I went up to the man behind the cash desk and asked him the only question I could, in the circumstances.
“Am I really here?”
If you asked that in most shops, they’d be hitting the security buzzer before you could say Bertrand Russell. But this is not most shops. It’s the Metaphysical Department Store in Sedona, an oddball town in the oddest state of the Union — Arizona.
To most holidaymakers, Arizona means just one thing: the Grand Canyon. The world’s biggest and most beautiful hole in the ground pulls in 5m visitors a year, but they tend to arrive, gasp and leave. Remarkably few turn south to explore the rest of the state. Which is a shame, because Arizona has the two vital ingredients of every good road movie: epic landscapes — deserts, mountains, swathes of giant cactus, every new stretch of road like a John Ford western unrolling before your eyes — and an equally surprising cast of strange characters, waiting for you at every truck stop, motel and diner you pass.
As I headed due south from the canyon, Sedona was my first stop. The town nestles in a valley surrounded by an array of buttes, mesas and other alluringly named western formations. Just glance at the skyline and you can’t help humming the theme to The Magnificent Seven.
It’s also the new-age centre of the USA, home to an eccentric community of UFO-spotters, Native American shamen, aura-readers and spiritualists. Hence the presence of the Metaphysical Department Store, a sort of new-age Macy’s stuffed with a cornucopia of wishing pyramids and shamanic shields, multicoloured crystals and books with titles such as Is Your Pet Psychic?
Asking if I was really there seemed reasonable, considering the shop’s name, and the man at the desk didn’t seem surprised by the question. I got the impression he wouldn’t be surprised by anything. He rubbed his goatee beard and slowly shook his head, which made his 2ft-long ponytail swish gracefully. “I’m afraid I can’t answer that for you, sir,” he said finally. “You’ll have to work it out for yourself. But if it’s enlightenment you’re after, you might consider our Native American smudging wands. We have a fine selection.”
A smudging wand is used for ritual purification, and if you want to put yours to good use, there’s no better place than a vortex. Vortices have put Sedona on the new-age map: only trouble is, nobody seems sure what they are. “They’re Gaia’s acupuncture points,” said the man at the Crystal Magic Resource Center for Discovery and Personal Growth. “They’re concentrations of mystical energy,” said the woman at the tourist office.
Confused, I went on a short tour to find out. My guide was Kurt, an enthusiastic young man who drove us to the most famous of the four vortices scattered around Sedona, the Airport Mesa Vortex. It’s a rocky outcrop five minutes out of town, with a gobsmacking view over the blood-red rock formations.
It was undeniably spectacular, but it didn’t strike me as especially otherworldly. Kurt, though, was. He’d seemed normal enough as we parked the 4WD, but when we crested the rocks, he broke out into an impromptu dance, capering over the stones and crying: “Can you feel the energy? Can you? It’s coming up through the ground, man! It’s the spirits of mother earth and the Yavapai-Apache grandfathers!” I tried to feel the energy. Was that a tingling in my toes? No, it was a mild cramp. “Sorry, I’m not getting anything,” I said.
“Rilly?” He clearly considered this strange. Then he brightened up as a thought occurred. “Hey, that’s fine. We’ll do some chanting — that’ll get you connected!”
IT’S A day’s drive south, past Phoenix and Tucson, to Cochise County. A few roads in the state have been designated “scenic routes”, but the fact is Arizona has so much scenery that it doesn’t know what to do with it, and it overflows onto any road you care to take. Everywhere is space, drama, vast mountain chains that start from nowhere and retreat back into the desert as abruptly as they began.
Cochise County’s big draw is Tombstone: “The Town That Was Too Tough To Die”. It’s a bit of a theme park, with actors staging Carry On Cowboy gunfights in Main Street on the hour, but, satisfyingly, there’s still a marshal in Tombstone. He’s a real cop, and if you get out of hand at one of the many saloons around the town, he’ll really arrest you and really put you in a real jailhouse. Sipping a beer in Big Nose Kate’s, I was almost tempted. I was arrested by the marshal in Tombstone — that would sound good on a postcard.
