I used to load up a backpack with two bottles of wine and a single glass. That was the ritual. No water, no food. Just the essentials: alcohol and intention. There was an old Afghan scarf I carried too, something that looked like it belonged to a dead soldier or a desert drifter. I’d wrap it around my head when it got hot, around my neck when I started to sweat, and when I sat down to meditate, I’d lay it out in front of me like a prayer rug to a god I didn’t believe in anymore.
Strapped to the side of my orange backpack was a faded pink yoga mat. Yeah, pink. Maybe I looked like a fool to the tourists, but out there, none of it mattered. I’d hike up these half-hidden social trails like I was chasing some ghost version of myself. My favorite was a narrow path off Baldwin Butte, right near Buddha Beach. At post marker 55, you jump the trail—cut right off and cover your tracks. Go off-grid, like a goddamn outlaw, and you’ll find yourself in a dried-out waterfall surrounded by old twisted junipers. Follow the falls. Stay left. Eyes open. The trail isn’t man-made; it’s deer, bobcat—animal. It’s survival. You’re walking the same paths the wild things walk. That’s what I wanted.
The trail winds up over loose rock and cactus bones until you hit a couple of plateaus. Stop. Turn around. Look at what you left behind. It’s all there—the red rock, the green valleys, the slow heartbeat of the desert. Sedona unfolds in silence, and if you stand still enough, you’ll feel it breathing. I took my kids up once or twice, but the top climb wasn’t for them. Hell, it wasn’t for anyone sane. You cinch the backpack tight and crawl—hands and knees—up the face of that Butte. One slip, you’re done. To the right, to the left, or three feet behind you? Death. Straight fall. No second chance.
But when you hit the top?
The whole fucking world opens up.
360-degree view.
Sedona in every direction.
Cathedral Rock dead ahead.
Female vortex glowing like a wound beneath you.
It was sacred ground.
It was mine.
I’d unzip my pack, lay out my scarf, my pink mat, place a little brass Buddha at the center. Burn a wad of sage. Pull out A Course in Miracles. And then? I’d strip down. Butt-ass naked. Let the sun cook my body like a ritual offering. Crack the bottle of wine. Take it down slow. Sip. Gulp. Breathe. Repeat.
And yeah, sometimes I’d get too drunk. Stand up on that cliff and scream at the top of my lungs, letting the wind carry it across the canyon like a challenge. The tourists on the other side would hear it. Maybe they’d think it was an animal. Maybe they’d know better. But most days were quieter. I’d sit there. Still. Naked. Burning. Watching the thoughts pass through like trains in the dark.
That’s when I started watching the ego. Not fighting it. Not trying to kill it. Just… watching it. This little bastard version of myself that always had something to prove, something to defend. He’d crawl up with his opinions, his plans, his scars, and I’d just observe him. I’d ask—do you even like this guy? Would you have a beer with him? Would you trust him with your kid? And once you can name that voice, once you can tag it for what it is, you can shove him aside. Put him in a box and stop letting him drive.
And then comes the silence. The good kind. The kind that drops into your chest like a stone and just sits there. No thoughts. No stories. No agenda. Just sun on skin. Blood humming in your ears. Sparrows dive-bombing overhead trying to scare you off because you’re too close to their nests. And you sit through it. Sit until it shifts. Sit until the desert breathes for you.
I’d meditate for 20 minutes, sometimes an hour. Come out of it dazed, raw, soaked in sunlight. Pour another glass of wine. Burn more sage. Read a paragraph, close the book, fall back into the trance. I’d do that again and again. That’s how I spent my mornings. My afternoons. My sunsets. Alone. On that rock. Watching myself shed layer after layer of civilized bullshit until I was just another cracked soul roasting under the Arizona sky.
And the rocks—God, the rocks. They start to change. Faces appear. Shapes shift. You swear the desert is watching you back. Not judging. Just bearing witness. The temperature drops. The shadows crawl. Life phases in and out. And you realize this isn’t about you anymore. You’re just one tiny flicker in something way bigger, older, stranger.
I was usually the first car in the lot. Always the last to leave.
That was my life for a year.
Every day.
My feet split open from the heat, skin cracked and calloused. My hair turned feral, this orange mess blowing in the wind. My body turned into something wild, burned, leathered. I looked like a relic. I felt like one. I wasn’t a man anymore. I wasn’t a job title. I wasn’t a son or a father or a husband. I was something else. Something old and unpolished.
And in all that time—through all the pages, all the sweat, all the drunken meditations and sage smoke and whispers from the void—seven of the most profound things I’ve ever learned in my life didn’t come from a book. They didn’t come from a priest, or a YouTube video, or a $600 retreat.
They came from just sitting down,
shutting the fuck up,
and watching.
Not thinking. Not judging.
Just being there.
Right there.
Present in the nothing, where everything lives.
