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The mingled perfumes of INDIAN RUINS, juniper and pine swept down Secret Canyon on ANCIENT MYSTERIES a cool breeze that murmured through the treetops ABSORB HIKERS like surf. John Hay snoozed in a hammock while friend IN SECRET CANYON Ron Barstad browsed through Mark Twain's short stories. Another friend, Therasa Hetherington, napped in a pool of sunlight pouring through the doorway of her tent.

The quiet made me restless. I strolled out of camp, down a sharp incline to the creek. Runoff from recent rain and snow filled the stream, and a steady trickle burbled like a fountain over the weathered rocks. Two pools, still enough to reflect the forest and red boulders typical of this terrain northwest of Sedona, gathered in the lee of the sandstone walls. A lemon-yellow swallowtail butterfly floated past and came to rest on the damp gravel as if to flaunt its black tiger-stripes and the blue spots near its tail. The sun was warm. Moved by an impulse, I pulled off my shirt, boots, and socks, stepped into the stream, and splashed the cold water over my face and body. It was the first time I ever bathed in snowmelt, a delicious first.

At that moment, Therasa's husband, Tom, and her father, Tom Kuhn, were bushwhacking uphill through thorny brush to reach a small Indian ruin hidden on a ledge about a mile away. They made their way to the remains of a single room beneath a smoke-blackened overhang, where they found pottery shards and corncobs and left them untouched.

After breakfast the next morning, Kuhn invited me and John to accompany him to the Indian ruin.

It was a rough climb through thick scrub, punctuated by shindagger and small prickly pear cactus, to a ruddy cove on the canyon's north wall. Once we reached the sandstone outcropping, we had to traverse its smooth, unstable surface several hundred feet to reach the stone shelter, a tiny hovel invisible from below.

As I edged along a narrow foothold above a concave hollow in the ledge, my boots slipped. I lost my footing and started to slide down the 300-foot slope.

I yelped, dug my heels against the grainy surface, and clung to the wall with sweaty fingers. This stopped my fall, but I was paralyzed with fear. The bottom was a long way down. John, who was closest, inched over next to me. I could see a foothold where he could get enough purchase to lift me, but, unable to let go long enough to point, I couldn't make him understand where it was.

Kuhn, meanwhile, made his way back to us. "I'm going to take your arm in a tight wristlock," he said. "When I give you the word, let go so I can catch you." He braced his feet on a fourinch-wide ledge and leaned into the cliff wall, steadying his balance. I sensed that the moment I let go with even one hand, I would slide again. "Now," said Kuhn. As we reached for each other, I indeed did start to slip down the wall. But in that instant I felt his hand wrap around my arm; with a single motion he pulled me to my feet. After he got me past the tricky place, he returned for John. The two men eased their way across the narrow, slippery ledge, and we were safe.

But what a place we had entered! Layered sandstone cliffs rose 600 feet above us in striated blocks and strange spires. We could hear the wind murmur through the ponderosa pines, and the spirit of the ones who came before seemed to watch over the canyon with us.

"You know," I remarked, "we're probably older than most of the people who lived here ever got to be." "That could be," Kuhn reflected. "They didn't usually make it past about 45."

We saw chips of crudely made, undecorated pottery and tiny, hungry-looking corncobs stripped of kernels. We examined the layered double walls in the little cliff dwelling. And we wondered at the circumstances that drove people into this aerie, such a risky, tedious distance above the ground. For a long time we sat quietly gazing out over the canyon, sip-ping at a mystery we can never fully partake. When we left, we covered our trail with leaves.

The spirits of Secret Canyon deserve to be left in peace.

WHEN YOU GO

From Sedona, take U.S. Route 89A west to Dry Creek Road. Bear north about two miles and then turn right at the sign for Dry Creek and Vultee Arch. Follow this dirt road about three miles to a metal signpost on the left that reads "Trail 121; Secret Canyon." The unpaved segment of the road is rugged. Although you can drive it in a family car, four-wheel-drive is preferred. Do not attempt it in rainy weather. Water runs through Secret Canyon in springtime, but at other seasons the creek may be dry.