Hiking adventures . . .

Thursday

Today, my brother and I drove over to Cathedral Rock to go hiking. Cathedral Rock is one of the famous "vortexes" of Sedona. I felt its energy as we drove up. We parked, started out on the hiking trail, and it was beautiful. We walked along a creek, listening to its song, and enjoyed the beautiful surroundings. We reached the end of the trail, had our snacks, sat awhile and then started back. The sun was lowering in the sky as we walked. And walked. And walked. Something didn't seem right. We seemed to be on the left side of Cathedral Rock and neither of us could remember starting out that far. We kept walking thinking the path to the parking lot would be just "around the next corner." It wasn't. We passed several corners and no parking lot! The sun got lower. The air felt colder. My brother had been here many times before and had never gotten lost. But, I thought it was my fault: earlier on the hike I had told him of something that had once happened to me and Don.

When we were living in the Lake Tahoe area, we went on a hike to a place called Lake Margaret in the middle of a national forest. A very primitive but beautiful place, we found a bear track on the trail as we started out. We made it to the beautiful lake, sat awhile and started back. At some point, we realized we had crossed the same area three or four times! We turned around on the trail to try to see where we went wrong. But, we actually had no idea where we were going. We ran into a couple women, and we asked them if they were going to the lake or back to the parking lot . . . because at that point, we didn't know where we were. They were going back to the parking lot. We told them our predicament and asked if we could walk along with them. Soon, the four of us passed the same spot again! Now, all four of us were lost! We ended up "bushwhacking" (blazing our own trail) through the wilderness, and somehow we got lucky and found our way out. It was a very scary day.

So, I had told my brother that story, and I think I put the "lost" vibe out into the universe. So, we kept walking and thinking "the next corner" or "the next corner," but we were getting farther away from Cathedral Rock and things just didn't seem right. We finally turned around. Again, we kept walking, but we still weren't sure where we were going. Then, we ran into some people that we had seen earlier. They described to us just where the path to the parking lot was, and what to look for when we got there. They were very nice, and even gave us an unopened water bottle because we were running low. They kept following the trail we had been on. We arrived at the path to the parking lot, and it had big forest service "cairns." They are big things, about a foot in diameter, filled with rocks and surrounded by wire fencing. We had no idea how we missed them when we went by the first time. Neither of us even remembered going by! So, we got to the car, and Marv called Liberty to let her know we were safe. We kept watching for the other people to come back, but we never saw them. And it was getting later and later, and colder and colder, and darker and darker. We thought maybe it was one of those "touched by an angel" moments, and maybe those people weren't real at all . . . except . . . we had the water bottle . . . I guess we'll never know the truth . . .

This picture shows how dark it was getting when we got back to the car . . .