture are visible on the landscape of Bears Ears National Monument in southeastern Utah. Thousands of fragile sites are spread across the rugged backcountry. Each artifact tells a centuries-old story that is part of a longer narrative with deep meaning for the area's indigenous people. Visit with respect and "with a good feeling in your heart," as you'll hear from Jonathan Till, archeologist and curator and Edge of the Cedars State Park Museum, and Nate Thomas, archaeologist with the Bureau of Land Management.

Bears Ears National Monument is not like the dramatic Zion or Yosemite national parks. While there’s beauty all around, it’s the layers of life and history that give definition to these lands. Local guide and adventurer Dustin Randall believes one of the best ways to see it is on a mountain bike. With the monument’s few paved roads, biking accesses abundant remote and hidden secrets, nestled among the exposed rock and high-country setting. From 12,000 feet down to the shores of Lake Powell, hike, bike, climb and carefully explore the starkly beautiful and fragile lands of Utah’s Bears Ears.