SEDONA PILGRIMAGE

Secret Sedona

Experience the aura of Red Rock Country

along the trails less traveled

Text by Lawrence W. Cheek

Photographs by Larry Lindahl

Celebrating the State's GREAT PLACES It's 10 o'clock on a chilly morning near Sedona and I'm in a spot of trouble.

I'm way off the trail - can't find it and a storm is rapidly congealing. My Canon's light meter tracks its progress as clearly as weather radar. An hour back, the lightly overcast sky read f/5.6; now it's three stops darker and the color of a Stealth Bomber's belly.

I'm not afraid to get wet well, maybe hypothermia wouldn't represent a great career move but I'm carrying a thousand bucks' worth of camera and nothing, stupidly, not even a Ziploc bag, to keep it dry. Once again, the deceptively benign Red Rock environment has caught me unaware on a casual day hike.

I've been here before well, not in this specific physical location, which I obviously don't know. But I've been in trouble, trouble of kaleidoscopic variety. I've been lost. I've been seduced into climbing crumbly sandstone canyon walls without ropes, partners or even grippy boots. I've run out of water. I have been caught by the stars without a flashlight. One could reasonably argue that allowing me to hike these Red Rocks by myself equals letting me write prescriptions for my own brain flu.

But there's actually a reason; I'm not a complete doofus outdoors. In Red Rock Country I began learning and loving to hike. Since I usually went there by myself, working on a book or magazine story, it became the proving ground for all my novice faux pas. That the landscape proves relatively forgiving relative, at least, to the Grand Canyon or Washington's North Cascades ranks as one of its qualities that I profoundly appreciate.

Here's the bottom line, right up front: The best hiking in Arizona occurs within a 20-mile radius of Sedona. It's more accessible and more approachable than the big-canyon country to the north. It offers more unadvertised specials, such as the prehistoric Sinagua ruin, intact except for its roof, that suddenly pops into view under a ledge near the Lost Canyon Trail. It deploys more variety: red desert, manzanita bosque, oak-juniper woodland, conifer forest, And more drama: I'll pick my way around the great red bells, needles, coffee pots and capitol domes like a mite on a chessboard, and something will occur in the architecture of the sky that magically transforms the mood

Secret Sedona

Continued from page 27 proves an essential part of the deal; without this edge it would stand as just another amusement park. And so we learn humility. Respect for the Earth and all its systems. And even a little wisdom, if we're receptive enough. The Red Rocks, with their extravagant beauty and complexity (and fragility notice how radically a few decades of human colonization has altered the landscape), offer these lessons more powerfully than most other places on Earth.

Well, scolded Emerson, “A dilettantism in nature is barren and unworthy,” and so I began to take my Red Rock hiking more seriously. I continued to get lost, but this wasn't always my fault: Many of the Forest Service-sanctioned trails have countless “social trails” (less charitably, “brat trails”) peeling off, often making the right route difficult to follow. But I began to take in more of what I saw and to understand its significance. I learned to appreciate the abstract architecture of an alligator juniper. I watched the reflections of changing light in the Seven Sacred Pools, and it dawned on me why someone had thought to term them “sacred”: They celebrate and weave together water and light, two of the essentials of all life. I began to predict where the prehistoric Sinagua had stashed their sandstone pueblos and to understand their delicate relationships with the land and climate.

All of this is what has brought me to “Sedona National Park” on a brisk winter morning. This “national park,” drawn in my imagination, I created some years ago out of vexation at the way tentacles of development were angling into the Red Rocks, and some of my favorite trails were becoming rivers of people. In a perfect world, President Theodore Roosevelt would have roped off “Sedona National Park” as a companion to Grand Canyon National Park. In the less-than-perfect real world, I find it's still easy enough to escape civilization in the Red Rocks. More than a hundred hiking trailsawait within a half-hour's drive from town, and only a handful of them see heavy use. Solitude takes only a moderate effort.I've never seen more than a handful of other hikers on the Sterling Pass Trail, which corkscrews 1,120 feet from the floor of Oak Creek Canyon to a mountain saddle where lives a weird copse of oak trees, all bending south like soldiers doing calisthenics in formation, to drink in the scarce canyon light.

The West Fork of Oak Creek remains plenty popular along its first 3 easy miles. Then the canyon narrows dramatically, the trail deteriorates into a rock scramble and creek slog and the walls begin to look like interlockable Henry Moore sculptures, a billowing convexity on one side aching to mate with an indent on the other. It continues another 9 miles in this vein, and few people have the time or inclination to try it - they think they've seen enough already (and maybe they have; the first 3 miles prove plenty stunning).

Practically unknown, Narrow Canyon and its “trail” stay decidedly unmaintained. I tried it on one recent solo hike in Sedona, certain that a route inside a place place named “Narrow Canyon” would prove impossible to get lost along. Wrong. Returning near dusk, I missed the exit ramp out of the canyon and continued plodding for another darkening hour, the vague realization of

(LEFT) Like iron filings responding to a magnet's force, oak trees along the Sterling Pass Trail in Oak Creek Canyon pull to the south in search of sunlight.

(RIGHT) Dressed in robes that change from red to orange to crimson, The Nuns rock formation presents a pageant at sundown.

Something wrong slowly blooming. The nontrail finally crossed a dirt road, where I waited until a providential truck rumbled along. Men will ask directions, if the alternative means a freezing night on a boulder pillow.

The Little Horse Trail also remains relatively unpopular, probably because it proves notoriously hard to find — and then to follow. It meanders off the driveway of the Chapel of the Holy Cross and curls around "The Nuns," two red-robed spires stretching gracefully into the heavens. Last time I hiked there in the dark. I had gone to visit The Nuns at twilight to photograph their fire colors. I burned a dozen frames as the dying sun bathed them with its most intense orange light, then packed up my camera to head back. Three minutes later The Nuns turned hellish crimson, a geologic color impossible on Earth. I ripped into my camera backpack, but the color evaporated in seconds. Well, no matter. Sedona rewards film, of course, but never as thoroughly as she does an eternal memory.

And now, on this trip, I'm again on Little Horse, or somewhere near it. At least one can't get hopelessly lost; the distinctively shaped red cairns tower about a thousand feet high. Under increasingly charcoaled skies, I set a bushwhack course, dodging shindagger agaves and prickly pear cactuses, and finally reunite with the trail. The Nuns, who have been watching out for me, hold back the rain.

Instead, it begins to snow.

Additional Reading:

Sedona's allure eludes easy description, but Lawrence Cheek caught some of the magic in his book Sedona Calling: A Guide to Red Rock Country. Cheek's insightful narrative and tips combined with vivid photography to guide the reader through Sedona's sight-seeing and recreational bounty.

Younger readers, ages 4 to 9, will enjoy the true story of The Three Sedonas, told in the voice of a girl named Sedona, the great-grandchild of the town's namesake.

To order Sedona Calling ($12.95, plus shipping and handling) and The Three Sedonas ($15.95, plus shipping and handling), both published by Arizona Highways, call toll-free (800) 543-5432. In Phoenix or from outside the United States, call (602) 712-2000.

WHEN YOU GO

Location: 119 miles north of Phoenix.

Getting There: To Boynton Canyon: Take Dry Creek Road 2.9 miles north from State Route 89A in West Sedona, turn left at "T" intersection onto Boynton Pass Road and drive 1.6 miles to another "T" and turn right and drive .2 of a mile to the trailhead parking. To Sterling Pass trailhead: Take State Route 89A north out of Sedona to Milepost 380.5. Park at the pull-out 50 yards north on the right side of the road just past the Manzanita Campground. The trailhead is 200 yards farther north on the left.

Travel Advisory: Day hiking around Sedona can prove as easy or as demanding as you choose. One of the easy hikes, Boynton Canyon, also proves one of the most spectacular. Sterling Pass, another scenic hike, offers more of a cardio workout as it corkscrews 1,120 feet up the west wall of Oak Creek Canyon. Local stores sell "Experience Sedona," a recreational trail map of the area.

Warning: Carry a minimum of two quarts of water per hiker; four quarts per for long and strenuous hikes. Nights quickly turn cold, so take extra clothing in case of an unplanned bivouac.

Additional Information: Coconino National Forest, Sedona Ranger District, (520) 282-4119.