Sedona

Arizona for me is a beautiful place. The landscape is varied, colorful, vast and stunning in beauty. Awesome, too, in ways difficult to articulate.


Sedona, Arizona, though, is in a league of its own. Red rock. Meandering streams and roaring river. Forests of dessert firs and hardwoods, too. Topography of hills, mountains and buttes. Air clear. Temps warm to hot. Sky so blue you wonder. Sun steady and basking.


An aura surrounds the town. Magical and embracing. Power centers? Who knows for sure, but something is very different about Sedona. If you have visited, you know. If you haven’t been there, you have a treat in store.


Newly divorced and a self employed consultant, I toyed with the idea of buying a home in Sedona. Part of me thought it would be a retirement home; another part suggested year-round living and working from home. There is a small municipal airport there with daily small plane flights to Phoenix so I could easily visit my clients to deliver my work outputs. In medical emergencies, helicopter ambulances flew to Phoenix quickly. I could do this, I thought.


Home prices back then, the mid-90’s, were already high. A vacant lot was available, buildable but not desirable for residential. I thought of buying and holding it to hedge the upward spiral of real estate values. I could always buy another lot after selling the bad one, and then build a house to suit my needs then. But I didn’t. Complications of business, health and logistics, thwarted a move to Sedona.


Covid-19 has changed all that for many people. Working from home will likely be a common career fixture in the future. Now I could live and work in Sedona very well. Only now, I’m retired and dependent on expert medical care. Impractical in Sedona for me at this point of my life.


I still have my memories. Sitting at a window, gazing at the landscape. Pink sands, dessert plants, red rocks, blue skies and plenty of sun, the views enlarged the sense of the world and my being in it. Soaring thoughts were natural. Uplifted spirits abounded. Wonder at space and place. The history of the land and the story of past millennia. Awe and wonder.


Sedona still has this effect on me. Cheaper thinking on it than executing an actual move. Such is life and missed opportunity. For me the memories are enough now; for you? The beauty awaits you!


July 6, 2020