I have an ambivalent relationship with heights. I prefer the window seat when traveling on airplanes for views. The thrill of roller coasters has rendered me to a gravitational pull, attracting me to Six Flags every few years for a day of exhilaration. In contrast, if I stand atop a table, I’m woozy; and you’ll never see me walk along the edge of the second floor or higher of a mall because I have a fear that someone, anyone will push me off. (Somebody betrayed me in another lifetime!) I figured out that I’m the person who will readily tightrope walk, but there better be a safety net underneath me or else my fear of heights will otherwise thwart any such attempt to chance an imminent fall. It’s called Acrophobia, a nemesis of my psyche.
I discovered my fear of heights on my first hike with some friends from my neighborhood when I was around seven years old. We got a ride out of the city and into the desert from an older brother of one of my friends who also served as our guide that day. I saw my first rattlesnake that we agitated with sticks and rocks from foolhardy range; its blood-curdling rattle only activated more of our inept experience posturing with potential danger. We slap boxed and exchanged incessant banter with no aid of water for hydration on what was probably a triple digit summer day. Traversing the desert terrain into what seemed like an upward spiraling staircase along the side of a mountain is where things got real for me. The path narrowed to where our backs were against the mountain and the tips of our toes neared the edge as we sidestepped along the way. At that point, I looked down and focused on the one-hundred-foot drop and stopped moving. What I felt, I imagined the fly feels when it stares into the eyes of the spider approaching it while stuck on its web. It took an hour for them to coax me to finally move, and I only moved because they had to pass me to retrace our steps to exit the mountain.
A year later, my family moved to one end of the desert in the city, and I unearthed two things about myself that would later solidify as what will be lifetime companions without knowing it upon inception: hiking and meditation. There were no other kids in the neighborhood, so I spend a lot of time wandering in the desert by myself. I called it “exploring” and found along the way that although I was very social and had a lot of friends at school, I was also comfortable alone, but this alone time heightened my senses seeing mica in the sand and smelling creosote from plants. I had no idea until later that I was hiking and meditating in nature.
Other kids soon moved into the area. They joined me in the desert, but basketball leagues soon took me away as my love for basketball directed me to an inordinate number of hours in the gym. In 2009, I got into a relationship with a girl who would help me return to and introduce a new world of hiking as she lived on the opposite side of the desert where I grew up. The hikes she took me to I had no idea existed in the city and I researched more uncharted territory throughout the mountains to reciprocate in gratitude for additional shared hikes. Basketball remained my first love, but hiking was frequented as I could connect with nature and the kid within me. Fast forward to 2020 when all gyms were shut down, rims from outside courts were removed and this is where the story begins.
Cathedral Rock Sedona, Arizona March 9th, 2021, 4:45am.
I set my alarm for 5:30am but excitement awakened me by 4:45am. Since March 2020 when everything started shutting down, I was hiking daily in Tucson, Arizona as a result of being completely without basketball for the first time in my life. Seven Falls Trail, Sutherland Trail, Romero Pools Trail, Valley View Overlook Trail, Tumamoc Hill Trail, Freeman Homestead Nature Trail, Yetman Trail, Linda Vista Trail, Tanque Verde Falls Trail, Blackett’s Ridge Trail, Cactus Forrest Trail, Mount Wrightson via Old Baldy Trail Summit and Picacho Peak Summit were my baker’s dozen with Tumamoc Monday through Friday mornings and the other twelve rotating on Saturdays and Sundays. Seventy percent of the time, I went alone. Ten percent was being a guide for my sister and niece for big adventure hikes. Ten percent were dare devil missions that involved rock climbing like Picacho Peak or highest elevation points like Mount Wrightson with a friend of mine who is a high-level hiker. The remaining ten percent I’d take people who caught wind of my commitment to hiking and wanting in which I was reticent to surrender most of the time because these hikes gave me sacred time alone, away from the burgeoning madness of the world. Months later, all ground was covered in Tucson, so I started taking road trips within the four corner states of Arizona, Utah, New Mexico and Colorado seeking more hikes.
March 9th was the first morning of several I’d planned to be in Sedona, Arizona hiking the likes of Doe Mountain, Soldier’s Trail, Devil’s Bridge, and Bell Rock. I’d researched that Cathedral Rock was a short, favored path up a steep slickrock hillside to the base of a sheer-sided butte, yielding breathtaking views. What I didn’t know is that the images I saw online were deceptive. Cathedral Rock is a short but highly technical hike. I started out climbing up a sandy slope past trees and bushes with an arrogant smirk on face, somewhat feeling disrespected by the ease. As the vegetation started to fade, I started to get a clear look at the surroundings with majestic red rock everywhere.
At this point that I swallowed my smirk as I approached the infamously steep slickrock ascent. Two teenage girls and a woman in her sixties arrived simultaneously with me. It was evident that we all shared trepidation now. After a few minutes of silently measuring each other’s fear, one of the teenage girls blurted, “welp, I’m going up” and disappeared, leaving the other teenager mortified. Soon, she went up too. I turned to the woman, and she said she was fine with turning around. Before she did, she told me there was a man with a tan hat who was helping people near the more difficult parts. I heard her but wasn’t listening because I was too busy tussling internally with my competitiveness and the disappointing alternative of giving up. I grumbled “hell nah” and started climbing the steep ascent. There are small foot holes, but most of the scale up this section necessitates jamming your feet into crevices and doing a semi-form of rock climbing. I found myself soon wedged between a vertical gully with my nemesis heights, and an unexpected helping hand about to appear like voila.
As I looked back and beneath me and got that same feeling I had stuck on the pathway of that mountain as a kid. I froze up once again, people were gathering at the base of the ascent seemingly waiting for me to fall. Out of nowhere, I heard someone say, “hey buddy…you’re okay, I’ll coach you through this.” Without looking, I responded, “nah dawg, I’m turning around” which is impractical because there’s no way but up to go from that point. It’s an odd twenty to thirty meters of scrambling vertically where it’s physically impossible to backtrack into those crevices and foot holes. I finally looked up and this guy was somehow kneeling diagonally with his heels secured in crevices effortlessly like a Shaolin monk on the branch of a tree. He was smiling and I was able to intuit that he was genuinely a helpful person. I squinted. TAN HAT! This was the guy that woman told me about earlier. “Goat man” as I named him advised me how to make it the rest of the way. I can’t remember his exact instructions. I do know that he told me that the rock I was pressed against was like sandpaper and if I felt like I was going to slip, all I needed to do was lay flat against the rock and it would stymie the slippage. His tutelage was gold.
After we finished, I thanked Goat Man a few hundred times. I was just glad to be standing flat foot with a surface underneath me again. From there, I continued for 0.5 miles of moderate and steep hiking that is comparable to climbing a football stadium. The views at the top of Cathedral Rock are some of the most captivating in Sedona (or anywhere else) and is the perfect place to be during sunset which I was gifted by the highest that morning. The most popular spot is at the end of the trailhead, where a ledge drops down and faces the horizon. I met Goat Man’s wife and daughter, taking a picture with him because I had to remember this guy and somehow, I knew I’d tell this story one day. There were many other people at the top, but the canyon felt like I was seated at the bottom of a Tibetan singing bowl, offering an unmatched quietude and stillness. I pulled out some written intentions, read them silently to myself and meditated for about thirty minutes, occasionally slivering my eye lids open to behold the picturesque scenery.
When I opened my eyes fully, a couple walked up to me and asked if I could take a picture of them to which I did then asked them to do the same for me. Their names were Faisal and Laura. They were visiting from Louisiana. We returned to the bottom together, exchanged information and met for sushi that night. Turned out I made such a spectacle being wedged in that gully that Laura took a picture of me and Goat Man before meeting me at the top because she was unsure if she’d be able to climb the ascent. The picture is framed in my office. I’ve stayed in contact with them, and they just returned to Sedona recently to get married. Cathedral Rock isn’t that difficult for the average hiker but throw in the fear of heights combined with that vertical gully and you’ve got yourself a formidable challenge.
For that moment that felt like an eternity when the paralysis of fear possessed me, something strange happened before I heard Goat Man speak to me. Most of the time when people find themselves in the throes of a precarious situation with an unknown life or death outcome, they start to bargain with a higher power. “If you help me here, I’ll never do” and so on. My experience was oddly different in that I started to bargain with the internal last vestiges of my disappointment, resentment, anger, expectation and fear accumulated throughout my life. At that point, I decided to let them go because when ascending greater heights, those type of things only prevent you from seeing horizons awaiting your arrival. I wasn’t finished facing heights and several months later, I found myself challenging my nemesis in Southwest Utah at Angel’s Landing in Zion National Park.
To be continued…
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