22 over 7 = [aspects and concepts of matter and energy / form, flame, light, space, image and imagination]

20070711

Three weeks in the West, part 13

One of the reasons that I'd looked forward to our visit to Sedona was because of the opportunity to climb. When I moved to Arizona in 1997, it was just a few months after my first trip to Colorado. My friend there had roommates who were rock climbers. With their guidance, I had my first, tentative experience scrambling up and down a granite cliff.

I went to Arizona in order to work for the daily newspaper in Sedona. I would spend my lunch hour kicking around the twin hills and the purported vortex near the airport. Down in the dry wash at the base of those hills, I spent a lot of time investigating the plant life and insects, taking in the views, and figuring out routes along the sandstone cliffs. Thus began my brief, solitary, and fairly minor-league career as a free climber.

After a few months, I quit the newspaper job. I went on to spend most of my time exploring new rocks, new routes and the nighttime sky. The cumulative effect of those activities was the awakening of the astro-naturalist in me. Living under those dark skies and seeing Sedona's vistas everyday -- to spend so much time in that place, which seems like a home to gods and goddesses of some long-lost era -- it was only a matter of time before the beckoning of spirit and the land drew me away from the structures and demands imposed by others, and onto a path of reclamation and reformulation of self.

The challenges and wonders that I experienced in Sedona helped me to be aware of my potential and purpose in life (though it took a couple of years before I really began to act upon it).

"The Sacred Pentagram of Sedona,"
by Nicholas R. Mann

A couple of years after I returned to Ohio, I was asked what part of my body I associated with my strength or ability to negotiate risk. "My feet," I replied, and I talked about bounding from boulder to boulder, or edging along some inches-wide shelf in Sedona. I added that at the base of the airport hill routes, I would look for a bit of sage to rub on my hands and face before I began to climb. This, I was told, was likely because of the cleansing and calming effect of that plant, which I (consciously) knew nothing about at the time of my little ritual.

Anyhow... Our journey to Sedona was a way for me to reflect on those experiences, and to consider how they influenced my life from that time forward. It was also another opportunity, much as it had been in northern New Mexico, to share some of the sights and stories from the past with my Lady Friend, who'd heard many tales but had no reference for the places.

I'd had this grand vision of us climbing to the top of Camel Head Mountain together, to close the circle on the experiences that I'd had by myself. My Lady Friend isn't too big on heights, though, and as I made my way up the ridge to see how challenging it might be for her, I realized that this was just going to be a homecoming for me.

After an hour or so, I made it to the peak. It used to be possible to get onto the camel's head, but the sandstone shelf that provided a kind of ramp onto that boulder has broken. It was easy to imagine trying to clamber over that thing and then taking a thousand-foot fall. So I walked across the camel's back, took the obligatory "I was here" pic, remembered how I hooted and hollered for people's attention the first time I reached the peak in '98, and then I made my way.

We tooled around town for a bit, had lunch at New Frontiers, and then we drove to the airport vortex to watch the sunset (along with scores of other folks). And so ends part 13.