This is a recollection—as I bask in The Enchantment Resort—of my first visit, 16 years ago, to Sedona, Arizona.
If you google where God lives, one hit after another refers to a Native American Indian proverb: God created the Grand Canyon but He lives in Sedona.
Sedona is renowned for its red rock, rich in iron, maybe irony too—and where creativity, spirituality, art and lunacy bake beneath the hot southwestern sun; an oasis within the Sonoran desert where the sky is bright and dry and crystal clear—among people who put much faith in the power of crystals.
Marfa, Texas, has its mystery lights; Sedona, its metaphysical vortexes: Four red rock sites believed to emit highly concentrated electro-magnetic energy.
A New Age lure for metaphysicians and their patients, Sedona boasts new insights, intense joy, physical healing and heightened spiritual awareness. In other words, an ideal setting to find God—or at least indulge in a spiritual tune-up.
There are no asylums in Sedona to dispense electrical shock therapy. Instead, a voltage of the metaphysical variety is administered naturally, whether you want it or not.
Bell Rock looms as we enter the outskirts of Sedona beneath which a construction crew has kicked up a storm of red dust while widening the highway to better grease the paths of four million New Age pilgrims who roll in yearly to vibrate with the vortexes.
The basin and what’s left of the fractured plateau—millions of years ago a seabed—is red clay. You walk on it, fill your lungs with it, become one with it.
The scenery is astounding but the settlement is seedy: A sprawl of cheap motels and highway strip-malls mocking nature at its most awe-inspiring.
Van Stein calls it “Pagan Place.”
We pull into a strip plaza called Old Town (despite its newness), park and stretch.
My feeling—and I’m highly attuned to sensations, expecting any second to feel a tingling in the apex of my spine rise to my cortex—is disconcertion.
This is the New Age Mecca?
We’re hungry; a Whole Foods café lures us past a woman offering 15-minute massages. This town exudes a veggie state of mind so I try to fit in and order The Vortex Veggie Sandwich: tomato, cucumber, shredded carrot, avocado and sprouts bound with hummus on seven grain bread.
There’s something odd about the locals behind us in line, serving us, watching us. I cannot immediately discern what or why but it perplexes me further as the vortex veggie sandwich falls apart in my hands. The little that reaches my mouth I wash down with fresh blueberry juice.
Somebody says something to Van Stein about his red New York City Fire Department T-shirt emblazoned with “Stay 200 feet away” as natives swarm around us in concentric circles, closer and closer.
My sandwich all but disintegrates as a man with paintbrushes stuck in his hatband sits at a table next to mine. “Let’s get out of here.” I drop the skeletal crusts of my sandwich.
We cut around to Ravensheart Coffeehouse, a moody den, locals with laptops. The natives have a buggy look in their eyes, as if they’re assessing the flavor of our blood.
“I got it!” I half hiss, half whisper. “They’re all bugs. These are bug people. Mutants. Probably from breathing red dust all the time.”
A buggy barista brews the artist an Americano, scrutinizing us with bug-eyes.
“They’re attracted to your red shirt,” I say. “I’m getting out of here.”
I take refuge in a cigar shop called Light-in-Up.
As I’m paying for two Hemingway Short Stories, Van Stein backs up to me. “They’re swarming,” he whispers.
“Don’t worry.” I hold up the Arturo Fuente cigars. “The smoke from these babies will keep them at bay. But I’ll feel a lot safer when we get to our hotel.” I turn to the cigar guy, who’s trimming our weapons. “How do we find Enchantment Resort?”
“That’s way out there,” he says. “Deep into the national park.”
Good.
The bugs watch us climb into our car.
We zip away to Boynton Canyon until stopped by a security checkpoint.
Enchantment is surrounded on three sides by steep plateaus, a natural fortress. “Ah, Mr. Eringer,” says the guard, after whispering into a headset microphone. He hands me a large laminated yellow pass. “Follow the sign to the clubhouse, they’re expecting you.”
The gate rises.
I turn to The Artist. “What’s that about? And why all the security?”
We look at each other, stricken simultaneously by the answer: Bug people.
Twenty minutes later we trek through iron oxide and silica, an aroma of sage and jasmine. We’re able to scramble two-thirds up a boulder adjacent to Kachina Woman, reputed to be a giant magnet where magnetic ley lines converge and energy is highly concentrated. (“Concentricity,” says Van Stein, creating yet another term for our creativity-and-madness glossary.)
Once up, gravity tugs at me and I feel a need to grip something. A wind whistles by.
“Feel those vortex vibes?” says Van Stein.
“I think God just spoke to me,” I whisper solemnly.
“Really? What did He say?”
“Go back down, son.”
Back down, we hit Mii Amo Spa for shots of wheatgrass juice.
“Let’s return to town,” I say, re-energized, “check out Airport Mesa.”
First stop, Tlaquepaque Arts and Crafts Village on Portal Lane. A bug-eyed woman manning a tourism booth casts a line at us. “Where you boys from?”
I try to ease away but, attracted by Van Stein’s red shirt, her personal vortex reels us in. As she wraps her buggy psychic tentacles around him I use this opportunity to slip away, leave the artist to his fate.
Van Stein can chew fat with just about anyone but after a minute he, too, flees before she can chew his fat. “Oh my God!” he whoops, euphoric to be free again, blood un-sucked.
“This fakery is the devil’s work,” I say. “And I know which one from our investigations in Florence: Ticky-Tack. You got the locals doing seedy suburban sprawl and the tourists getting their dollars sucked in a mini-Disneyland for New Agers. Just another place to go, get relieved of your dough.”
Next: Air Mesa Vortex, believed by those who specialize in such things to be the strongest of Sedona’s four vortexes. The red rocks are infested. Not with bug people but with visitors who, like ourselves, are hoping to catch a psychic vibe or two.
“Feel anything?” asks Van Stein.
“Not even a stomach rumble—and that’s surprising because my stomach got vegetated from that vortex sandwich.”
We course around the trail until we finally see it: Cathedral Rock—not just any old vortex but the most photographed sight in all Sedona.
Thereafter, we cruise back into Old Market Place where an infestation of bug people are swarming around a jazz band playing outside Schezuan Martini Bar. Their attention swings from jazz to us.
“They smell blood,” I whisper. “We need to light our cigars or get the hell out of here.”
We opt for out: a return to our secure resort, Mahi Mahi tacos and Hedges cabernet beneath moonshine, stars and intricate chemtrails, followed by a the smoking of cigars outside our casita to ward off whatever bug people have penetrated Fort Enchantment—and to admire, beneath an almost full blue moon, Kachina Woman, blessed by an alphabet of moon gods and goddesses, from Artemis to Yarikh.
Next morning, even with a gentle morning glow cast upon it, Sedona’s downtown suburban sprawl disgraces the natural setting USA Today once called the most beautiful place in America. This is where the crystal crowd is encamped.
“God may reside here,” I say. “But Ticky-tack is taking the neighborhood down.”
“Woo-Woo-ville,” says The Artist.
We park—and almost immediately get sucked into The Crystal Vortex, one of numerous shops hawking palmistry, aura photography and crystals in all shapes, sizes and colors, presided over by two smiley metaphysicians.
One, a Dolly Parton look-alike, photographs Van Stein’s aura then offers to raise his chakras while I’m scavenging twaddle and bunkum mass-produced in China, wishing to uncover just one authentic talisman.
I find it, not upon the shelves, but in the Kirlian photography room: An angel, crafted from pewter, palm-size.
But upon weighing it we discover a devil in disguise.
Dolly Parton tries to sucker us into palm-readings (“I did 75 in one day!” she shrills) and we use all the psychic energy we can muster to extract ourselves.
“All these folks have OD’d on crystals,” I say.
“And crystallized.”
On a mission to find rainbow moonstone, known as the travelers stone and believed to strengthen psychic ability, I find one the size of a postage stamp—and it’s mine.
Back at the fort I drop my bones onto a sofa and fall into a snooze so unusually deep that when I awaken 40 minutes later it takes another ten to regain complete consciousness.
Van Stein goes off to paint so it’s time for me to follow the advice of a vortex book I’d picked up. Its message, essentially, is that all of Sedona is one collective vortex. So the thing to do, advises the author, is choose a spot where you feel the most comfortable and meditate.
My spot, I’d already figured, is the open-air terrace bar at Fort Enchantment—serenity unspoiled by the swarms—cocooned within Boynton Canyon Vortex, a view of Kachina Woman.
Here I sit, alone, with only my thoughts—or rather, trying to empty them from my head. And then it hits me—bang! The hitherto elusive moniker that most accurately depicts what Van Stein and I do on these roadtrips: Luna-seekers.
The full moon has still not shown its face over the canyon walls when 8 o’clock arrives; it is (literally) just around the bend, hanging with a lower horizon. So I drain my juice and careen through Boynton Pass where only the moon’s glow is visible until halfway down Dry Creek Road—and there she is: a giant moon brightening the night sky.
As I sink deeper into Crescent Moon Park the moon disappears again, having not yet risen behind Cathedral Rock. It is dark and quiet. The park is closed. Wild hares scamper across my headlight beams. I park, get out, wander towards Oak Creek.
Van Stein sees me, whistles.
“Where’s the moon?” I ask.
“Hasn’t come up yet."
“Sure has. I just saw it.”
“Are you trying to moonpsyche me?”
At that very moment the moon rises above Cathedral Rock—an awesome spectacle as hundreds of toads are croaking from a creek and, somewhere in the distance, a canine creature howls.
Van Stein pulls out his camera, snaps pictures. “Look!” he says, examining the images. “Orbs.”
A big fat red orb.
“Who the hell’s that?” I ask.
“God? The devil?”
“Maybe both,” I say. “Godevil.”
We drive to Fort Enchantment, moon-bathe on their terrace and dine on Tasmanian salmon with dandelions in mustard sauce.
“I think we need to start the Church of Luna Seeking,” I say.
“Yes! Pray lune, that’s it! How did you think up that one?”
“While you were painting I was doing the real work: tequila and contemplation.”
“Can I belong?”
“You nuts? You’re the grand pooh-bah.”
“I guess I’m both.”
“It’ll have to be a cult,” I say. “All religions start that way. But aren’t we supposed to have turbans or tee-pees to get a license for this stuff?”
“I don’t think they issue licenses for what we do.”
“So maybe we should open it as a bar,” I say. “Call it The Moonbeam Bar. Cult headquarters.”
“Do you need a luna-key to get in?”
Eureka! On the spot I design our Lunakey, later crafted in silver and moonstone by Daniel Gibbings of Montecito.
I raise my glass of Ridge Geyserville. “Many moons!”
The artist clinks his glass with mine. “To moonacy!”
Sometime during the night, in the total blackness of my room, I am jolted awake by a burst of electricity—a tingling in my left hand as if circulation has been cut. I try to shake it off but the sensation morphs into a swirling storm beneath my knuckles that moves slowly, clockwise, from left to right.
This tornado is halfway across my hand before I tweak to what’s going on:
Metaphysical shock treatment!
I allow the sensation to play out. Upon reaching the base of my thumb, the twirling electrical current turns and reverses, counter-clockwise beneath my knuckles until, very slowly, it fades and disappears. The whole episode lasts about a minute.
I bolt from bed at six in the morning, fully charged, ready to red-rock & roll, while Van Stein stumbles around his room organizing his art accoutrements.
“I felt something in the night,” I say. “I think I got MESTed.”
“Sedona blame me. What’s a mest?”
“Metaphysical Electro-Shock Therapy.” I hold up my left hand. “What would you call a vortex in your hand?”
“Did you get the message?” he says.
“I did.”
“And?”
“It was from Nietzsche.”
“The German philosopher? What did he say?”
“He said, ‘Wake up you maniacs, you are in zee wrong place!”
“Huh?”
“Nietzsche told me we’ve been sidetracked, that we need to go to Switzerland, to the village of Sils Maria. That’s where Nietzsche summered all through the 1880s to think thoughts that had never been thunk before about God and the Antichrist. He said Sils Maria is the real vortex.”
And, thus summoned, off we went. Another story for another day.