Hilary and Theresa's Road to Nowhere: Rock On

Why aren’t we all living in Sedona? Seriously, I think it might be the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen. I know I’ve said this about other places, but we left Sedona a week ago and I can’t stop thinking about it. Maybe all those crazy vortexes put some kind of a spell on me; more likely it’s those haunting red rocks.

Massive sandstone monoliths bearing the descriptive names of Snoopy, Coffeepot Rock, the Nuns, and Bell Rock surround the town and create an unforgettable landscape. Iron oxide gives the rocks vibrant red and orange colors that become even more intense as the sun rises and sets.

We pulled into Sedona after dark and didn’t see the red rocks until the next morning. I looked out the window and couldn’t believe it when I saw Bell Rock and Courthouse Butte right next to our motel. What amazing luck, I thought, until I realized that amazing rock formations were everywhere in Sedona. Even the dog park is in the shadow of Coffeepot, Steamboat, and a dozen other famous landmarks. I hadn’t told my husband yet, but I had already decided we were moving to Sedona.

We struck up a conversation with the computer geek who worked at the Subway across the street. Along with helping me with a computer glitch, Sean provided an excellent introductory tutorial on Sedona. He told us to avoid the vortex tours. Like many who’d spent years in Sedona, he’d never felt anything at the vortex sites. He told us how to get to the most popular ones on our own. “But be careful,” he advised. “Some people think being naked enhances the vortex experience and you never who you’re going to see running around without clothes on.” Aha, I thought, they’re probably mistaking the breeze on their naked butts for the vortexes.

Sean suggested that we ignore the signs instructing us to buy Red Rock parking passes and to park illegally like all of the locals. He directed us to Tara Thai, where we had the best green curry since leaving San Francisco. And he gave us sage advice about the Sedona “entrepaneurs.” “Watch out for anyone offering you a ride on a spaceship,” he said, sounding very serious. Apparently, someone recently made off with 200K after promising hundreds of prospective, and ultimately disappointed, passengers a ride on the mother ship.

I didn’t want to go on a vortex tour, mainly because they were run by organizations like “Spirit Quest” and people with names like “Kristelle Love.” But I was curious about these strange forces that elude scientific explanation. They have been described as “whirling masses of energy that affect anyone who comes within a quarter mile of them.” Terms like “magnetic,” “electrical,” and “electromagnetic” were used a lot. So were terms like “psychic” and “spiritual. All of this sounded very cool to me. “I guess science just hasn’t figured out a way to graph the mystical,” I mused aloud. “Or maybe they defy explanation because they are imaginary,” said my killjoy husband.

In any event, I hiked to several of the vortex epi-centers really wanting to feel something mystical. And I think I felt something. At one of the vortex sites I felt really energized and my thoughts were very clear. And I thought I felt some sort of vague connection to something. Was it the mystical vortex or was it breathing clean air and looking at beautiful red rocks? In the realm of the “woo-woo,” who can say for sure…

One morning, as we parked our car in the shadow of Cathedral Rock, a Native American man with a chiseled brown face and a long gray pony-tail approached us with a big smile on his face. He looked sort of familiar and I thought maybe he was an actor who’d played a stereotypical “Indian Elder” in some movie I’d seen. “Hey, hello, hello there,” he said, as if he knew me. Was this going to be some sort of a mystical connection? I looked over my shoulder to make sure he was talking to me and he started to laugh. “I saw you at dinner last night, at the Thai restaurant.” Damn.

He was sort of mystical though. His name was Eagle Spirit, but we could call him “Gil”, and he was an Apache “Guia” or guide. He asked me what I thought of Sedona and I told him about the connection and the lightness and the clarity. “Oh, Sedona has that effect on everyone” he nodded knowingly. “It is a powerful and sacred place and it was that way long before the New Agers got here. But even they can’t do anything to spoil it.” Eagle Spirit had a sense of humor. We swapped cards and he promised to look me up when he came to San Francisco. I made a mystical connection after all.

As you might expect, a lot of people end up in Sedona because they really buy into the whole “New Age” scene. Even before the "Harmonic Convergence" in 1987 - a gathering of spiritualists intended to ring in an era of universal peace - Sedona had been the destination, and increasingly the home, of all kinds of metaphysical believers. On the day we left, Hilary made friends with one of the hundreds of massage therapists who try to make a living in Sedona while I chatted up a guy who worked at one of the numerous crystal shops. His eyes glazed over when he talked about the healing properties of rocks and I found it really hard to keep a straight face. I began to wonder if I was just a little too cynical for Sedona

The rocks in Sedona were spectacular alright. But sometimes bigger is better, so we headed for the Grand Canyon. We stayed in Flagstaff, a college town on historic Route 66. It has a ski resort in mountains called the San Francisco Peaks, a cool Old Downtown area centered around a train station, and a young and hip vibe to it. But we were there because it was the gateway to one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

I found it difficult to speak when I first saw the Grand Canyon. I just sort of mumbled for the first 10 or 15 minutes. I didn’t burst into tears or anything, but I felt ill equipped to process what I was seeing. I thought about God and how I can’t process that one either. Like the Grand Canyon, God is also too big for me to wrap my head around. Wow, I thought, going into LSD flash-back mode, I think maybe God is the Grand Canyon.

Unlike God, however, the Grand Canyon was explained concisely on the little wooden placards we read as we walked along the South Rim Trail. We learned that it is 227 miles long, 18 miles across and has a depth of 5700 ft. Marine sediment is deposited in the canyon walls from a time when the ocean covered the canyon. Over millions of years, it has been carved and shaped by the movement of the Colorado River. The various hues, like in Sedona, are from the deposits of iron and other mineral in the rocks. I found it all fascinating. I realized that I had never taken a geology class and I added that to my already jam packed “to-do” list.

Everyone told us we had to hike below the rim, that the view would be completely different from below the rim. I’m pretty sure none of them had visited the Grand Canyon during the winter when there is snow and ice on the trails below the rim. Nevertheless, we dutifully drove to the Bright Angel Trailhead in order to attempt our descent.

My stomach was already in knots from looking over the edges of South Rim Trail and worrying that the dog was going to fall off a cliff. That might have been because someone (who’s name I won’t mention except to say that it starts with the letter “H”) almost gave me a heart attack when he dropped Layla’s leash and she ran around in several mad circles, each precariously closer to the edge than the last. Frankly, I was relieved to see that Bright Angel was completely iced over and there was a sign advising the use of crampons. It wasn’t even a close call. We got back in the car and drove to Hopi Point where we watched an impressive sunset. Hiking below the rim didn’t even make the “to-do” list.

After more than four months on the road, we were ready to go home. Now that we had seen the Grand Canyon, it was like air traffic control had given us the okay to take off. There was no question about which route we would take. Chuck Berry had been reminding us how to get home since we arrived in Flagstaff three days earlier. It was time to get our kicks on Route 66.