Afternoon hike in Sedona ...

Saturday, 10 pm

Brrr - it is COLD here in Flagstaff! Well, relatively, at least: +5 at this time of night is balmy compared to the temperatures at home, of course. It is quite a change, however, from the +30 we experienced yesterday in Camp Verde and later in Sedona, another place of beauty and colour in this state so blessed with both.  

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After the massage my back has improved enough for a two-hour hike just south of Sedona. We stop at the visitor centre for Red Rock National Park to get suggestions for short hikes, and as in visitor centres everywhere we receive very helpful information. 

The trailhead is fairly congested: at least three trails branch out from here, one of them, Bell Rock Loop, short but interesting enough to attract a larger crowd. We choose the four or five mile long Courthouse Butte Trail and soon are pretty much alone. 

Again a new surprise awaits after rounding every corner, a new vista takes my breath away. The deep red that makes the rocks in this area so stunning prevails even in the sand under our feet: it looks as if someone has ground bricks to powder and sprinkled the dust everywhere. Washouts just barely dry after last week’s rains and river beds lined with sheets of rock, boulders rising in the distance or right beside the trail – everything is cast in hues of this incredible colour. Auburn, carmine, crimson, cardinal ... just naming them re-creates the glow, even now, more than a day later. 

The vegetation is interesting, too. The summer fragrance of sun-warmed pine and juniper surrounds us, low shrubs with clusters of small bell shaped white and pink flowers appear here and there, prickly pear cacti in pale green and pink form little colonies that remind me in turn of children sitting in an outdoor classroom and a peaceful graveyard with its collection of beautiful tombstones. 

Birds, mostly unseen, twitter in the low bushes resembling lilacs, though their leaves almost seem to be evergreen – how else could they be fully formed, just like the ones of scrub and gambel oak, when other deciduous trees still stand bare? For a long time the only other sound is the rumble of an occasional helicopter or airplane overhead. 

Walking up to the high rock walls rising ahead I feel as if I am entering a sacred place. I am filled with awe. No wonder this has been considered a place of spiritual significance for hundreds of years.

We drive on to Flagstaff, where we arrive early enough in the evening to see it in the daylight - and this time without snow! We have decided to stay here for another day and drive to the Grand Canyon on Sunday. With spring break underway it might be difficult to find accommodation, so we might again resort to sleeping in the tent. The weather is supposed to be nice for the next few days, and we hope that we will be able to explore some small part of this canyon on our hikes. So far I cannot even imagine its scale.