Sedona Moves On

   

A few of the many pictographs at Palatki Ruins near Sedona

   We were jamming a lot into these last days but the picture above is important, for it will provide you an idea of just where some of the ancient Sinagua people lived (look carefully at the bottom left corner and you'll see what is detailed in the picture on the right).  One must remember that driving down to Sedona from my home state in nearby Utah can entail over 9 hours of driving and much of that is open land; should your car break down there is little out here in the way of services (for those already in Arizona, the city of Phoenix is just two hours further south and many established cites are now near Sedona); but go back and imagine the age of people having to just walk or later to ride horses, a time when the enormity of the land must have seemed even more intimidating.  Still for many this area would become home, albeit a home etched into the recesses of the rock and destined to grow into thriving communities.  By the time the Western settlers arrived nearly 400 years later the Sinagua were well gone, their places and way of living now simply small pockets of discovery returning to the earth.  But they left evidence of their lifestyle marked and painted in the rocks, each different tribe adding a different color or symbol but never defacing the earlier markings.  As with many such ancient cultures, archeologists now feel that many of the symbols reflected growing and harvest seasons, ones timed to the equinox and phases of the sun and moon.  But there's one more puzzle for among the same peoples one group painted such stories on the rocks using pigments made from plants and animal fat, these becoming pictographs which darkened as fires were built nearby.  But across the valley the nearly identical symbols from the same peoples were etched into the rocks (such carvings are called petroglyphs).

      The name of Sedona itself came from an early settler who wished to open a post office but his own name proved both too long and too difficult to be accepted so he used his wife's name (his mother-in-law reportedly said that she simply liked the sound of Sedona and the name itself had no meaning or basis in another language).  And as new people arrived, so did new faiths (the

View from a parking lot in Sedona

Chapel of the Holy Cross, built into the mountainside, was a monumental venture but is now considered by some as one of the vortexes of energy allegedly so prevalent in the area).  While my wife and I didn't have any concentrated feelings of swirling energy, we did find the overall area itself full of energy.  Was there something to this place or were we simply caught into the tourist "awe" that one might find upon walking onto a beautiful beach or staring at a snow-capped hillside?  One thing seemed certain, the skies here were different (at least to my untrained meteorological eye).  The names also began to change, the Western settlers finding a need to begin naming canyons and roads and settlements...names emerged such as Canyon of Fools, Deadman's Pass and Devil's Gulch (all are now trails).  In the course of 350 million years, the area had transformed into an area that would welcome 4 million human visitors (and many of their dogs) annually...perhaps the Sinagua saw it coming.

    

A young couple daring to pose atop Devil's Bridge

In our short time it seemed that we had done it all, hiking once and sometimes twice each day (one ranger told us that a person could hike a new trail every single day in this area and still have new trails to explore).  We had wined and dined and saw beautiful scenery around, under and sometimes over us; we had hiked canyons and stood on natural arches, heard gunshots (a firing range nearby only adds to the contrast of the otherwise peaceful land) and heard coyotes (we never did see the javelina, a boar-like animal that lives in the area and primarily feeds on those spiny prickly pear cacti).  But mainly my wife and I re-connected, back with the earth and back with ourselves, the long drive to get there and back producing a blend of silence and conversation, of barren landscapes and the stark underappreciated beauty in such. We relaxed and just bathed in the space, the spotty cell coverage and the worries now as distant as the cliffs in the distance.  But this could and does happen anywhere and to anyone, for a vacation or getaway or camping trip or night at the movies can turn that bit of planned "away" time into something unexpected, a time and place where letting down your guard allows you to see the world differently...plain yet brighter, older yet alive, barren and yet rejuvenating.  It's but one more wonder, one more discovery that all of us can find...my wife and I were fortunate, for we found it on this trip, a trip to a place we had never been to, a place called Sedona.

My wife attempting to capture one last picture of Sedona