05/14/2026
I found nature in me.
And nature looked back hoping to see reflections of itself… but instead found a wanna-be pine-pollen-puffing pyrotechnic ‘leaf blower wheezing’ halfway up a hiking trail in mild cardiac arrest.
The ocotillo flower leaned toward the juniper and whispered,
“Maybe she could use a pine needle as a sword against sugar cravings and diabetes.”
Halfway up the trail, I remembered when my older sister burned the flowers the cute next-door neighbor gave me for my birthday.
That memory hit harder than the elevation.
Out of breath and emotionally folding like a lawn chair at a backyard barbecue, I stopped the hiking group. Possibly the spring wind too. Sat down. Cried. Announced I could not continue.
Everyone looked disappointed.
Or maybe they just looked sunburned. Shame has a way of putting hostile subtitles beneath innocent faces.
Even the smallest rocks on the trail seemed to mumble confessions of hard luck while offering me Long Island iced teas.
The juniper tree laughed,
“Ha. Sure. Next you’ll sound like Joe Biden talking about his hairy legs turning blonde in the sun.”
But the second I grabbed the slick red skin of the manzanita tree, something in me lifted like goosebumps waking from the dead.
The wood felt electrically alive.
The flowers smelled like nature’s smelling salts.
The rocks beneath my feet softened like warm pudding thickening with self-determination.
But the real chemical reaction occurred later, integrating yoga and Qigong at the Sedona vortex.
Between the spine-tingling light show of love and gratitude, Ziggy Stardust wheeling inner flower nectar through the cosmos on one side, and grassroots healing shimmering through cottonwood leaves on the other…
What hidden inner pyrotechnic show might ignite inside you after a Vortex Yoga Hiking In Sedona experience?
