Cathedral Rock

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Center for the New Age in Sedona

The Center for the New Age in Sedona. Photos by David Lansing.

It’s a straight arrow of a drive east from Palm Springs to Phoenix. About 270 miles of nothing but desert. From here I should have veered south towards Tucson but what’s a road trip without a detour or two so instead I headed north to Sedona, the New Age capital of the world. As I was passing through town I came across the Center for the New Age in the shopping village of Tlaquepaque. I thought I might buy some crystals to guide me or give me good luck on my trip but instead was seduced by a young woman with long red hair into taking a vortex Jeep tour.

My guide, unfortunately, wasn’t the young woman with long red hair. Instead I got a guy wearing a black felt cowboy hat with a rattlesnake skin around the crown and a clear crystal on a gold chain around his neck. His name was John and he told me as we headed off in our open-sided Jeep in search of a vortex that he had once owned a Dairy Queen in Minnesota. Then his wife died of cancer and now he was a vortex guide in Sedona.

Vortex guide in Sedona

John, my vortex guide. Photo by David Lansing.

First John took took me to Cathedral Rock, which is the most popular vortex in Sedona. There was a naked man with very long gray hair sitting on one of the rocks meditating. We tried not to disturb him.

John says most of Cathedral Rock used to be under the ocean when the Gulf of Mexico covered the area. He pointed out a gray band about midway up the spires that he said was once the bottom of the ocean floor.

“You can go up there and find nautilus fossils,” he said.

I liked being out in the desert and thinking about it once being the bottom of the ocean.

From here we went to the Airport Plateau to experience another vortex and then to Bell Rock. Finally we went into the Boynton Canyon vortex that is known for its balanced male/female power, John said, and is protected by a red rock column called Kachina Woman.

Standing in front of Kachina Woman I concentrated as hard as I could on everything around me, hoping I’d feel some special energy but all I noticed was that my eyes were watery and red and I was so congested I could hardly breathe.

Taking a good hard look at me, John said, “That there is the power of the vortex.”

If so, the power of the vortex is a lot like hay fever.

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