To say Sedona Arizona is beautiful is to do it an injustice. Somehow the words are not deep enough to carry red and gold canyons in their letters. The way the sunset rings through the valley like a harmonic overtone is something you have to stand under to really understand.
Our local guide, Clint Frakes, said, “It is common for people to find themselves on an inner journey while hiking here. It is the land. It pushes you inward.” As if, in taking it all in, the landscape here draws you inside yourself and swallows you whole.
I recently spent 3 days in the Sedona area with my dear friend Jill. I had read about the place, mainly travel articles by those jaded by the “woo-woo” aspect of the town. A rough estimate says that 80 percent of tourists visiting Sedona are searching for something, many of them healing. It is indeed a place of pilgrimage, and it has been for thousands of years. Navajo, Tusayen and Hopi people are just a few of the tribes that regard Sedona as a sacred place. I can see why. We drove in as the lightening storm was driving out. Pillars of red sandstone appeared through the heavy clouds, vibrant from the recent rain. Canyon walls appeared like magic behind those spires. As I watched the landscape come into being, my eyes seeing it revealed in layers for the first time, I had to ask myself what I was searching for.
Jill and I avoided the Silver Shops. We did not try on any turquoise jewelry, nor did we have our palms read or our auras captured on film. What we did do was connect with the land through a three part journey hiking into a few of the seven sacred canyons around Sedona. Even better than the mud facial at the Sedona Day Spa is the joy of ten toes in red clay, joining raccoon and elk footprints in a riverbed.
Our guide was beyond incredible. Clint is a renaissance man, enfolding like a yucca, layers upon layers of education, knowledge and faith. He is one of those rare people who is a true Medicine Man, who knows how to carry his magic and apply his knowledge. I will not make assumptions about the number of people who may be posing in Sedona as healers or seers. I will say only that Clint Frakes is the genuine deal. He guided us not only through secret canyons and through pocket ecosystem forests, he guided us through layers of history, circumnavigating with myth and legend. Pointing out not only the wildlife and plants of the area with their healing qualities, but also our own strengths and hidden abilities. Through these walks in the canyons, through the stories of the ancients who walked these same paths, I have reconnected, found what I was searching for and more.
Clint shared a story of how in the Beginning, there was only the Creator. The Creator was lonely and longing for experience. He created a companion, Grandmother Spider, who set to work immediately in the dark void weaving an intricate web. She wove the ideas of everything she wanted to create. She wove in gorgeous patterns of possibility, and in this way, she wove a dream of the entire world and all the beings in it. But just as a web is invisible and transparent, the world she wove was not physical, it was merely a desire. The Creator gave her some fine dust and she blew a little on part of the web. It stuck to the luminescent threads making the dream visible as physical objects. As she blew dust on the web, all the creatures and living things she has dreamt of came into being. All life is connected by the Web of Life, not isolated but an individual awareness in a separate physical body, sharing the same energy as all other life.
Sedona is surrounded by seven canyons running parallel to one another, and the valley floor between them holds 40,000 archeological sites from pictographs to ruins. The ecosystems shifted as we hiked along, more than Aguave and Cacti, but Ponderosa Pines and Aligator Juniper. To those that pay attention, there are more than 700 different species of plants in this valley. As a healer, Clint harvests and makes medicinal teas of some of the plants and introduced them affectionately as friends, listing their healing attributes.
Clint spoke about Balance. How it is lost, how it is regained, and how his tribe, the Tusayen people believe it is tended. Balance, he said, is based on three main principles: Authenticity, Relationship, and Living From the Heart. The Tusayen believe that it is important to know oneself. To understand who you are, what your gifts are and to share that authentic self with the world.
In regards to living from the heart, we often think of our brain that is the processing center of the body. This week I learned that there are actually over three times more electrical impulses and connections within the heart as there are in the brain. Scientifically speaking, the heart generates the body’s most powerful and most extensive rhythmic electromagnetic field. Robin McCraty, Ph.D. says, “Compared to the electromagnetic field produced by the brain, the electrical component of the heart’s field is about 60 times greater in amplitude, and permeates every cell in the body.” The magnetic field of the heart is measurably 5,000 times stronger than that of the brain. We take in, process and feel a lot more in our hearts than we give credit for.
To live from the heart may be interpreted as seeing with eyes of love, or being guided by our emotions, our intuitions. To the Tusayen, it means starting everything you do from a place of your true essence, not making any action without first connecting to yourself. As in being connected to who you are, you may more deeply connect to the world and remember the invisible threads that unite us all.
Miles into our last hike, we stopped to connect and “drop in” - to sit still and breathe in the essence of the place. I found a solo seat in a dry creek bed, and nested in with my back against the ruby wall. Over the backlit pines that filled the canyon with the scent of vanilla and cardamom loomed a dark crimson sandstone wall. Between this wall and myself, were hundreds of travelers. Tiny spiders that moved high on the wind, connected to silky threads, illuminated when caught by the afternoon sun. A single thread is enough to catch the air tension and allow the spider to float weightless, without an ounce of resistance, as it trusts the wind to take it where it wants to go.
I smiled, remembering the first time I saw this phenomena, the day before on a different trail when a tiny orange being floated past me and into the great expanse of the Grand Canyon. I thought immediately of Grandmother Spider, as I watched this little spider, moving out into the great unknown moved by a luminescent dream. Watching the drifters, riding the sunlight in their ethereal chariots, I was reminded of how small we really are, and yet how we are able to cross the great expanse of possibility, to go where we want to go when we are willing to trust. And perhaps more importantly, how easy it is to follow our dreams until they manifest into reality. We are all weavers in our own right, creating dreams that glisten in the night and come to be in the morning light.
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