New age in the sage

The Faux West

By David Feela, 2-27-06

Rodeo Days reminds us that the West is not only a tourist attraction but also a celebration of tradition. A law firm may have may have partners, but some of us still call them pardners. Irritants may get on people’s nerves but around here burrs get under our saddles. Spurs and chaps, cowboy hats and belt buckles – the accessories for holding out against a new frontier.

This is the case, sometimes to the extreme, in the faux West, places where tourists flock to mix up the old with the new. And the most faux, faux away location I’ve encountered since moving west of the Mississippi is called Sedona, Arizona. I know. I’ve been there, once back in 1976, and then just about a year ago. Luckily I only had to draw on my credit card twice.

A tourist guide oriented us by discussing the three regions we’d encounter in Sedona: Uptown, West Sedona, and the Village of Oak Creek, where our B&B was located. She called ahead to check directions. On a map she pointed to an important intersection where 89A and Highway 179 divided. I asked, “where?� She pointed, “Y.� I asked, “Y?�and she drew an “X� on the map at a spot referred to as the “Y.� Since we were searching for a place to sleep, I figured our guide was proposing that X plus Y might equal a few Zs.

She was right. We pulled in at the Cozy Cactus. Its name prickled the hairs at the back of my neck, but what attracted me was how my Cactus bed had back door access to some of the 1.8 million acres of national forest land. If we stepped off the patio and climbed through a ready-made opening in the fence, we’d be playing footsie with the wilderness.

After unpacking we visited the uptown district, a faux West at its best, or worst, depending on where you take your stand. I noted the names of businesses along the street. Uptown operates under the notion that it’s still the late 1800s. Places like the Western Trading Post, Mesquite Grill, Hitching Post Restaurant, Stage Coach Emporium, and Olde Tyme Photo Works testified to a veneer of old West fantasy. I expected to see a sheriff amble out of a saloon when a man packing a cell phone on his hip bumped into me as he stepped out to the street. I glanced up at the shop sign: The Hummer Store? We excused ourselves and went in opposite directions. I counted 20 paces, glanced behind me, but his mind must have been occupied polishing chrome.

We’d planned on hiking to the Boynton Canyon Vortex, one of four local vortexes, spinning like a spur on the west of side of Sedona. A vortex has no association with the old West but is a new age phenomenon where psychic rejuvenating energy collects like hairs in a shower drain. The vortex was a simple hike, not even a mile, and barely 15 minutes, but we still had not purchased a Red Rock Pass, which masquerades as a park service version of a camouflaged parking meter. The pass is required for vehicles parking on the national forest land or for parking alongside access roads that pass through national forest or probably for peeing at the side of the road. $20 dollars gets you a year of access, $5 gets you a day. People say that’s reasonable, but it strikes me as another way to disguise an additional day use fee.

As we approached the 30 foot knoll at Boynton Canyon where energy is supposedly the strongest, I looked to the sky and watched a small bi-plane circling overhead, soon to be followed by a sight-seeing helicopter stitching a loop in the blue air. I thought, Wow, this vortex is powerful enough to attract aircraft. At the top of the knoll we noted the twisted juniper branches that supposedly prove the vortex’s awesome power. My companion wondered aloud if the twisted juniper growing near our septic tank in Cortez was also a sign of vortex activity. I told her, no, it’s probably from flushing the toilet too much.

That evening before leaving we decided to see the national forest on the other side of our fence, where the ancient rock formations persist despite new age thinking. Bell Rock is so perfectly contoured, its shape repeats its name. Located in wilderness, it hovers just off the highway where the evening rushhour drives by. But it’s Castle Rock where we decided to climb and as we hiked in meditative silence the ground got steeper. Soon we were shedding a layer, heated by effort and sweat. On a small promontory we stopped for a breather and to look back at the landscape we'd just climbed above.

And that’s when I saw it so clearly, the line that explained everything about the old and the new, a line defined by a simple wire fence with a series of forest service signs: Healing in Progress.

A mile below us it looked as if the Village of Oak Creek’s tide of development had hit an indestructible, wire wall. On the opposite side of the fence, undeveloped national forest land stretched out toward the horizon.

It was and still is the classic western duel: two ways of life squaring off just to see if one will survive.

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