fea I >. • - Desert Magazine of the Southwest

24 November, 1981
If you hold out your hand, cup it
deeply, and then tilt it so it slants
toward you, it will resemble nothing so
much as a great, wrinkled canyon.
Where the fingers join the palm, Sedona
nestles quietly into the lower end of Oak
Creek Canyon, slashed into the
southern margin of the Colorado
Plateau and merged into the northern
reaches of the Verde River Valley. It has
a pleasant country highway that makes a
great tour of the valley, then circles up
and around the long meadows on the
lower slopes of Mingus Mountain. It
climbs sharply over a ridge and is gone
into the tree-studded slopes of the
country beyond, leaving the little,
almost-hidden place to its own devices.
Fifteen years ago, Sedona was a small,
unincorporated place with a population
of 1,200, retaining much the same pace
and atmosphere as when it was founded
in 1902. The days and the seasons
moved along with an unhurried gait. In
the past decade, the little town has
grown in much the same way: It has
retained the slow pace and the understated,
quiet, Western atmosphere.
I reached the coffee shop and
thumbed idly through a sheaf of post
cards while I waited for a pot of tea and
my 10 o'clock appointment. "Just look
for an old cowboy," he'd said.
He shambled in, a few minutes late,
and recognition came easily. Bob Bradshaw—writer
and photographer—has
served as liaison, stand-in and movie