TUCSON: Two Ways : At two Arizona resorts, would-be wranglers and poolside sybarites can play in both the old and new West

Dust off the Bentley, Oliver. Polish the Rolls. Fire up the Mercedes. And while you’re at it, saddle up the Mustang.

It’s roundup time in Tucson.

Indeed it is the season when Easterners jet west to escape the cold and Westerners gather in Arizona in search of serenity. And although old Tucson is no more--when in heaven’s name did the cow town become a city?--the earlier peacefulness still exists, although one must search it out, beyond the bright lights and into the haunting silence of the desert itself.

In this pursuit, one faces decisions: Join the Bentley crowd at a luxury resort? Or boot up and ride off into the sunset with the Levi Strauss gang? The only concern with the latter is that the options have been critically reduced.

No longer does Tucson claim the title of “Dude Ranch Capital of the West,” as was the case in the ‘50s and ‘60s when would-be Hopalong Cassidys gathered at 35 guest ranches, this during a period when Tucson folded at sunset--save for a few grungy saloons. Afterward, tract homes, huge office buildings and chic resorts began choking off the ranches until today only three major ranches remain.

While drawn to the sybaritic pleasures of the new West recently, I found myself mourning the lost harmony of the old West. Confronted with a choice (old or new), I decided to compare Westin’s palatial La Paloma resort with Tucson’s premier guest ranch, Tanque Verde, a peaceful plot where dawns arrive with the silence of a falling leaf and night skies are misty with stars.

Before shifting to old Tucson, I checked in at La Paloma, which is near the foothills of the Santa Catalina Mountains. One of Tucson’s newest resorts, the $100-million hotel is wrapped around a swimming pool, with lush gardens that give the impression that an oasis of exquisite beauty had evolved quite naturally from the Sonoran Desert.

One drifts off to sleep listening to the shrill cry of distant coyotes as well as the moan of the wind and a chorus of crickets just outside the window. La Paloma is a low-rise resort whose adobe-colored walls blend with the land, which is in startling contrast to the green of fairways. Last evening, clouds boiled on the horizon, ignited by the setting sun. Later it rained, so that by morning the atmosphere was flawless, pure and clear to the horizon and, it would seem, to the the very brink of eternity itself.

Today a bobcat skittered ahead of me as I strolled at dusk across a golf green. In its path a couple of coyotes sprinted down the fairway, disappearing in a mesquite-lined gully, while in another corner of this verdant oasis a family of cottontails nibbled on the grass, much to the annoyance of the greenskeepers.

This is not unusual, this sighting of wildlife at La Paloma. Earlier, an acquaintance came eyeball-to-eyeball with another bobcat on another fairway, which is evidence that the wilderness and wildlife remain, even at a luxury resort rising dead center out of wide-open spaces.

Westin’s La Paloma is a village-like setting, its 28 adobe units containing 487 rooms, five restaurants and three bars. There are jogging trails and a dozen tennis courts, four that are clay. Mariachis entertain at poolside and romantic melodies spill forth from a piano bar with cathedral windows that frame both desert and mountains.

To make room for the construction of La Paloma, thousands of saguaro cacti were transplanted out to the desert along with prickly pear and other growth native to the Sonoran Desert: the spindly ocotillo, barrel cactus and dozens of mesquite trees, which in turn are surrounded by brittlebush, desert marigolds and Arizona poppies.

In such a setting, guests hike nature trails and hitch rides on golf carts, photographing this flora and fauna that appears barely 25 minutes from the skyscrapers of downtown Tucson.

At La Paloma, as well as the Loews Ventana and Sheraton’s El Conquistador, a battalion of concierges order up limousines for trips to the old Western towns of Tombstone and Bisbee, as well as tours by hot-air balloon above the desert.

La Paloma claims the distinction of being Arizona’s only resort to employ forecaddies, which is to say young men and women who scamper ahead of players to shag wayward balls and perform other services intended to speed one’s game. At La Paloma, chef Neil McLaren, formerly of the Arizona Biltmore and later the Century Plaza in Los Angeles, turns out a variety of delights ranging from eggs on a corn tortilla with tomato salsa and sour cream to New Zealand green lip mussels; shrimp with cilantro and tequila; scallops with caramelized shallots and baby corn; pork medallions with corn cakes, and poached salmon in apple cider. McLaren receives raves for his gulf snapper with black bean salsa, his grilled petrale sole in tarragon butter and duck breast with blackberry sauce.

Enough.

After having been smitten by the good life at La Paloma, it was time to move on to Bob Cote’s Tanque Verde Guest Ranch. The road leading to its entrance is lined with miles of mesquite, and dust devils spin on the horizon. Of the surviving ranches, Tanque Verde is locked in a time warp--a former stop on the Butterfield Coach Line and a one-time cattle ranch with more than a million acres of wilderness abutting its fences: the Sahuaro National Monument and Coronado Forest, which is its salvation from developers.

At this family-oriented ranch, guests return annually--both from the United States and overseas. Paul McCartney became so infatuated with Tanque Verde that he built a home nearby; the late Christina Onassis spent days soul-searching here.

Passing through the gate, I could feel the stress peel away. I was led to a casita on the 640-acre spread, a place that’s disturbed only by the occasional cry of a coyote, where deer graze at one’s door and owls peer from the skeletal arms of desert trees.

In the lounge, guests gather in front of a crackling wood fire, while in the distance, across miles of darkness, the lights of Tucson wink back--as they do at La Paloma. The room hums with conversation. Languages blend. Shizue-Kobayashi of Japan, who is on her fifth visit to Tanque Verde, tells in broken English how the West has woven its spell. A couple from Sweden--Kenneth and Ingrid Lindstrom--confide how they’ve discovered an elusive contentment on this, their fourth visit. Others from Denmark, England and Switzerland join in conversation

A photographer from Minnesota, who has been coming to Tanque Verde since she was a child, has vacationed here 43 times; some guests are descended from second and third generations of vacationers. One couple from Chicago spends three months each winter thawing out at Tanque Verde.

Tanque Verde satisfies a mental image most vacationers, especially those from other countries, have of the West; they see it as a carbon copy of a Hollywood Western.

Sheri Sandmann, a court reporter from Akron, Ohio, visited Tanque Verde for the first time last spring. Home only two weeks, she booked a second trip, this time with her parents. The peacefulness of Tanque Verde, she says, was like a drug. “I was attracted by the scenery and the quiet--the wildlife that came daily to my door.”

Chicago artist Tamara Morrison is making mental images of these scenes that she intends to transfer to canvas.

While the casitas are rustic outside, inside they offer the comfort of resort life. Proprietor Bob Cote decided early on that after a day on the trail, even his most macho guest longs for a hot shower and a comfortable bed.

Still, there are exceptions. On a recent pack trip, a group of 140 Frenchmen chose to sleep under the stars following a nonstop flight from Paris to Tucson. Besides riding, guests at Tanque Verde play tennis and paddle about in indoor and outdoor swimming pools while others boil away saddle aches in a sauna and a Jacuzzi.

Open year-round, Tanque Verde attracts foreign guests even during the heat of summer. Germans in particular are hooked by the Western way of life, telling how back home they pitch tents and tepees in the Black Forest in preparation for their Arizona adventure.

Equally enthusiastic are the Italians, who take to the trails like John Wayne bearing down on a pack of cattle rustlers. Cote describes the Italians as both loud and lovable, and tells how they take over the microphone during a cookout quicker than a fast-draw artist performing in a celluloid shoot-out.

Tanque Verde appears like a page from a Western novel. An Arizona treasure--it gets a rave in Thomas Cook’s “Three Hundred Best Hotels in the World”--the ranch welcomed its first guest in the ‘30s. Since then, Cote has installed wood-burning fireplaces and forced air heating to check the morning chill at 2,800 feet. He also installed a chef who turns out a noontime buffet featuring hot entrees, 15 salads, marvelous soups and a shameful dessert table created expressly for chocoholics.

Don’t expect rustic, family-style dining here. In a departure from the norm at other ranches, guests at Tanque Verde choose from a dinner menu featuring three entrees that change daily, seven days a week. Recent menus listed roast duckling a l’orange with a Grand Marnier sauce, roast prime rib, leg of lamb, New Zealand white fish, chicken Kiev, scallops in garlic butter and a broiled fillet of salmon in a bearnaise sauce.

Diners take their meals at individual tables. Candlelight. Flowers. Romance. It’s the Tanque Verde touch.

Besides cookouts, riding and shopping sprees into Tucson, guests help band birds to track migration patterns and join ex-Los Angeles zoo keeper Jerry Brewer on hikes into the mountains and across the desert.

Brewer puts on weekly shows featuring live rattlesnakes and poisonous insects. A gung-ho man of the soil, Brewer had a supporting role in “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” Later, he says, he lost a role in an English flick when studio moguls failed to pick up the air fare for 400 snakes that were to join him in London.

Just the other day, Brewer sat for 20 minutes cradling a four-foot rattler in his arms. Later he watched amused as a pet tarantula crawled up his arm.

That’s fine, Brewer, but I’ve got a date with a new Stephen King novel, which is about as near danger as I intend to get. Play with your snakes and insects. I’ll be by the swimming pool.