I should say upfront: I didn't come to Sedona for the energy. I came for the hiking. The red rock formations, the canyon trails, the landscapes I'd seen in photographs. The vortex stuff, the crystal shops, the aura readings — that was background noise. Tourist trappings.
Then I watched sunrise from the saddle of Cathedral Rock and something happened. Not spiritual awakening. Not energy transfer. Something simpler and harder to dismiss: I felt profoundly, unexpectedly moved. And I'm still trying to figure out why.
I'd read that Cathedral Rock at sunrise requires arriving in darkness. The trailhead parking lot holds maybe 30 cars and fills by 7AM even on weekdays. At 4:47AM, mine was the only vehicle.
The Red Rock Pass ($5 from the kiosk — exact cash or check, the machine doesn't take cards) was my first challenge. I'd forgotten cash. Fortunately, I'd bought a weekly pass ($15) at the Sedona Chamber of Commerce the day before. Already clipped to my visor.
The trail starts gentle. A well-marked path through juniper and piñon pine. The air was cool — maybe 12°C — and smelled like sage and something mineral. Desert smell. Clean in a way that city air never manages.
I turned on my headlamp and started walking.
Cathedral Rock's trail is only 1.2 miles round trip. But the second half isn't a trail — it's a scramble over slickrock, smooth sandstone worn by thousands of feet into shallow grooves that serve as handholds. In the dark, guided by headlamp, the rock glowed dull red under the beam.
The exposure is real. Not technical climbing, but steep enough that a fall would hurt. My shoes gripped the sandstone well (grippy soles — essential, as every guidebook warned me). I wedged my fingers into cracks, pulled myself over ledges, and tried not to look down.
The stars were still out. And out here, without Sedona's already-minimal light pollution, they were staggering. The Milky Way was a visible band. Jupiter was a bright point. I turned off my headlamp for 30 seconds and stood still on the rock, surrounded by stars and silence.
Then I kept climbing.
The saddle of Cathedral Rock is a notch between two spires. You sit on smooth sandstone and the world opens in every direction — Sedona's valley below, the red formations of Bell Rock and Courthouse Butte to the south, and the dark line of the Mogollon Rim to the north.
I was alone. Completely. The first light was just touching the eastern sky — a thin line of pale gold below indigo.
I sat down, ate a granola bar, and waited.
Here's what I wasn't prepared for: the speed of it. One moment the rocks were dark red, nearly black in predawn shadow. Then the sun crested the rim and the light hit the formations like a switch.
The red sandstone ignited. I don't know a better word for it. The rocks went from dark to vivid orange-red in seconds, as if they were generating their own light. The shadows retreated down the cliff faces, revealing textures and striations that had been invisible moments before.
The valley below was still in shadow, but the spires around me were lit like stage sets. The contrast — dark valley, blazing red rock, pale blue sky — was almost too much. My eyes didn't know where to focus.
I sat there for 40 minutes. I took some photos. None of them captured it.
Cathedral Rock is one of Sedona's four main vortex sites — places where the earth is said to emit spiraling energy. The others are Airport Mesa, Bell Rock, and Boynton Canyon.
I'm a skeptic by nature. Energy vortexes aren't part of my worldview. But sitting on that saddle at sunrise, I understood — at least partially — why people believe.
The juniper trees near the vortex points grow in distinctive twisted patterns. Locals call them "twisted trees" and point to them as evidence of spiraling energy. A botanist would call it wind exposure and rocky soil. Both explanations are probably true.
What I can say: the combination of altitude, silence, physical exertion from the climb, and the overwhelming visual spectacle of the sunrise created a state of focus and calm that I rarely experience. Whether that's "energy" or neuroscience or simple awe, the effect was real.
After descending Cathedral Rock (trickier going down — the smooth rock is slippery), I drove to the Chapel of the Holy Cross. This is the church built directly into a red rock cliff face in 1956, designed by a student of Frank Lloyd Wright. Free entry, open 9AM-5PM.
The chapel is small — 50 seats, maybe. But the rear wall is a floor-to-ceiling window with the red rocks filling the frame. The effect is deliberate and powerful. Architecture as spiritual experience. I'm not Catholic, but I sat in a pew for 10 minutes and felt something.
Afternoon: Devil's Bridge Trail. A 4.2-mile round trip to the largest natural sandstone arch in Sedona. The arch is 54 feet across and you can walk across it — carefully, no rails, considerable drop on both sides. The Instagram line at the top was 15 minutes long. I waited. The photo was worth it.
Evening: a Pink Jeep Tour ($109, 2 hours). I'd been dismissive of these — touristy, overpriced, gimmicky. I was wrong. The Broken Arrow route goes over terrain that would destroy a rental car — steep slickrock ledges, tight gaps between formations, angles that shouldn't be possible in a vehicle. The driver was excellent and the access to backcountry views justified the price.
Sedona holds an International Dark Sky designation. This means they've actively reduced light pollution to preserve visibility of the night sky.
I drove to Airport Mesa overlook after dinner. Parked. Turned off every light. And looked up.
The Milky Way was a visible band across the sky. Not a photograph. Not a planetarium. The actual Milky Way, visible with my naked eyes. I could see the Andromeda Galaxy as a faint smudge. I identified Orion, the Pleiades, Jupiter.
A couple nearby had a telescope ($60-90 guided astronomy tours are available). The man was pointing out Saturn's rings to his daughter. She was maybe eight. She gasped.
I drove back to my hotel at 10PM, sunburned, trail-dusty, and inexplicably happy.
Sedona doesn't require belief. You don't have to buy into vortexes or crystal healing or aura photography to have a transformative experience here. The landscape does the work.
The red rocks are 300 million years old. They've been shaped by water, wind, and time into formations that look designed but weren't. Standing among them — especially at sunrise, especially alone — creates a feeling that I can only describe as appropriate smallness. You're a small thing in an old place, and for once, that feels good.
I came a skeptic. I left... still a skeptic, honestly. But a moved one.
