Mature Life Features

. . .that our brain

has a left side and a right side.

On the left, there is nothing right,

and on the right, there’s nothing left.

Sedona’s Health In the Pink

Red rocks tethered to meditative vortexes are everywhere in Sedona, rising as cliffs, buttes and wind-sculpted animal-shapes cutting sharply into the deep blue sky. It was these sandstone sentinels that sparked the transformation of what was once a small artists’ colony into an upscale resort an hour or so north of Phoenix.

On our first visit here in the late 1950s, the business community comprised a cafe, drug store, market, gas station and a few other establishments. Its 2,000 or so residents would drive into town for groceries from homes scattered among the junipers, pinion pine and Arizona cypress atop red-rock slopes, or from cabins in nearby Oak Creek Canyon. There were no traffic lights and few places to stay other than cabins and camping areas up in the canyon.

Hollywood loved Sedona and built false-front towns where the heroes of countless westerns rode off toward the wind-scoured sandstone outcroppings.

Perched midway between the Valley of the Sun’s desert and the massive Colorado Plateau’s pine forests, Sedona’s dry climate and generally mild temperatures attracted snowbirds from the Midwest’s grim, gray wintery grip.

As word got out, people arrived from all over. Land values shot up. By the 1960s and ’70s, New Age spiritual gurus were proclaiming the area contained a concentration of psychic energy sites. In the late 1970s, Sedona was designated the epicenter of a “harmonic convergence” of people drawn to the spiritual overtones.

Filmdom’s false-front frontier was replaced by European spas, upscale resorts and chic boutiques. Stop lights controlled traffic on the main street, which also was the highway north through Oak Creek Canyon to Flagstaff. Two championship golf courses and a pair of nine-hole layouts were laid out few miles out of town.

It would have become just another hideaway for the beautiful people, had in not been for the photogenic red rocks – and the pink jeeps.

Realtor Don Pratt purchased former movie-studio land in the late 1950s in the Broken Arrow area and took prospective buyers on off-road treks to ooh and aaah the red rocks up close. Noticing folks not interested in housing came back for more, he bought an old Jeep and began charging $3 for a tour. He made them all pink after a stay at Waikiki’s legendary – and pink – Royal Hawaiian Hotel.