My husband is Catholic- he’s not into “woo-woo”. In fact some might say he’s anti-woo woo...which is why I didn’t say a word about why we were going to Sedona. He was blissfully ignorant about vortices, ley lines, and all the things that Sedona is famous for. I wasn’t sure if this was going to backfire on me- how much of the woo-woo stuff was going to be thrown in our faces? Personally, I can get down with woo-woo. I cleanse my chakras and have my bowl full of crystals, I’ll judge you based on your star sign and I’ll happily hug a tree and pretend that fairies are real. We’re a mismatched pair in that sense but it’s been that way since day one and we just go with it.
The first thing you notice when you stroll down the main drag are the shops. Psychics, crystals, massage, aura readings, wellness centers with a mix of restaurants and fair trade clothing stores. It’s a perfectly manicured New Age Disneyland, waiting for the well-off retirees to spend their money on the same necklace that can be found at 10 other stores on the street. It is pretty? Yes, it’s stunning. But when a bus full of tourists pulled up next to us and unloaded masses of people, I knew it wasn’t for me. Daniel instantly looked at me with suspicion when he saw the kinds of stores we were walking past. There was no hiding that Sedona isn’t your average kind of town. He actually sighed and said, “Where have you taken us?” I struggled to think of how to explain Sedona without using words that would make him grab for his rosary. I used phrases like, “magnetic fields” to make it sound scientific. He only partially bought what I was selling.
Thankfully our accommodation for the night was actually in the Village of Oak Creek just south of Sedona. I think I would have had a mutiny on my hands if we were staying in Sedona proper. After the covered wagon situation I was skating on thin ice with the Mister. I can only be forgiven for putting us in weird places so often. If we had stayed next to Judy’s Psychic Emporium that would have been one straw too many.
As much as I was turned off by the town of Sedona, the landscape of the surrounding area is spectacular. This is why people come, this is why people feel energy. There is something in that towering red stone and the bright orange earth. I learned while we were there from an informational board that the landscape was once an ancient sea- a tropical beach oasis. The rocks and buttes were formed from millions of years of the sea advancing and then retreating. Each time it both shaped and deposited new materials- limestone, salt, sandstone- creating the formations we see today.
Our hotel was in the shadow of Bell Rock, one of the famous “vortex” sites. Let me reveal my true motivation for not telling Daniel anything about Sedona before we arrived. Whether he likes to admit it or not he’s incredibly sensitive to all things “woo woo”. He has prophetic dreams and feels things when we go to supposedly haunted places. I trust his “spidey senses”. I wanted to see if he sensed anything without any prior knowledge. We can all probably feel somehting there if we are told that we are supposed to. Honestly? Sedona creeped him out. It gave him the willies. This made me a bit wary when we stood at the Bell Rock trailhead ready to embark on an afternoon run...separately. It will come as no surprise that we jog at very different paces. We agreed to set out separately so I didn’t feel the pressure of keeping up with his long legs. I had some trepidation and just knew I was going to get sucked into the 3rd dimension, never to be seen or heard from again. That clearly didn’t happen but you know what did? My navigational genius of a husband who has gotten us out of huge jams just by looking at the location of the sun got lost. He got so turned around that a 2 mile run turned into 5. To make matters worse the battery charge on my phone was drained by listening to a podcast while I ran my best mile since 2013. It was at a sorry 4% by the time I got back to the car. When I realized that he was way overdue to meet me at the parking lot I called him. Ring after ring, he didn’t answer. It went to voicemail and I started to panic, retracing my steps on the trail thinking any minute I would meet up with him coming the opposite direction. I didn’t.
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| Off he goes, to get lost in the desert |
If you don’t know it, my middle name is “worst case scenario”. I have anxiety, I prepare for the worst to happen and immediately jump to overdrive when presented with situations like this. You won’t see it on my face- I keep it well hidden but inside I’m already trying to figure out how to call the police with my phone dying, the car keys in Daniel’s pocket, him with no water or anything warmer than a lightweight shirt and shorts. Would we need a helicopter? Would this be on Dateline NBC? Surely it’ll at least make the nightly news. Is this how I become a widow? Forever wondering where he got lost in the desert?
My true thought was at what point do I really panic and call for help? I paced that parking lot watching the minutes tick by. People came off of the trail, filing past me into the parking lot. There I was living my private drama, wringing my hands and wondering if I should ask for help. I was sweating and feeling less like an in-charge adult by the minute.
With my heart pounding I called him again. This time with an even worse 2% battery. To my great relief, he finally answered! I could hear the panic in his own voice as he told me that he was lost. He went on to describe the trail he was on and asked me to see if it matched anything on the map posted in the parking lot. Together we pieced together where we thought he was and what turns he needed to make. At one point he asked if the trail we decided he was on could be seen from the parking lot. I looked at the map and said no. He said okay, well I think I can see the parking lot. And my response? Well, it can’t be this parking lot, maybe you’ve gone too far? So he turned around and backtracked. And you know what? That *was* the right parking lot. We made a mistake in figuring out what trail he was on. He had been right there. Fifteen long minutes later and I finally saw his black hat bobbing towards me on the trail.
Looking back, his being creeped out by the vibes of Sedona was justified. While I felt energized and focused, his internal compass was completely turned up on it’s head and he just felt chaos. The place put him off kilter-a feeling he’s not used to. I don’t know if there’s any truth to the vortices or spiritual concentration to the land around that area, but I do know it attracts a unique kind of person that brings their own energy to the place.
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| Bell Rock |
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| Courthouse Butte |
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| Bell Rock |
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| I had several blurry photos before suddenly they started to be clear again.... |
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Blurry Courthouse Butte- was the vortex at work on my iphone?
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Fortunately when I look back on Sedona, I don’t immediately think of the above incident. What comes to my mind is the time just before this happened- when I was just jogging along feeling incredibly free. I was listening to a podcast with Tommy Rivers Puzey, putting one foot in front of the other and feeling so capable. I think of later that evening when we were sitting in our hotel room eating grocery store salads and drinking wine out of a can. I think of our amazing coffee and pastries the next morning at the Firecreek Sedona location. And I think of gratitude. Gratitude that my husband isn’t still lost in the wilderness of the desert.
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| Oblivious me, out for my best mile run in years! |
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