Sedona Hikes, Part Two: Call of the Cow Pies
By Marv Lincoln | March 26, 2007
[Note: This entry was originally posted on 11/21/06.]
In Part One of this post, the wife and I drove our fragile Chevy sedan up the notoriously rugged Schnebly Hill Road until the potholes and sharp rocks defeated us. We pulled into a shady parking lot and set out on foot on an unknown path, hoping to come across the Cow Pies trail.
Onward we trudged, awed by the beauty of the nearby Mitten Ridge, but no pies, cow or otherwise, showed themselves. My wife gave up and sat down on a rock after 20 trudging, grudging minutes. I pressed on, confident our goal was just around the next corner. Typical male optimism, devoid of reason.
But…there it was: the trailhead! And a parking lot across the road (sigh); if only we had driven a little further. The trailhead was barely marked with a crude, homemade sign. Cow Pies! (The un-P.C. name derives from the surreal rock formations which some say resemble cow droppings. I choose to call them “muffins.”)
About 15 minutes into the hike we came upon one of Sedona’s energy vortexes, allegedly located at a beauty of a cow pie/muffin where chunks of black volcanic rock are scattered about. The origins of these rocks is a mystery. The whole vortex zone here, about 100 feet in diameter, does seem to pulsate with a strange energy.
“It feels like unseen forces are in charge at this place,” offered the wife. She said this vortex, or power spot, is known for the strange phenomena that many have experienced here. Tales of bright lights beamed down from the night skies, of weird sounds, of eerie energy orbs — all have been reported, making this vortex location sound like an ET landing field.
After soaking up the vortex energy — whatever — we continued on the dry, dusty trail as huge layers of muffins and the awesome spine of Mitten Ridge loomed up ahead. We stopped for a relaxed picnic under the spreading branches of a juniper tree. It was sunny and warm under the impossibly blue Sedona sky. No humans, no barking dogs, no car engines, not even a tourist helicopter broke the silence.
After lunch we leaped and danced over the red rocks like wild children, playing the game called muffin-popping. The muffins were arranged long ago by Mother Nature herself, which makes it easy to scale layer after layer of slickrock, bringing a feeling that is akin to flying. Freedom!
This is what Sedona is really all about: Nature, the rocks, the forest, the mystery. Dorothy, you are not in Kansas anymore!
My wife — named Liberty, not by accident but by design — is an ordained minister and plans to perform a wedding soon upon the muffins. “This whole area is a great place to declare your love for each other,” she said. “We are inviting the spirits and entities to come to the ceremony, or maybe a UFO will land on the cow pies and bring some off-planet friends to the party.”
Whatever happens, it is sure to be a special blend of mystery and magic, a Sedona kind of event. A muffin-hopping, vortex-rocking, mind-expanding extravaganza. At the Cow Pies. Yo, at the Cow Pies. In Sedona, Arizona.
Topics: Outdoors | Comments Off
Sedona Hikes, Part One: The Joy Is in the Journey
By Marv Lincoln | March 26, 2007
[Note: This entry was originally posted on 11/6/06.]
Sedona hikes are among the best in the world. Red Rock Country offers an incredible variety of hiking experiences, including the one described below, in which we attempt to reach the famous Cow Pies trail.
More than a hundred years ago, Schnebly Hill Road provided the best way for Sedona’s early settlers to get their produce to Flagstaff. The road is named after T. Carl Schnebly, a farmer who guided his covered wagon over the treacherous trail to exchange his tomatoes, carrots, corn and watermelons for lumber in the thriving little railroad town called Flagstaff at the top of the hill.
Our little town is named after that farmer’s wife, name of Sedona Miller Schnebly. They settled along Oak Creek in 1902 and had five children, one of whom died young in a tragic accident. Today the modern version of the wagon trail navigated by T. Carl is a hazardous, potholed rattlesnake of a byway, used mainly by tour Jeeps, high-clearance SUV’s, and ordinary passenger cars driven by fools.
We must fall into that latter category, the wife and I, for we ventured up that nightmare road in our trusty Chevy on a recent beautiful Autumn day, our first time in years on fabled Schnebly Hill Road. We were on our way to a trail impolitely named Cow Pies, so called because the surreal rock formations there vaguely resemble bovine droppings. We prefer to call these wild works of Mother Nature “muffins,” forsaking the scatological reference.
Cow Pies is not even a real trail, but is part of a hike called the Mitten Ridge trail. The cow pies are concentrated about a half-mile into the walk, where the hiker can expect to encounter one of Sedona’s legendary energy vortexes. New Age types and other wide-eyed visitors like to arrange black volcanic rocks scattered around this area into large “medicine wheels,” or circles, where people can meditate, hallucinate, or, by the light of the full moon, enjoy mindless drumming events.
We had actually given up on ever finding the trailhead. Schnebly Hill Road, at its best, is one of the worst-maintained roads in the USA. Its maintenance is the responsibility of the U.S. Forest Service. (Don’t get me started!) Due to a pretty good monsoon season the past summer, the rains had washed away whatever gravel was there, exposing knife-sharp rocks and creating deep ditches in the road.
We drove about two miles, top speed 5 mph, when we finally gave up and parked our tortured sedan in a shady parking spot. Nearby was a trail that paralleled the rocky road, and we set out upon it, in search of the magical cow pies.
It is a lovely nature trail, unnamed and previously undiscovered by us, and we trudged gamely along, thinking the pies must be just over the next rise, then the next, and then the next. After about 45 minutes of this futility, the trail suddenly ended and we found ourselves trudging along Schnebly Hill Road itself, potholes and all.
My wife said, in effect, enough is enough. She plopped herself down on a rock and called several friends on her cell phone to tell them where we were, just in case the search parties were already looking for us. I was exhausted and ready to cash it in too, but decided to trudge ahead on the dusty road around the next curve, and the next.
We had come this far, and I knew the trailhead was within reach. Bravely I soldiered on: In search of the elusive cow pies; in search of the hikers’ Holy Grail.
Topics: Outdoors | Comments Off
