Sedona: Sunrise to Sunset

One full week later and my head is still in the clouds. Well, maybe not quite there, but with mem­o­ries at ele­va­tions of 4,500-feet and more, depend­ing on your loca­tion, my heart is still in the mountains.

The moun­tains that are the Red Rocks of Sedona to be exact.

Not being a par­tic­u­larly con­sci­en­tious nature-girl, and a bit stub­born, I did not intend to fall in love with Sedona. I did not intend to start some­thing that would end after 12 days, where I lit­er­ally had to be coaxed into a smile on my last night.

Bet­ter to have loved and lost comes to mind. But really as in times past, what I’m really think­ing is–not so much!

Sedona hap­pened as a means to the end.

The heart of the mat­ter was my hus­band and his dream to do a cross-country trip to visit the unimag­in­able Grand Canyon. I still remem­ber him slumped before his com­puter, look­ing for all the world like he had heard the worse news and was expe­ri­enc­ing the first, sec­ond and third pound of a migraine.

“What’s wrong,” I asked. His response, some­thing along the lines of not being able to find a hotel that wasn’t another road trip drive to the Grand Canyon.

“OK fine,” I said more to soothe the way for what­ever was to come. “Where are you find­ing hotels?”

“Some place called Sedona,” he replied.

In ret­ro­spect, that is a brush off if I ever heard one. He didn’t know, and I, in my lim­ited imag­in­ings of Sedona as sim­ply a much touted spa-town could not begin to com­pre­hend how this place could seep into mar­row and bones.

I love Sedona. Absolutely. Indefinitely.

Sedona (pro­nounced /sɨˈdoʊnə/) is a city that strad­dles the county line between Coconino and Yava­pai coun­ties in the north­ern Verde Val­ley region of the U.S. state of Ari­zona. Accord­ing to 2005 Cen­sus Bureau esti­mates, the pop­u­la­tion of the city is 11,220.

Sedona’s main attrac­tion is its stun­ning array of red sand­stone for­ma­tions, the Red Rocks of Sedona. The for­ma­tions appear to glow in bril­liant orange and red when illu­mi­nated by the ris­ing or set­ting sun. The Red Rocks form a breath­tak­ing back­drop for every­thing from spir­i­tual pur­suits to the hun­dreds of hik­ing and moun­tain bik­ing trails.

Sedona is named after Sedona Miller Schnebly (1877–1950), the wife of the city’s first post­mas­ter, who was cel­e­brated for her hos­pi­tal­ity and industriousness.

I am not alone. In fact, many who now call Sedona home hail from places in Amer­ica and all over the world that I might con­sider to be idyl­lic for dif­fer­ent reasons.

Like our guide from Pink Jeep Tours. Born and raised in New Hamp­shire, he was impressed us as an all-American 20-something year-old young man, who to quote him spent “80-hours work­ing in a great, well-paying job in Graphic Design.” He had every rea­son to stay put and yet 6 years later, he’s feed­ing his love of all things geo­log­i­cal and nat­ural, with­out the ben­e­fit of a TV to soften or harden (depend­ing on your per­spec­tive) the glare of real life.

I got it. Sedona was so much more than I bar­gained for.

We sin­cerely had an agenda. Sedona threw it out the win­dow. Between the inevitable South Rim visit to the Grand Canyon, and the jaunt over to Las Vegas, and stop at the Hoover Dam, we couldn’t wait to get back to my home-away-from-home. At the Sedona Sum­mit we dis­cov­ered that our view of the sun­rise and sun­set in Sedona rivaled that of the more pub­lic Sedona air­port lookout.

Is it any won­der a sun­rise and a sun­set became one of my most vis­ceral takeaways.

Our time there was not even per­mis­sion to relax. We had no choice. We breathed dif­fer­ently. We took our time in the morn­ings. There was never any rush. There was this reverb in my head of, I just never knew that a place like this existed. My hus­band often asked me, “what did you imag­ine it would be like?” It had sur­passed all my expectations.

This expe­ri­ence has changed us on fun­da­men­tal lev­els. I think it has made us more aware of the poten­tial for plea­sure in the sim­ple things, a hunger for a whole­ness in our day-to-day life that can be blurred by the need to do and suc­ceed. We left Sedona with a sharper view of what our future could be and what our present didn’t nec­es­sar­ily have to maintain.

We hope to return sooner rather than later to the Red Rocks of Sedona. And we can’t imag­ine this place that embod­ied hos­pi­tal­ity wouldn’t lay out a wel­come mat.

What’s your favorite vacation/staycation spot?

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