The Magic of Sedona


by Kerry Wood - Date: 2006-11-28 - Word Count: 468 Share This!

Even if it's your first visit to Sedona, Arizona, and its green valleys and ochre mesas, buttes, and pinnacles, you may feel a peculiar sense of déja vu familiarity with the landscape. All your life you have been looking at the remarkable colors and topography of Sedona on TV and movie screens.

Zane Grey was probably the first author to film one of his works on location in Sedona. An avid hunter and fisherman, Grey is thought to have been living in a log cabin known as Mayhew's Oak Creek Lodge when he wrote his Novel "The Call of the Canyon" in 1921. Since then over seventy movies, mostly westerns, have been filmed in the area.

The Motion Picture Museum features still photos from many of these films, and videotapes of classic westerns filmed in Sedona unreel on the museum's television sets. You may watch "Broken Arrow" with James Stewart, Debra Paget, and Jeff Chandler performing against the background of a sandstone formation known as Chicken Point. Upstairs the feature might be "Apache," starring Burt Lancaster and an actor named Charles Buchinsky, who would soon become Charles Bronson.

Sedona, Arizona, has to be the most euphoniously named town anywhere. Neither Spanish nor Indian, Sedona was the given name of Mrs. T. C. (Carl) Schnebly. In 1902, Carl applied for establishment of a post office in the Oak Creek area where he and his family had settled. The post office department objected to proposed names like Oak Creek Station, Red Rock Crossing, and Schnebly Station which were too long for a cancellation stamp. Someone suggested using Carl's wife's name, which her mother had invented because she liked its sound. The government approved, and the Sedona post office was established with T. C. Schnebly as postmaster.

What brings most tourists to this section of Arizona is the prodigious work of art dashed off by Mother Nature. Oceans came and went depositing their sediments; volcanoes belched their deposits; wind, rain, rivers, and quakes did their artistic sculpturing; and the result is a masterwork of fossilized seashell limestone.

The pinnacles and mesas have picked up labels suggested by their conformation. Cockscomb rises west of Chimney Rock, Capitol Butte, Sugar Loaf and Coffee Pot Rock, whose spout points toward Steamboat Rock. Monoliths known as The Nuns stand like sentinels near the man-made Chapel of the Holy Cross.

Obviously it was not long ago that Snoopy Rock got its name--one section looks like a dog's head and nose, then comes a rounded stomach, and what look like two upraised paws of Charles Schultz's beloved beagle snoozing on his back.

New Agers believe that Sedona's "harmonic vortexes" produce in people feelings of inner peace and wholeness. More simply, it may be the tonic effects of breathtaking scenery, healthy climate, and bright skies fee of big city pollution. Visit and decide for yourself.


Related Tags: sedona, arizona, zane grey, oak creek lodge, chicken point, car; schnebly, charles schultz, vortexes

Kerry Michael Wood is a retired English teacher, textbook author and award-winning poet. His memoir, "Past Imperfect, Present Progressive," tells of his life, education, 37-year teaching career in California secondary schools and in Istanbul. Combining essays, poetry and short stories rising from his personal experiences, the memoir begins with his being consigned to a Catholic military boarding school at age 4 in 1942. More info is available at his website http://www.kerrymwood.com Your Article Search Directory : Find in Articles

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