Mystic wonder
Sedona’s stunning landscapes draw sightseers and seekers
Sundown is magic hour in Sedona.
As the sky grows darker, the light hits the otherworldly red rock formations that surround the Arizona city, making them glow.
Spots for watching the fading sunlight play across outcroppings — with names like Coffee Pot and Cathedral Rock — are major tourist attractions.
The natural light show is second in popularity only, perhaps, to getting your aura photographed or taking a tour in a pink jeep to visit the energy centers — dubbed vortexes — among the rocks that have been drawing New Agey types for decades.
The city of 11,500, once famous as the setting for Westerns like “3:10 to Yuma” and “Broken Arrow,” became a spiritual hub of sorts after 1987.
That year, Harmonic Convergence believers chose Sedona’s red rocks — along with Egypt’s pyramids, Manhattan’s Central Park and a host of other “mystical” places — as a pilgrimage spot. The plan was for everyone to gather at appointed places around the globe, meditate at the same time and welcome the aligning of the planets.
Thousands came. Some climbed to the top of Bell Rock that August, convinced, according to town lore, that the flat-topped outcropping would open up to reveal a UFO inside. It didn’t. But lots of people stayed anyway.
Now the city’s a mix of tourist traps, strip malls and stunning vistas, retirees on the sun circuit and friendly local hippies who make the salad bar at New Frontiers Natural Foods in West Sedona feel like a pub at happy hour. A deadly 2009 sweat lodge incident at one of the town’s retreat centers put it on the map in a bad way, but tourism seems to have bounced back.
In search of sunshine and wide-open desert skies, my friend Maureen and I spent a long girls getaway weekend in Sedona. We decided to skip the pink jeeps and really go off the map — signing up for a “sacred healing journey” with a “shamanic counselor” named Clay Miller.
It was a cathartic day. He even got me to yell “Why! Why! Why!” at the top of my lungs into the clear desert air.
It turns out Miller — a gray-braided healer in fleece and Vibram barefoot sneakers — has also counseled the
Duchess of York, Sarah Ferguson. There’s a whole special on Oprah’s OWN network about it. He told Fergie to yell “Mom!”
I wasn’t able to learn enough about Miller to completely satisfy my shamanic curiosity, but I did find out he’s from Michigan and once worked as an actor and even a bartender in Manhattan before he found his calling. In the bathroom of his home in nearby Cottonwood, he has got more than a half dozen portraits of all of his dearly departed dogs hung on the wall — with their ID tags balanced in the frames.
In a beat-up Toyota Land Cruiser, we rode through the juniper, sage and pinyon pine of the spare and gorgeous Coconino National Forest with Miller and his two current, huge and lovable dogs — mutts named Hanta Yo and Beauty. He brought us to a circle of white rocks in a spot he believes is an energy center, a place where you can leave behind bad feelings and fill up with good ones. It wasn’t one of Sedona’s traditional “vortexes” but one he says he discovered on his own and built — an act park rangers frown on, I learned later.
“The space is a doorway. The circle opens the door,” he said.
After driving to a different rock labyrinth and meditating, with the towers of Sedona’s most majestic rock formation, Cathedral Rock, just barely visible in the distance, we headed back. Miller put a background track on his ipod and belted out a song he’d written about the area as we drove. We left covered in dust and dog hair but also with an odd sense of peace.
The next morning, we headed off on our own, taking a two-hour hike to the top of Cathedral Rock. The steep climb up slippery red rock had us scrambling on all fours and avoiding cacti. But well-placed carved footholds and trail markers kept it from feeling scary.
We walked between the spindly, looming spires and at the very top, sat in the sunshine, looking out into the striped rock horizon. Whether or not the spot, which many believe is one of Sedona’s vortexes, has its own energy field, it’s a breathtaking, awe-inspiring place.
Before we left Sedona, we took a final hike along Airport Mesa loop, the high trail taking us past rock formations that we’d been gazing at all trip. Snoopy Rock, Coffee Pot, Courthouse Butte, Bell Rock, Cathedral Rock. They felt like old friends.
As we walked, both of us, ridiculously, kept getting Clay Miller’s ode to the desert in our head. “Arizona, Ar-izona! Land of Hopi, land of peaceful people ...”