People in different environmental and socioeconomic contexts experience sustainability in various ways—which is especially true for the culturally and ecologically diverse region of the Intermountain West. A key component of the WRMES program is a 20-day summer field course (NR 536) in which graduate students visit eight to ten ranches in southern Colorado and northern New Mexico, where the ranchers discuss their visions and concerns for the land and demonstrate the methods they have developed to implement those visions and address those concerns. The faculty instructors provide background and supplemental information, but the class is primarily an extended conversation between the students and the ranchers. The ranches and ranchers the class encounters represent much of the ecological and cultural diversity of this region. This includes a multi-generation family with a small ranch in the San Luis Valley who depend on nearby federal grazing lands; also a large ranch whose wealthy absentee-owner is especially concerned about ecological integrity and biodiversity; and historic tribal lands in northern New Mexico. We anticipate adding a ranch located on a former Spanish land grant where a controversial commons-based land use philosophy is still practiced.