Time to squeeze in one last mini adventure for the year. Why not end the year cleansing my soul hiking on some red rocks in Sedona?! And this time, I have company! Yup, about four weeks ago my friend Jenny asked if I wanted to get away to Carmel for a weekend – I couldn’t but I replied that I really wanted to do a little Sedona trip soon to hike. And just like that, we compared calendars, picked a weekend, checked accommodations and boom, a trip came together. A trip to close out the year. About 11pm last night Jenny and I were texting, both still trying to start packing. The COLD weather had thrown us for a loop. That’s right, we checked the weather and it was going to be highs in the low 40s. Not what we had expected. It would be colder here than half my days in Iceland! Finally, I got packed and forced myself to sleep. The alarm came too early and I forced myself out of bed, coming down the stairs to the most amazing adorable sight ever, my Zeus had swaddled himself. Seeing my little velcro-dog so silly and sweet made me start missing them already!
We had an uneventful quick flight to Phoenix and picked up a rental car. We had our choice from the lot and I first thought a Challenger would be fun but immediately upon sitting down and starting it, hopped out and grabbed a Jeep instead, setting off for our two hour drive out to Sedona. As we drove, I could tell it was getting colder and colder outside. The sky was getting dark and Jenny pointed out the rain off in the distance. We were still an hour out from our destination, I figured it had to clear up by the time we got through as there hadn’t been any inclement weather on the forecast for today! Then little white petals started falling over the car. WTF! It was snowing! SNOWING! We were in Arizona right? We laughed at the falling snow, I said it was “fascinating” and Jenny questioned my choice of words. But surely, it was going to clear up. When we left the airport our ETA was 2:10pm. Perfect as we had a 3pm reservation for a private chakra balancing session at an energy vortex. As the snow flurries got flurrier and our ETA kept being extended we realized that we would be hiking to our chakra balancing energy vortex in the snow. Well, that’s what we thought. “We’re going on an adventure!” I exclaimed.
We made it to our hotel, the Hyatt Residence Club Pinion Pointe, with about 15 minutes to spare. The check-in took forever and they even had the concierge come in for a mini timeshare sales pitch. Not cool Hyatt. We had a chakra balancing to get to! We got to our room for a quick change and ran down to meet the guide, who was picking us up in the front. He had called to let me know he was there. I looked at Jenny and shrugged, “he sounds cute.” It was no small feat to find the front of the hotel on foot from our room. We meandered through the maze-like sprawling property in the freezing cold with snow sticking to us and finally popped out and found our guide! We were off! This was to be a 2 ½ hour adventure with just us and a healing guide who would hike us out to an energy vortex, balance and cleanse our chakras, and teach us how to balance our own. We were optimistic when Loren picked us up and had all the signs of a good hippie healer, right down to a dreamcatcher hanging from the rear-view mirror that he made on his own with feathers from a dead raven he found on the ground. We asked him the plan for the day, the method to his madness, and he simply said, “We’re going to meditate. And it’s freezing cold so I brought sleeping bags you can meditate in.” I’m sure my face said it all. Meditate? For how long? When he said it would maybe be a 30 minute meditation I about jumped out of his jeep, that sounded like boring hell to me. He caught my sneer and we asked about the hiking part. After realizing that we were “able” bodied people he asked if he could take us to the vortex he felt we were being pulled to instead of the one they normally use and the hope crept back in when he said it meant more hiking and less meditating. Let’s do it! He must already be reading our energies, realizing there was a better place for these restless souls.
We arrived and started off, with the snow still falling around us. I tried to engage him about his chakra balances we still knew nothing about it and didn’t seem to go anywhere. The red rock was gorgeous as we started up to some rocks whose name I should know but don’t. One was “warrior” something. As we climbed he chose not to talk about chakras but instead talked about tales of aliens visiting Native Americans who once inhabited the land. Fascinating. We were both taking in the moment and beginning to feel calmer and more centered. That’s about as far as the healing went though. The guide set some blankets down and instructed as to sit as Jenny and I took in the breathtaking view and then he sat down beside us and basically tried to lead us into meditation. Ok, I’ll play along for a couple minutes. He took about 30 seconds to say all the typical relax this muscle and that and then fell quiet. I waited as I listened to the sounds of other hikers gleefully extoling just a few yards away from us and wondered when the heck he would start talking again. It was cold and snow was falling on my face. Every once in a while a glimmer of sun would poke through and there would be a brief moment of warmth but then the clouds would take back over and the breeze would pick up. I was bored as hell and finally couldn’t take being so cold any more. I reached into my pack and pulled out a scarf. And then a fleece hat. Finally, he asked how we felt. “Cold” was my simple reply. Well let’s hike up then. Great! I figured we would be hiking it our final point to begin the chakra balancing.
The hike up was tough. This was NOT a hike. This was straight climbing up the side of rock. My lacking depth perception had a field day with me and I wasn’t sure if I could do it as my hands and feet clumsily found their grips. Finally making it up the side of the red rock we were rewarded with a little shelter from an indentation in the rock wall. We warmed up in there for a moment, as we were sheltered from the wind, and took in the view. A surge of rainbow seemed to be sprouting out from a rock across the valley.
We walked around to another rock hollow and I looked out in awe at the views around us. Jenny asked what color each of us saw when we first closed our eyes to meditate and he was quick to share that his was red and he kept feeling waves and waves of anger wash over him. Hmm, so the man who is supposed to be balancing our chakras is telling us how angry he is. Not to mention we were two women on the side of a very steep rock with this man extolling his anger. He also babbled about seeing flashing strobe lights when he stuck his head in holes in the rock. And have I mentioned that it was cold?
We finally made our way down, scooting down the side of our mountains on our booties half the time, and stopped to take a couple pictures together. This dude is a world class sucky picture taker. He joked with us to “Say Vortex” and that’s the picture he snapped, us literally with our mouths open. Thank god we got another one.
There was another spirally cone shaped formation we could climb. I hopped up the first 15 ft or so on the easy rocks but decided to forego the scramble up the side to the top. It was pretty sheer and with my lack of depth perception combined with the overcast skies and the stiffness in my body and numbness in my hands from the freezing cold – we are talking about 26 degrees out there – I decided it wasn’t a good idea for me. As much as I hate to, every once in a while I do think it’s a good idea to listen to my instinct and acknowledge my limitations. It doesn’t happen often. There were no other people around finally so I enjoyed a few moments of silence, standing in the Boynton Canyon Vortex, as Jenny and Loren climbed to the top. She made it! I climbed off the rocks and tried to get a picture of her at the top. Loren WOULD NOT move. When we got back to our room tonight Jenny found a magic app where she could erase him! This app is a game changer and saved the picture!
And then we were on our way back to the car. In the car he pulled out two weird not-fortune telling fortune teller decks and basically had us do each other’s fortunes as we drove back. We did run through our planned hikes with him and took in his feedback on which we should eliminate and which we should add. And then we were back to the hotel. As Jenny and I closed the car doors behind us and headed back to our room, we realized that literally zero chakra balancing took place. In fact, the experience we had was not really what we had signed up, and paid handsomely, for. I have had my chakras balanced before and I was so eager for that feeling of peace and balance. And there was zero added peace or balance. He never even discussed the chakras or energy or healing with us at all except to answer the questions I had peppered him with early on. We had been bamboozled! We were both in disappointed awe of the experience and discussed how to address it.
We were also starving! We dropped stuff off in our room, found a decent looking casual-enough-so-we-didn’t-have-to-change restaurant on yelp, and took off to fill our bellies. My phone decided that I was in Scottsdale and not Sedona so neither Waze nor Google Maps could navigate us. I’m not sure what they know that I don’t. Jenny’s phone led us a couple blocks away to the Pump House Urban Eatery. We walked in and were offered seats a high boy right by the door or we could eat at the communal table, which was currently vacant. We sat down at the communal table and were excited when they asked if we wanted to move to another table that was right in front of the fireplace. Why yes, yes we did! We split a meal of delicious kale and spinach salad, one of the best butternut squash risottos I’ve ever had, and a so-so-trout. We spent the first third of our meal complaining about our failed chakra outing. As we were eating and reviewing our plans for the trip a family of three walked in. The communal table was full as were all the tables. We were at a table for four and we invited them to pull up another chair and join us! We introduced ourselves. They were locals. The father got excited when we told him what area we were from. He went to U.C. Davis! What a small world! We exchanged a quick “Go Aggies!”
We made small talk with the woman. She made a comment that if we needed to do any yoga while on our trip, she knew the place to go! I correctly guessed that she owns a yoga studio. And then she added, “If you can’t make it to yoga come to my sound healing session Sunday night!” Say what?! Now she had our attention. She suggested I pull up the workshop description on her website and it’s actually called “Chakra Sound Healing.” Chakras! Yes, our chakras still needed to be healed! We both became giddy as we gushed that we would be there. On our way out we talked about how we both felt a great energy from her and feel like her healing is meant to be.
We ran by Whole Foods to get water, a few breakfast provisions, and food to pack for our hike tomorrow and then decided to call in an early night. The hot tub had been on our mind but it’s so cold outside and the hot tub is so far away across the property. But really, we both want a good night’s rest so we can be up and out early tomorrow. Tomorrow is our longest planned hiking day with about 13 miles planned. It should be a cozy 42 degrees and sunny. My layers are ready to go and we’re excited to really kick this adventure off.
Taking On the World 
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