A Long Weekend in Arizona, and Beyond

On occasion, I’ve included posts about my travels in this blog. However, since I’m a fiction writer, not every word of these posts is true. Last weekend, I traveled to Phoenix to attend a wedding.

While in town, my wife and I went sightseeing. On Friday morning, we drove to Camelback Mountain, named for its resemblance to an animal that has never set foot in the Sonoran Desert. It’s a mountain for serious hikers, and I’d like to say we hiked up and down in record time, but I can’t. We snapped a few pictures and left.

That afternoon, we took a delightful cruise on windy Saguaro Lake aboard the boat Desert Belle. Narrated by Captain Gino, the cruise took about ninety minutes and we enjoyed seeing the desert mountain scenery and hearing facts and stories about the area.

On Saturday morning, we drove to South Mountain Park. Though you can hike up the mountain, we found it much easier to drive to the summit. If you do likewise, take it easy on the roads; they’re full of hairpin turns and blind bends.

The wedding took place Saturday afternoon, with perfect weather, and I’ll simply say the bride looked beautiful and the couple is now well and truly joined in matrimony.

On Sunday, we met a college friend of mine and ate lunch at the quirky Buffalo Chip Saloon in Cave Creek. I couldn’t resist ordering the Buffalo Stew and thoroughly enjoyed it.

My wife and I got up early Monday morning and drove to the Grand Canyon. Although I took pictures, I’m now convinced you can’t appreciate that place through other people’s photos or videos. You must go there.

Two people had recommended we see the red cliffs in the town of Sedona, situated between the Canyon and Phoenix, so we drove back that way. Driving along State Road 89A, which winds its way down Oak Creek Canyon, we took in the majestic mountain terrain on a road the mostly followed the serpentine path carved by the creek.

I’d grown tired of driving, so my wife and I switched places. She drove along the touristy main road of Sedona with its slow speed limits and frequent lights. We stopped twice to take pictures of the towering, rust-colored rock formations. You really get a sense of geological time and the slow power of water in such a place.

Then a strange thing happened.

Just past Airport Road, I felt something odd while sitting in the passenger seat. While still belted in, I experienced an upward whirling sensation, as if being twirled in a spiral manner. I saw the car spinning below me, then the town, then the entire desert.

Panicking, I tried to see what was lifting my body, only to discover I had no body. My senses had somehow separated from it, and I could see the turning sphere of our Earth below me without having to breathe or suffer any discomfort.

Of my galactic voyage through our own and many alternate universes—some where the void is light and the stars dark, others where magic outweighs science, and still others where living stars and planets converse and philosophize—I can’t say much. Mainly this is because our Earthly vocabulary is too limited, too constrained by our provincial understandings.

After a wondrous, crystalline eternity spent wandering various dimensions and astral planes, I felt myself drawn back to our tiny orb. Down I spiraled, toward North America, toward Arizona, toward Sedona, but this time not to the mesa near the local airfield, but rather toward a reddish rock formation southwest of there.

Without warning, I was back in the car, awash in a sensation of spiritual renewal and psychic vitality. “Did you feel that?” I asked my wife. She looked puzzled. “Feel what?”

Only later did I learn Airport Mesa is a so-called “masculine vortex” of outward energy, and nearby Cathedral Rock is a “feminine vortex” of inward energy.

Someone should have forewarned—

  Poseidon’s Scribe