The Sedona Vortex
We have come to Sedona for the weekend to attend the wedding of my niece Nichole. Nichole is the daughter of my sister Barbara. She attended Cornell and travelled with me and my kids overseas on several occasions, so I got to know her pretty well in her youth. Nichole was an interesting college student. She studied Art History in school and as a bright and attractive young woman, she managed to snag a prized internship at Sotheby’s before her senior year. That led her to get an even more prized job offer after graduation. The company even put a picture of her on their next year’s annual report, so she seemed destined for a career in the high-powered art world of New York. But that was not to be. At the last minute she had an epiphany and decided that what she really wanted to do with her life was to become a veterinarian. College is supposed to be a time of discovery, but one always hopes that discovery does not come at the very end of four years. Nonetheless, Nichole went back home to Las Vegas and applied to the University of Nevada Reno to take what amounted to two years of remedial science courses needed to apply to Vet School. Then there were only 17 Vet Schools in the U.S. (now there are 32). She got into the Kansas State Vet School and went off there for three more years to get her degree. She had found her calling and became a small animal vet and joined a practiced in the Phoenix area.
Unlike many young people, Nichole seemed to place relationships and marriage much further down the list of priorities. Somewhere along the way, while busy building her vet practice, she met Domenick. Nichole is a product of a western upbringing. She and her brother Jason grew up entirely in the wide-open spaces of Las Vegas. They lived away from the Strip, so it was less the dazzle of Vegas that influenced her and more the desert. Moving to Phoenix, as she did, would tend to introduce her to a somewhat different universe of romantic candidates than had she gone to Sotheby’s and been in the New York City mix. Domenick is decidedly not cut from the New York cloth and looks and acts much more laid back and “western” in his demeanor. He is a registered nurse and came to the relationship with two sons from a prior marriage. He and Nichole were a good enough match that they had a baby girl named Parker, who is the spitting image (both physically and attitudinally) of her mother. Life carried on with both Nichole and Domenick reaching their personal goals and their children thriving. Then one day, apparently out of the blue, they decided to get married just short of a decade after they started living together. They chose Sedona, the spot two hours north of Phoenix that is right in the middle of the state in the Verde Valley, surrounded by now-famous red rock formations. There are few places in America that are more known as a spiritual vortex than Sedona. It is unclear to me what causes a town to become a spiritual vortex. A very similar town in Utah, Moab is equally a tourist hub, but I don’t think anyone would accuse it of being spiritual. Its more of a party town from what I have seen. But Sedona, a town of only 10,000, has cultivated a very different vibe.
The galleries and restaurants are not so different from Moab or Park City, with their decidedly Mexican flavor, but Sedona is simply a more mellow place. This afternoon we will go to a small and intimate outdoor wedding ceremony off in the desert at someplace appropriate called Lovers Knoll. This will be a pretty intimate gathering with only fifteen in attendance. After the desert ceremony we will have a reception at a local restaurant. In attendance will be most of my intimate family, my two sisters and most of their kids and grandkids that are in the area. There will be some who cannot make it for distance or obligation reasons, but everyone will be here in spirit.
I don’t really need a spiritual vortex to carry on about spirituality, but I feel extra spiritual here in Sedona. Kim and I will spend a few hours touring the local galleries and perhaps buying another wind spinner, which is a speciality of Sedona. We are big on bringing home mementos of our travels and that seems an appropriate trinket given that we have a wind-spinner type back hillside. Nothing about a wedding is a requirement of a strong and meaningful relationship and nothing about a place is predeterminate of spirituality, but we humans like to demarcate our lives with milestones and ceremonies. I doubt anything about this wedding will alter the course of Nichole and Domenick’s life together. My guess is that they realize that. Buying a spiritual wind spinner will not make my hilltop more of less spiritual either, but it will create a memory of the moment and that alone justifies its purchase.
I like to say that we all have only so many Christmases. That is not intended to be anything terribly profound or fatalistic, but rather to remind us that we only have so much allotted time on this earth and that we have to make the most of it in every way. I like that Nichole and Domenick are celebrating their union with this wedding. It gives us all a chance to remind them and ourselves about how much we love them and wish them well. The wind spinner will be a great symbolic reminder that life keeps going whether we are there to watch it and participate in it or not. It will also be a way to say that we all deserve to garnish our lives in whatever way pleases us and reminds us of all the good things and good people in our lives.
I am decidedly not a shopping person, but I will enjoy shopping today because I know that regardless of whatever Kim drags home from the hunt, I will drag home another wind spinner and will enjoy placing it and watching it carry on as a constant reminder that whether in the Sedona Vortex or my back hillside, life is beautiful and full of wonder. May Nichole and Domenick keep their lives spinning as long or longer than my wind spinner will.