Hello! Welcome to the 74th issue of Place. Today we travel to Sedona, Arizona, where the red rocks tower above the Ponderosa Pines and where energy vibrates higher than usual. However, the heightened emotion of a vortex brings to mind its physical counterpart. How do we know when we’re being dragged into a current of no return?
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There are two kinds of vortexes, one physical and one metaphysical.
In physics, a vortex is a mass of fluid that whirls together in a circle, pulling whatever is around it toward its center. They are natural, but disruptive: whirlpools and eddies, which happen when two conflicting currents meet, drag its surroundings away from the natural flow of water. In new age philosophy, vortexes mean something similar - however, it is energy that is swirling around a particular point. In these places, there’s said to be an invisible electricity imbued in the air; emotions are heightened and people claim to feel recharged in their presence.
While the two definitions seem to exist on different planes, there’s something to be said for the way the physical can evoke the internal, particularly in places where we experienced something remarkable. An emotion can rise with such intensity that it has the effect of a funnel, disrupting the currents we may have been comfortable floating on, pulling us in with more force than we’d expect. It takes strength to leave, rather than give into the pull. Nostalgia can be difficult to resist: “The past is a black hole, cut into the present day like a wound, and if you come too close, you can get sucked in. You have to keep moving,” Ling Ma writes in Severance. But sometimes this confrontation is unavoidable. What happens when you return to a vortex of your own making?
The first time I went to Sedona I was 15, visiting my dad who was temporarily living in Arizona doing radiation treatments for his cancer. We set off from Carefree, the town on the far outskirts of Phoenix where he had been living. The desert was different than anything I’d seen before, the opposite of my road trips through the lush cornfields of rural Minnesota, where the whispy stalks looked soft as green velvet changing texture under the caress of a high summer breeze. It was empty and full at the same time: teddy bear cholla, spiky agave, golden palo verde, towering Saguaro cactus, and twisted juniper trees dotted the terracotta dirt. We drove up highways that cut through blasted mountain rock, descended on switchbacks that curved along steep canyons where prickly pear cactus grew at impossible angles. In a way, I felt exposed, the only thing in place in a landscape uncultivated.
It was pouring rain when we arrived in Sedona, the weather caring little for our itinerary. But when the clouds parted, the red rocks radiated in the sunshine, rising up hundreds of feet straight up from the flat landscape like majestic tombstones commemorating glacial rivers past. We took a helicopter tour, swooping over the enormous canyons, a hyperreal experience of an already unfathomable landscape.
It was a trip that was normal and extraordinary at the time, in the way that can only be understood in retrospect. We got Starbucks, talked about the stock market and philosophy, took selfies on a Lumix digital camera set on self timer on the hood of the car, joked about crystals in the hippie souvenir shops that dot downtown Sedona. As a teenager it is difficult to see life as finite. Every new experience is formative because it is shaping a life that you have yet to live, not one to leave. I knew, somewhere deep that I didn’t dare touch, that this would be the last big trip we’d take together. But I left that feeling for the future.
I returned to Sedona a decade later, five years after he died from the cancer he sought treatment for in Arizona, this time with my mom and brother. We took the same roads north, but at this point my world had expanded. I’d seen other deserts. I was more comfortable with the wild landscape and unfamiliar weather having made it a habit to move and travel as often as I could. Chasing the unexpected had become easier since this seismic shift in my life, as well as a welcome distraction. I had found a fast-moving current that could take me toward or away from whatever I wanted.
Still, I returned to Sedona with curiosity. I had previously arrived knowing little about the area - this time I researched ahead of time and found out that the entire area is well-known as a vortex. New age spiritualists and wellness seekers make their pilgrimage to hike and meditate among the red rock’s heightened energy seeking self-healing. I walked the downtown streets that we once had, a bit of me hoping to feel the imprint of the energy that I had left behind so many years ago. Some memory of our presence must have remained, I thought as I peeked in souvenir shops and passed the cafe where we ate lunch. Or at least I wanted there to be. When you lose someone early in life, you not only miss your memories but you grieve the absence of experiences that you thought would be shared- I still imagined conversations, trips and coffees that could have been. This place was one of the few that only we had shared — there must be something that I could hold onto here.
I asked my mom to drop me off at the Boynton Canyon trailhead, known to be the strongest vortex in the valley. I mostly wanted to hike, but a part of me wondered if there was something deeper I wasn’t tapping into. The canyon is where the indigenous Yavapai-Apache people believe humans were originally birthed from; this was a space that had been sacred to people for thousands of years. I walked through scrub oak and Ponderosa pine forests on the canyon floor, the deep grooves in the red rock guiding me onward. A few miles in, the trail led up the sandstone to a flat platform with views out to the undulating canyon facing the valley. There were a few hiking groups and tourists chatting and taking photos. It was the climax of the hike — I stopped and breathed in deeply, sat down on the red rock and felt the sunshine on my face, but no deeper spiritual connection. A few people had built cairns, stacked rocks that are a practice in patience and gratitude. I gathered a few nearby rocks and tried it myself — still nothing. Finally I pulled out my notebook and wrote out a note, a paragraph on what I had learned in the last decade and what I’d want my dad to know now. If the energy wasn’t going to come to me, at least I was going to have my say.
By this time, the groups had cleared out — I was alone on the platform, exposed to the canyon. I stood up and looked out in the distance one last time, appreciating the landscape. I suddenly had a prickling feeling on the back of my neck, like there was someone behind me. I turned around and no one was there, but the presence started to feel stronger, like it was above and moving all around me. It felt like there was something expanding through the whole canyon, something that fell far more powerful and fundamental than whatever fleeting feelings I had. The presence wasn’t necessarily negative but it felt like a warning — if you stay here any longer, you may not be able to leave.
While whirlpools have a mythical reputation for taking down ships and sailors with it, in reality they pose little danger unless you happen to be out swimming in the middle of the sea -- modern vessels are strong enough to pull out of the currents or simply to steer around them. The awareness is key - if you acknowledge they are there, it’s easier to know how to navigate safely.
The existence of grief is inevitable - it’s when you live too deeply within it or ignore that it is there that it becomes an issue. Sedona will always be a place that has a deeper emotional meaning to me, but I also know that the memories I have there must be left there - yearning to return to the past takes away from the present. That Sedona with my dad will always be a place in the past, one that I can remember but not return to, and in some ways accepting that makes it easier to move on. These conflicting currents are a paradox, but also a bargain, one that we agree to for experiencing something more powerful than ourselves.
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Join us next week, in search of bones.