Sedona Arizona: Visit Splendid Canyons and Meteor Craters

Mystical city of Sedona, Arizona close to Canyon Diabolo meteor crater site in the badlands

Northern Arizona’s badlands are a surreal landscape of ochre canyons and sand-colored mesa, of splintered cacti and sagebrush. This part of Arizona has remained unchanged for millennia - one that existed before Man learned to measure time by seasons and constellations wheeling above him.

As I stand on the rim of a gigantic circular hollow gouged into the barren earth, an Arizona desert wind ruffles my hair and whispers secrets of ancient cataclysmic upheavals of earth and fire. It tells of an event 50,000 years ago that created what lies far, far below my viewing platform: the largest meteor crater on Earth.It is nearly a mile across, 550 feet deep and large enough at its base to encompass 20 football fields, while two million spectators would fit comfortably along its sloping walls.

The crater was formed by what came to be known as the Canyon Diabolo meteorite. The power and speed of the meteor’s impact is almost beyond comprehension, slamming, as it did, into the earth at 40,000 miles an hour (like traveling from New York to Los Angeles in four minutes) and causing an explosion equivalent to a force greater than 20 million tons of TNT.The wind dies away and I lean over the rails to peer at the crater, its surface pocked like a moonscape, and I’m not surprised to learn that this site was used by NASA as a training ground for Apollo’s astronauts (including Neil Armstrong) back in the 1960s. A special section at the on-site museum is dedicated to the heroes who dared, (as John Gillespie Magee puts it) to “slip the surly bonds of earth” and soar into space.

Hollywood’s imagination too has been fired by the Arizona crater: the 1979 movie Meteor starring Sean Connery and Natalie Wood was filmed here; and Star Man with Jeff Bridges and Karen Allen told the story of an alien who was picked up from the floor of the crater by a space ship.

More than Hollywood glitz, however, there are other issues that crowd the mind at the meteor crater site. The sheer unpredictability of a cosmic event of this magnitude raises the point as to whether this could happen again, and if so, are there early warning systems in place?

I find answers to this and other questions at the adjoining Meteor Crater Learning Centre. Meteorites as “shooting stars” frequently collide with the earth, but our atmosphere slows their velocity, and, luckily, so far none has landed in densely populated areas.

While we aren’t immune to the possibility of another massive meteorite smashing into our planet, it is reassuring to know scientists feel this is unlikely for another 50,000 years.Fifty thousand years isn’t much in terms of Earth’s evolutionary history, but 225 million years is mind-boggling, and standing at a lookout in the Painted Desert Park, I am breathless at the panorama of scarlet, indigo, orange and white rocky outcrops which stretch, fold upon fold, to the horizon - a scene which has endured since the Triassic Age.Erosion has sculpted portions of granite into twisted shapes: here a fist raised against the sky, there a staircase of gray blocks piled in defiance of gravity or, in the distance, the silhouette of some fabled castle perched on a mesa.

The Chinle Formation area in the adjoining Petrified Forest National Park has its own treasures dating from the same period. Petrification takes place when logs are buried under layers of sediment, (often following a volcanic eruption), and the wood becomes imbedded with silica, crystallized quartz, manganese and oxidized iron.

Under pressure and over millennia, the result is a log, or a chip emblazoned with fantastical designs. I crouch down to peer at a five-inch cross-section of wood compressed into marble-smooth whorls of royal purple, and fire engine red.Not far away lies another chunk that looks like a miniature modernist painting with splashes of bright yellow, veined by thin blue capillaries.

The word “awesome” is used loosely these days, but in its truest sense, it means an emotion of deep reverence. Sedona, south of Flagstaff, evokes feelings of mystical wonder, and it is not surprising its monumental copper-hued canyons with their surfaces chiseled into temple-like carvings, were sacred to the Hopi, Navajo and Yavapai.

Nor am I surprised to learn many still regard the area as a powerful vortex of psychic energy.

As I get out of the car, the afternoon sky is a sullen gray, so the canyon walls are muted to pale mauve, and shell pink. Magically, a shaft of sunlight breaks through, and the entire Cathedral Rock escarpment is bathed in golden light.

The buttes and spires turn to flame, their edges bright orange, their crannied shadows vermilion. I am stunned to silence.

In that strange dance between light and shadow, it begins to rain, but not heavily and only for a moment, while far below in the valley beyond the ridge of the escarpment, a rainbow arcs across the distant horizon.

If you go to Sedona, Arizona

The Meteor Crater site and Learning Centre is 35 miles east of Flagstaff and 20 miles west of Winslow, a short drive off the I-40. For information, e-mail info@meteorcrater.comPlan to spend an hour at the adjoining Learning Centre.The Petrified Forest and Painted Desert may be accessed off the I-40, (north entrance) running east of Winslow, or Highway 180 (south entrance) in the southern part of the Colorado Plateau. For information, visit www.nps.gov/pefo

Sedona is 30 miles south of Flagstaff on Route 89A. It lies 110 miles north of Phoenix and public transportation via shuttle is available from Sky Harbor Airport.

Author: Margaret Deefholts