Beyond the Canyon
The only reason anyone ever goes to Arizona is to see the world?s biggest hole in the ground ? and they?re missing out. Stephen Bleach delves deeper into America?s most eccentric state
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.
Arizonans will proudly tell you this was where the West was won, and they?re right: what they don?t mention is that the people who won it were the most motley assortment of ne?er-do-wells, misfits and out-and-out crooks ever assembled in the western hemisphere. Then, as now, the frontier towns of Arizona were a magnet for outcasts from across the Union.
Just down the road from where I was sitting was the OK Corral, scene of the notorious gunfight, where ? as everyone knows ? Doc Holliday and the Earps took on the Clanton gang and won. What not everyone knows is that Holliday was a failed quack dentist, and Wyatt Earp looked (and, many historians would argue, acted) exactly like a rat with a grievance. They also outnumbered the Clantons, who only had one gun between them. Heroes they weren?t.
Mind you, they did know how to party back then. Up the street, the Bird Cage theatre-cum- brothel hosted a poker game that went on 24 hours a day for eight years. You won?t find that here today ? the marshal would never stand for it ? but that lawless spirit still survives in Cochise County, just 20 miles down Highway 80, in Bisbee.
It?s a gorgeous little place ? just as historic as Tombstone, and a lot more picturesque ? a jumble of clapboard houses clambering up the steep sides of a gulley. A mining town that boomed in the 1880s, it was home to an extraordinary number of brothels, and plenty of riots, gunfights, bank raids and general bad behaviour. (Bizarrely, it also had a cricket team ? some of the miners were Brits.) It still has that edgy, frontier feel. On the bar-lined streets, skinny guys in cowboy hats gunned their Harleys and hollered, and sunburnt dropouts muttered happily to themselves on the street corners.
As night fell, I wandered up Brewery Gulch to St Elmo?s Bar. A huge moose head on the back wall was adorned with female underwear. A gang of bikers was playing pool for beer out back. I chatted with Joe (who was on welfare but cooking eggs on the side at a local diner), Dana (who had a foolproof plan for the perfect internet scam) and Lucas (an enormous man with a beard flowing over his copious belly, who had wandered into town four years ago and ?just sorta stuck, you know??). Dreamers, drifters and oddballs all: none of them would have been out of place in the Bisbee of a century ago.
NURSING A western-sized hangover, I looped through the high-plains ghost towns of Gleeson and Courtland ? hell-raising metropolises in their day, left to the rattlesnakes now ? and wound up in Patagonia, a classic small ranching town, neat and prosperous. While I was filling up at the Politically Incorrect Gas Station (there?s a big male chauvinist pig painted on the side), I got chatting to Greg, a farmer, lounging in cowboy hat and checked shirt.
?Bin driving around?? said Greg. ?Seen many illegals??
?Illegals? are the big local issue here ? Mexicans sneaking over the nearby border. Some die on the way, defeated by the waterless, unforgiving land. National politicians had recently been calling for tougher measures to stop the flow. I braced myself for a bout of xenophobia ? Greg looked about as redneck as they come.
?Those Washington guys have got it all wrong,? he said, spitting to one side for emphasis. ?They say we should stop leaving food and water out for ?em, but I?m going to go right on doing it. Those boys do some hard walking.?
Really? Even though they?re illegal immigrants?
?Hell, son, we?re all illegal immigrants! Ask Cochise, ask the Indians. This is Arizona, we?ve always found space for the people nobody else wanted. That?s what makes it a great state!?
And with that, he climbed into his pick-up, gunned the engine and was away. As the vehicle receded, I saw his bumper sticker. It read: Arizona ? Welcome to God?s Country. And from wandering Mexicans to metaphysical misfits to fly-driving tourists, everybody is.
Stephen Bleach travelled as a guest of the Arizona Office of Tourism
Travel details: British Airways (0870 850 9850, www.ba.com) flies from Heathrow to Phoenix, from ?424. BA Holidays (0870 243 3406, www.ba.com/holidays) has a 10-night fly-drive from ?639pp, with flights from Heathrow to Phoenix, including car hire. Or try Bon Voyage (0800 316 0194, www.bon-voyage.co.uk), or 1st Class Holidays (0845 644 3545, www.1stclassholidays.com).
There are plenty of motels throughout the state. In Bisbee, it?s definitely worth staying at the Shady Dell RV Park (00 1 520 432 3567, www.theshadydell.com), where vintage trailers cost from ?23 a night. For comprehensive listings, call 020 8741 7256, or visit www.arizonaguide.com.
Source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/ ... 39,00.html
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