In Sedona
“To wake up and face Sedona’s storied Red Rocks in the morning light – after having driven to town and settled in under the cover of night, whipped by wind from a top down convertible ride – is a moment of staggering, extremist beauty.”
To wake up and face Sedona’s storied Red Rocks in the morning light – after having driven to town and settled in under the cover of night, whipped by wind from a top down convertible ride – is a moment of staggering, extremist beauty. That first laying of eyes on the landscape steals the breath and invites deep contemplation of your very own existence and place here on planet earth. You may mutter to no one but yourself, “oh my god.”
Whether the energy vortexes (no one says vortices) are “real” or not, if you have been sent here by an old Korean fortune teller to get realigned with your purpose or if you are here simply to relax, regardless of your phone’s battery mysteriously, instantaneously losing all power after hiking up Bell Rock as the full moon rises, beyond the achingly stark yet organic structure of the Chapel of the Holy Cross, or the odd ways in which the Juniper trees are twisted, twisted like wooden tornados, whether or not the dogs who were howling were actually pet wolves, regardless of the not very fine flute playing taking place during the full moon ceremony, beyond the hacks and shamanic guides who are maybe Native American or maybe just half Native American or the throngs of people who flock to ledges at sunset to snap endless photos and selfies while talking loudly, and it is odd that the dive bar down the dusty road is deserted and the bartender seems annoyed to have any business at all, but well, never mind any of it – Sedona is something else.
And you may find that the many, many cacti after some time, look like people calling out and up to the skies above, in search of some sort of validation for all of their standing there in the dry heat, prickly and strong, surviving against all odds as if to say, “I am here! Are you?
M.Q.
Photographs by Sung Choi
