September 10 2006

Walking the Land: Grandmother Bell Rock Hike Part I-Sedona, Arizona

Hi Everyone,

Linda Metzler and I got up early Saturday morning, drove over to our favorite local vortex, Grandmother Bell Rock, and took a hike. We want to share it with you! And if you ever get out our way, you truly need to take this hike!

Copyright Eileen Nauman 2006

Here is the hiking map of trails around Grandmother Bell Rock and Courthouse Butte. It is called “Munds Mountain Wilderness” on the map, but in reality, it is the two buttes that sit next to one another. In the coming days, I’m going to cover our hike. There’s just too many photos for one or two blogs. So sit back and enjoy the virtual hike with us!

Let me introduce you to Grandmother Bell Rock! She’s a vortex and is often known for physical healings that she bestows upon people who karmically are ready to give up their ailment or symptoms. She is feminine and nurturing. I often come here to drum. In Linda’s case, she has her flute. Grandma Bell loves both! She is made of red sandstone with lots of quartz crystal embedded into her bones. You can see little circles of crystals just about everywhere on her. But nowhere as many as her ‘womb’ which I’ll share with you later on this hike.

As we started to walk around Grandma Bell after offering her a handful of cornmeal, and asking permission to trod upon her sacred land, this was nestled on her lowest ‘skirt’ of red sandstone.

We drove through Page Springs and Cornville where it rained. And then, once we turned onto Beaver Flats Road and headed north toward Grandmother Bell, we eventually outran the rain. But it was coming. I asked, mentally, if Grandma Bell would PART the coming rain so it went around us so that we could have a dry hike around her. And that’s exactly what she did!

Copyright Eileen Nauman 2006

Because the Thunder Beings have been so generous to the area this monsoon season, we have received record amounts of rain throughout the summer–and Spring of this year was dry as a bone. So, all the wildflowers that normally bloom in the Spring–are blooming now! It is just a palette of colors. Here is Coulter’s Spiderling; a very fragile, teeny tiny lavender/pinkish blossom on a very fine, thin almost web like stem. She was seen in many places around Grandma Bell. Can you FEEL the energy around her? You see, what we do is we sit with a plant and invite the spirit of the plant to tell us something about itself. It is very healing connection with any plant and they are wonderful teachers.

The sky was turbulent and threatening. It remained cloud covered for our entire hike. There is Linda walking the trail and you can see Courthouse Butte on your left–but that is another blog for another day!

On the west side of Grandma Bell is a wonderful field of green grass and it has lots of hidden treasures if you take the time to slowly walk through the red, sandy soil. One of these treasures is Scarlet Gaura.

Here is Slender Gaillardia (Gaillardia pinntifida) with a beautiful yellow and black bug on it! What a lovely combo. It too, was out in this grass field on the west side of Grandma Bell. I felt like a treasure hunter discovering all these beautiful jewel-like flowers…but the pretty bug was a wonderful addition!

And this will be the end of part one of Grandma Bell. We hope you’ve enjoyed the virtual hike with us. Come back for Part 2 tomorrow. In Spirit….