We should all live as elegantly as Amory Lovins, adding the minimum of noxious gases to the air, treading lightly and economically on the land. Lovins has created a little paradise of his own in which theory and practice are one. Home fits with work as yin with yang. For lunch someone may bring down a pot of beans cooked for free in the solar oven on the roof. Sometimes at night when the waterfall is turned off and the greenhouse glass is full of stars, the proprietor may roam about with gadgets that tell him where heat is leaking, where power is being wasted. To the extent it's possible, Lovins has dominion over his world. Even pests in the garden are controlled by natural insect predators that he has carefully introduced.

A life as elegant as his is bound to acquire an aura of myth, but the truth is that nothing is as exact as a page of numbers. It turns out winters in utopia can be chilly. The energy-efficient appliances extolled in RMI's visitors' guide do not include the two 600-watt space heaters that are occasionally plugged into the grid. The throngs who come on tours do not see the institute staff occasionally donning long johns and fingerless gloves. The solar-heating failure can be explained by the fact that some of the superefficient windows need to be fixed, that the weather stripping never seems to get installed on time, and that the design of the house doesn't take into account that people sometimes forget to close windows or shut doors. Maddening human caprice can ruin the best of calculations. The heaters, explains Lovins, who cannot be beaten in last-word Ping­Pong, "are mostly used by one elderly person with poor circulation."

Tonight there is a rodeo picnic in Snowmass. The archangel of the Soft Path is sitting under a tent with a foam tray of ribs and corn on the cob and powdered lemonade. Children bound about, and good ole boys cut up in a Wild West show, discharging six-guns and dying like hams. Lovins flinches when the guns go off. He seems a little preoccupied, and it's hard to blame him. It's hard not to wonder how he fits in among the clichés of the West, with his cowboy hat and snap-button shirt, with his calculator asleep in his pocket.

The crowd drifts to the wooden bleachers. The dirt in the U-shaped arena is dark ad pungent and freshly plowed. Armory always sits at the far end, near the gate, so he can watch when Hunter rides in. On come the bucking broncos and bawling calves, the lariats and clowns and beauty queens on a stagecoach. Short-legged cow-dogs nip the bulls back into their pens, their life is their work, too.

Lovins looks on with mild interest until Hunter appears, blond hair cascading from under the black brim of her hat. His colleague, his coau­thor, his business partner, his wife. She flashes across the dirt, rounds the barrels, and digs for home—alas, not fast enough to win. He seems to suffer her loss.

Sun long gone under an indigo wash, the rodeo winds out under the glare of some homely lights. "Those are old mercury-vapor lights," Lovins says, suddenly brightening. "New high-pressure sodium lights are twice as efficient."