Sedona a When You Go Guide

FOUR-WHEELING in Sedona's Sackcountry THE ONLY WAY TO FLY

TEXT BY MELANIE LEE JOHNSTON PHOTOGRAPHS BY BOB AND SUZANNE CLEMENZ

Sedona's Backcountry

"WHY ARE YOU REALLY HERE?" In the interest of journalistic disclosure, I'd just admitted that I was a passenger on an Earth Wisdom tour of Sedona's red rock country because I was writing an article on jeep touring. But apparently this didn't satisfy tour driver Dawson Hayward.

A tall man who looks like Clint Eastwood and speaks with the quiet intensity of David Carradine's Kwai Chang Caine, Dawson swivels away from the busy road he is navigating and casts an encouraging gaze my way. Since I am sitting in the backseat, exactly opposite the oncoming traffic, this causes me more grief than comfort.

I have to think fast so Clint Chang Caine will return his focus to the road. My fellow Tranquility begins to set in once Dawson, a man who feels compelled to communicate with his eyes without the aid of a rearview mirror turns onto less-trafficked Dry Creek Road. This is the gateway to the hiking, biking, and equestrian trails of Sedona's northwest basin.

Dawson gives us a short course in the kinds of energy centers native cultures (and New Agers) have discovered around the world. He talks of healing sites, oracular sites, and fertility sites, and says Sedona is known as an oracular site, "a place of vision questing and ceremonial importance."

He believes this explains why more than 3 million people make a pilgrimage to Sedona every year. I wonder quietly if the appeal of the spectacular red rocks, lush golf courses, Oak Creek fishing, and miles and miles of hiking trails might have something to do with it as well.

descriptions and the way he moves quickly from one point on the wheel to the next. His eyes are closed so he motions with his hands and arms to reinforce his thoughts. This alone is worth the cost of the tour.

We find our favorite spot in the wheel and stand or sit on it according to our own desires. I concentrate on receiving the Earth's energy and half expect to levitate a few feet off the ground, as if lifted by a magic carpet. When it doesn't happen, I decide my expectations must be too Magic Mountain. But I do feel energized in some respect, mostly from being out on the land instead of driving past it at the speed limit.

Speedy travel isn't a concern on my next jeep experience. As we set out one fall morning in our Pepto Bismol-colored jeep, our young cowboy driver, Darren, fails to mention that Pink Jeep Tour's signature excursion, the Broken Arrow, might more appropriately be called the Broken Sacroiliac. During this two-and-a-half-hour trip through Rattlesnake Canyon, jeeps snake up seemingly insurmountable boulders and slide literally down a stair-step trail.

We arrive at a spot called Rachel's Hill and take a mild hike to the "medicine wheel" Earth Wisdom has fashioned on a slope. The wide circle is outlined with foot-size rocks. Rocks also are laid out in two perpendicular lines that stop at a smaller two-foot-wide circle in the middle of the wheel.

We hold hands around the center of the circle. Dawson asks us to close our eyes and think about why we are really here. Then Dawson offers a master's level discourse on world religions and the mythical significance of the wheel in various cultures. I'm fascinated by the depth of his The tour starts innocently enough. We leave the pavement of Morgan Road and embark on the Broken Arrow Trail. When Darren says our average speed on this trip will be five miles per hour, I think he's kidding. But within a few minutes I realize that with your whole body rising and falling to the tempo of rock after rock, even five miles per hour starts to feel too fast.

We approach a three-foot-tall rock ledge that looks formidable. I guess that, experienced as he may be, poor Darren has taken a wrong turn. "We're not driving up that, are we?" I ask. "You bet!" he responds with the zeal of a It looks like I'm not going to get away with being a spectator on this one. "I'm here," I say, still searching for something insightful but not too personal, "because I would like a more solid center." This is true. I'm not sure what it means, but it feels true.

Satisfied, Dawson turns around to face the road again. "It's important that I know why you are here, so I can help you achieve the experience you came for," he says. "Everyone who would like to can't move to Sedona," he says. "But everyone can use Sedona as an initiating center, a place to reawaken your connection to yourself and the Earth. Then when you go back home you can re-create this tranquility."

Sedona's Backcountry

surfer eyeing an awesome wave. All five passengers have already revealed their motivations.

Darren asks if there are any geologists aboard. Turns out our tour is geologist-free. "Good," he says. "I prefer to make this stuff up as I go along." We learn that the source of the gorgeous copper and crimson hues that paint the rocks is basically rust. The scarlet layers of sandstone and shale would appear pale if not for red iron-oxide, which formed when floodplain deposits of iron minerals mixed with oxygen. Lucky Sedona. As we head for Chicken Point, Darren identifies many of the plants, cacti, and trees WE ARE CHURCH QUIET. THERE IS A SACREDNESS TO THIS SPOT.

around us. Because this part of the trail is just wide enough to accommodate a jeep, we reach out to touch tree leaves and sniff the tiny blossoms that have emerged after an unseasonal shower. We couldn't be happier to arrive at Chicken Point for a few bumpless moments. Perched on this isolated spot with nothing in view but multicolored rock formations and Coconino National Forest, I am inspired to survey the panoramic vista with my hands on my hips and my head held high, like Yul Brynner in The King and I.

Chicken Point got its name when jeeps used to make a three-point turn around this small circular jutting. They would back up and extend their back ends which carried their passengers' back ends over the edge of the rock. Risk managers and insurance companies prevailed, however, so the three-point turn is no longer on the itinerary.

But our jeep driver still has a trick up his sleeve. Pulling to the top of an outcropping the drivers call Panorama 1, Darren explains he has to test the brakes before we head down a stretch of the trail known ominously as the Point of No Return. Sounds like a good idea to me. He rolls the jeep slowly over the edge of this 12-foot slope and stops. "Yep, they'll do just fine, now let me just back up," he says, throwing his arm over the back of his seat. But instead of slowly inching our way back, we surge forward down the slope until Darren brakes at the bottom. "Oops," he says innocently. "I thought I put that thing into reverse."

As if our vertebrae hadn't already taken enough of a beating, we arrive at the Point of No Return. The edges of these narrow rock steps are blackened by tire tread marks. Even walking down this trail looks treacherous. Darren tells us the best method of getting down is a controlled slide. Sure enough, gravity pulls us forward, and we slide down from one tier to the next.

The sound of tires trying to clutch rock edges before skidding over them silences the group. Skid, clomp. Skid, clomp. Skid, clomp. We finally reach the bottom and the fork in the road known, very appropriately, as Happiness Junction.

We're all a few inches shorter than when we began this excursion. But even Walt Disney couldn't have made a more memorable ride than the one cooked up by Mother Nature and a crafty jeep tour company.

Having explored my inner being and Rattlesnake Canyon, I decide to turn my attention to Indian ruins.

Our Time Expeditions tour arrives at the cliff dwellings just as the setting sun hits them with the intensity of a laser beam. Clay, our driver and tour leader, leads us on a short pulse-elevating hike (for those of us not accustomed to hiking) to one of the dwelling's doors.

We are at Honanki, an Anasazi cliff dwelling at the base of Loy Butte, overlooking the Verde Valley. Now a crumbling facade with but a few discernible rooms still standing, Honanki is thought to have had as many as 60 rooms when it was constructed some time between A.D. 1130 and A.D. 1280.

Having seen so many pictures of cliff dwellings, I'm excited to be standing inside one. But excitement soon turns into claustrophobia when another tour member joins me in the confines of what might have been a one-person kitchen. We are church quiet. There is a sacredness to this spot. We don't stay in the room long, joking that we would hate to irritate any caretaker spirits who Might seek retribution for our intrusion. As we walk along the path that runs the length of the ruin, Clay points out fading pictographs high on the cliff's wall. Some of the pictographs are thought to be clan symbols, others depict game animals, and still others look more like "wild art," a newspaper and magazine term for an interesting photograph that stands alone with no story.

I ask Clay about the enigmatic dry white paint that drips down some of the walls. Did it have ceremonial significance? "That's pigeon poop," he replies. Sure, that's his theory.

Before we leave the impressive ruin, we tsk, tsk the tactless folks who've commemorated their visits by scrawling their names and dates on the rocks. We're not likely to run into any of them though. One piece of graffiti is dated 1939. Another carries the date 1925.

I sense that graffiti is in the eye of the beholder. How much would we know of their fascinating lives if Native Americans hadn't commemorated their stay by painting images on the cliffs?

As the sun sets, jeeps filled with tourists trail back into town like horses being herded into their stables. Tomorrow another group of visitors will climb aboard and venture out on archaeological tours, scenic tours, metaphysical tours, and photo tours. They'll bounce around back roads, the wind whipping through their hair and dust collecting in their teeth.

And they'll have the time of their lives.

WHEN YOU GO

There is a jeep tour of Sedona tailored to almost every traveler's taste. For a listing of jeep tour operators, contact the Sedona-Oak Creek Canyon Chamber of Commerce, P.O. Box 478, Sedona, AZ 86339; toll-free (800) ATT-SEDONA or in the Phoenix area and outside the U.S., (520) 282-7722.

For information on the tour companies highlighted here, contact Earth Wisdom Tours, (520) 282-4714; Pink Jeep Tours, toll-free (800) 8-SEDONA or (520) 282-5000; and Time Expeditions, toll-free (800) 999-2137 or (520) 282-2137.