Wilderness
The wild places that connect you with the roots of your soul. Where your heart pounds at 12,000 feet and eagles soar. Where in some unmarked canyon, you sit in a 1,000 year-old kiva and sense that you are not alone.


Service
Doing something, however grand or small, to make things better. Call it gratitude, or the human instinct to connect. You don't have to define it. Work all day in the Arizona sun for an elderly Navajo couple, collecting firewood, fixing their roof, herding sheep. When you see them in the doorway of their hogan with tears of joy in their eyes and a plate of fresh fry bread in their hands, you'll know.


The Southwest
The biggest, most majestic mountains in the continental Unitited States. Ancient rivers still shape vast canyons here. Ancestral peoples live the same traditions as they did centuries ago. This is where we live, where we have chosen to raise our three children.


So, in 1984, Beverly and I took a handful of former students and friends camping for three weeks, and it worked. Now we welcome 160 young adults each summer to Deer Hill. We see lives change before our eyes and we know that the dream has come true.


Douglas Capelin
Founder and Owner