Journeys: Arizona - Sightseeing

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Arizona - Sightseeing

I spent the past week in Arizona with mom. The trip was a Christmas gift from me and my sister, but since Kelly thinks travel is some form of cruel torture it ended up being just a mom and son trip.

I met mom in Phoenix on Tuesday and the next day we headed south to Tucson to walk through Saguaro National Park. These giants can grow over 50 feet tall and are beautiful to look at. The park marks the northern extent of the Sonoran Desert.

On Thursday we drove up to Sedona to spend a couple days at a spa resort and do some hiking around the red rocks. On the way we stopped at Montezuma's Castle National Monument built around 1400AD by the Sinagua Indians.

The highlight of the day was a visit to the Chapel of the Holy Cross. This is supposed to be a Sedona "vortex site" and while I didn't feel any special energies, I will admit that this was the most peaceful man-made place I have ever been to.

We hiked to Boynton Canyon on Friday and also spent some time at the other red rock landmarks in Sedona. Bell Rock was my favorite and it is also a "vortex site"

The final stop on the trip was the Grand Canyon. I hate crowds of people and I hate national parks that feel more like amusement parks .. the Grand Canyon south rim is a prime example of this .. BUT I still like it. If you can manage to find a place with no screaming children and a view not obstructed by a snack or gift shop it's worth it.

"One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am – a reluctant enthusiast….a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; You will outlive the bastards"

-- Edward Abbey

"The grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never dried all at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls. "

-- John Muir

"To be whole. To be complete. Wildness reminds us what it means to be human, what we are connected to rather than what we are separate from."

-- Terry Tempest Williams

"There may be people who feel no need for nature. They are fortunate, perhaps. But for those of us who feel otherwise, who feel something is missing unless we can hike across land disturbed only by our footsteps or see creatures roaming freely as they have always done, we are sure there should be wilderness. Species other than man have rights, too. Having finished all the requisites of our proud, materialistic civilization, our neon-lit society, does nature, which is the basis for our existence, have the right to live on? Do we have enough reverence for life to concede to wilderness this right?"

-- Margaret E. Murie

"I have always been unsatisfied with life as most people live it. Always I want to live more intensely and richly. Why muck and conceal one's true longings and loves, when by speaking of them one might find someone to understand them, and by acting on them one might discover oneself?"

-- Everett Ruess