Addicted2Wonder's Stargazing Joshua Tree Tours
With Our Military Grade Night Vision Goggles and Some of the Darkest Skies in Ca. You May Turn Into a Wonder Junkie!
TONIGHT, CHANGE THE WAY YOU SEE THE NIGHT SKY FOREVER!
Our Military Grade Night Vision Goggles and Ancient Stories May Turn You Into a Wonder Junkie!
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Seven Sunrise and Sunset Stargazing Locations & Storytelling Meditations
Changing the way you see the Sky Forever!
Before Finding Your Quiet Hill Staring At The Stars
Before we go any further Before anything else
Let us remember something even more elemental:
What I am and you are
We are People of Earth. And what we are is human.
Yes, we come with names: By race. By color. By creed. By city, state, or country.
These identities matter. They are threads in the cloth. But they are not the whole.
Beneath them, before them, we belong. We are People of Earth. We are kin by birthright. Connected by breath. By light. By stardust.
So let us remember: Before division, there was belonging.
This book honors wisdom from Indigenous peoples whose relationships to land, sky, and spirit run deeper than I can claim. I am not Indigenous. I am a guest on these lands and a student of these teachings.
The concepts shared here—Etuaptmumk (Two-Eyed Seeing), Iwígara (we share the same breath), Mitakuye Oyasin (all my relations), Dadirri (deep listening), and others—are not my inventions. They are gifts, carried through generations by those whose lineages extend back to the first fires.
I am not here to teach Indigenous wisdom. I am here to acknowledge that what Western science is “discovering” about interconnection, Indigenous peoples have known and lived for millennia.
To the Yavapai and Apache peoples—on whose ancestral lands Sedona rests—and to all Indigenous knowledge keepers who have chosen to share teachings publicly: Aho. Mitakuye Oyasin. Thank you.
For full sources, pronunciations, permissions, and resources to learn directly from Indigenous teachers, see Appendix.
At Munds Mountain in Sedona—where fire speaks and silence listens—the first light of dawn and the final glow of dusk call you to witness. These are not merely moments on a clock. They are breath and flame, exhale and ember. Sunrise is not a beginning—it is the ember of the first breath, rising again through you. Sunset is not an ending—it is the soft exhale, emptying the bowl of light as the sky gathers all it has known.
My hope for this book is the same hope I carry into every stargazing tour I guide:
To change the way you see the night sky and the stars forever—not just while you’re here in Sedona, but always.
I know it’s a tall request. But after 500+ nights under these stars, I’ve watched it happen again and again.
Here’s what I mean:
Right now, you probably call it “watching the sunset.” After this book, you’ll feel the Earth rolling you away from the Sun—slowly, silently—turning you into starlight. You’ll stop saying “the sun is going down.” You’ll feel yourself turning with everyone. And you’ll know: the sunset you’re watching right now is someone else’s sunrise. Same moment. Same breath.
You don’t have to believe it. You’re already in it. And once you feel it, you can’t unfeel it.
The same thing happens with grief, with breath, with every meal you eat. Once you know that your breath carries your ancestors—literally, in your lungs— once you understand that you are solar-powered, that every calorie you’ve ever eaten was sunlight that learned to wait— once you see that the light of everyone you’ve loved is still traveling outward, 26 light-years away, still expressing— the night sky stops being distant. It becomes family.
And here’s the truth I’ve learned: You don’t need Sedona’s red rocks for this to happen. You don’t need perfect dark skies or a telescope or any special equipment.
You just need a quiet hill.
Wherever you stand—beneath city lights, on a windswept plain, or beside a spiral carved into dust—there is a place that knows your name. A “quiet hill” is not a destination; it is where your breath weaves with the world’s. These trails, kissed by the hush of dawn and dusk, do not merely carry footsteps. They carry remembering. Of starlight in your lungs. Of silence beneath your name. Of the rhythm that belongs to you, even when you forget its song.
To Find It:
Seek Stillness: Choose a place where the earth feels open—a park, a rooftop, a backyard, or a clearing by a stream. It need not be grand, only honest. A bench under a tree or a patch of grass will do.
Face the Light: At dawn or dusk, turn toward the horizon where the sun rises or sets. If cliffs or buildings veil the sky, find a star, a cloud, or the moon’s quiet glow. Let it hold you.
Breathe the Place: Stand or sit, palms open, and inhale. Feel the air carry the stories of this land—its roots, its stones, its pulse. Exhale your own story, joining the spiral.
Listen Slow: Notice one thing—a bird’s call, the wind’s hum, a distant murmur of life. Let it whisper, “You are not separate. You are not lost.”
Return Often: This is not a task but a rhythm. Come back to your quiet hill when the stars sing or when your heart seeks its place in the weave.
What does your quiet hill whisper to you?
This is your fire, your breath, your sky. Here, now, in you. Walk these paths slowly. Let the land speak. Let the light name you. You are not separate. You are not lost.
You are only changing clothes.
HOW TO USE THIS BOOK
Three Ways In — All of Them Right
There is no wrong door in this book.
It was built for wanderers, not followers. So before you start wondering whether you’re doing it right—you are. Here’s a map of the territory, in case it helps you choose where to begin.
If you’re walking the trails Follow the seven trails in order—three at sunrise, four at sunset—or let your heart choose the sequence. Each trail has a description, a campfire story, and a meditation designed for that place. Bring this book with you. Read the story the night before. Do the meditation on the rock, in the light, with the land under your feet. Start with the Seven Directions practice first — it’s the foundation for all seven meditations.
If you want the stories Seven tales plus two bonuses. Sam, Sophia, and Tutu sitting by the fire while the stars do what stars do. You can read them as a single arc—from first spark to final ember—without stopping for trails or meditations. They work as stories. They also plant the seeds for when you’re ready to walk.
If you want the science Every claim here is grounded in physics, chemistry, and cosmology. The numbers are in the appendix if you need them before you trust the mystery. Then come back to the fire. The Indigenous elders and the Western scientists are saying the same thing in different languages. This book tries to listen with both ears. The Mi’kmaq call that Etuaptmumk—Two-Eyed Seeing.
However you begin Read in order or read by wonder. Walk the trails or sit in your kitchen. Underline things. Argue with Sam. Sit with Sophia’s silences. Drop a pebble into still water and watch what happens. There’s no test at the end. No certification. Just you, the sky, and whatever you were carrying when you opened this page. Set it down if you can. Pick it up again when you need it.
The fire’s already lit.
A Quick Reference for Wonder Junkies
Greet the dawn as the Earth rolls you toward the light
TRAIL 1: AIRPORT MESA Meditation 1: The Earth Turning
TRAIL 2: DOE MOUNTAIN Meditation 2: The Sky Shaped Just For You
TRAIL 3: SUNRISE LEDGE (Fay Canyon Spur) Meditation 3: Light Leaves No Trace
Watch the Earth turn you into starlight
TRAIL 4: SEVEN SACRED POOLS (Soldier Pass Spur) Meditation 4: The Three Questions
TRAIL 5: SECRET SLICKROCK TRAIL Meditation 5: The Breath We Share
TRAIL 6: SUGARLOAF SUMMIT Meditation 6: The Center Emerging
TRAIL 7: CATHEDRAL ROCK Meditation 7: The Sun We Eat
Walk them in order, or let your heart choose.
Each trail holds a teaching. Each meditation deepens the question:
How are we not separate?
All trailheads require parking pass.
Watch for: Wet slickrock (extremely slippery), rattlesnakes (dawn/dusk), drop-offs
If a trail feels wrong or weather turns—listen to your body.
The meditation is the destination, not the summit.
Your quiet hill can be anywhere. Be safe. Be present.
Now—let’s go.
Every meditation in this book returns to the same ritual: establishing the seven directions from your heart. This is not a metaphor. It is a practical method for remembering where you are. Learn this practice now. You will use it at every trail, at every sunrise, at every sunset. It is the thread that weaves through all seven meditations.
A Sunrise/Sunset Meditation Protocol
Find your sacred spot—a place where you can witness the sun rising or leaving. Arrive before the transition begins. Stand or sit comfortably where you can see the horizon clearly.
Place your hand on your heart.
Close your eyes.
Breathe in slowly through your nose, feeling your chest rise.
Breathe out slowly through your mouth, feeling your chest fall.
Do this three times.
On the fourth breath, hold your awareness at your heart.
Feel the quiet rhythm there—steady, patient, present.
This is puʻuwai—the seventh direction.
You are not lost.
You are here.
With your hand still on your heart, eyes still closed, notice:
Front – The space before you. Not empty. Alive. Waiting.
Back – The space behind you. Not forgotten. Held. Supporting.
Left – The space to your left. Present. Part of the whole.
Right – The space to your right. Present. Part of the whole.
Above – The sky overhead. Vast. Witnessing.
Below – The earth beneath you. Solid. Grounding.
The six directions are not out there waiting to be found.
They are emerging from here—from your heart, from your breath, from your presence.
You are not in the directions.
The directions arise from you.
Open your eyes.
Turn your body to face the sun:
Notice your shoulders:
You are standing at the center of rising and leaving.
Both are always happening.
You are the still point between them.
Watch the sun without rushing.
At sunrise, say silently or aloud:
“This light rising for me is leaving for someone else, right now, at this same moment.”
At sunset, say silently or aloud:
“This light leaving for me is rising for someone else, right now, at this same moment.”
The sun does not hurry.
The sun does not apologize for rising or leaving.
It simply is—exactly where it needs to be, exactly when it needs to be there.
Just like you.
Breathe into your heart again.
Notice:
You are not separate from this pattern.
You are not outside the dance.
You are the pattern becoming aware of itself.
The universe noticing itself through your eyes.
With your hand still on your heart, recognize:
You are not alone in this moment.
Someone, somewhere, is watching the same sun rise while you watch it leave.
Someone, somewhere, is watching the same sun leave while you watch it rise.
Eight billion centers.
Eight billion unique views.
All held within ALL.
You see what they cannot.
They see what you cannot.
Together, the whole sky becomes visible.
This is Mitakuye Oyasin—all relations radiating from here.
As the transition completes—sunrise becoming day, sunset becoming night—place both hands on your heart.
Say silently or aloud:
“I am here.”
“I am light.”
“I am enough.”
Take one final deep breath.
As you exhale, release any need to control what comes next.
The pattern holds you.
The mystery knows your name.
You are standing exactly where you need to be.
Bow your head slightly—not in submission, but in recognition.
You have practiced what the stars have been teaching since the beginning:
You are not searching for your center.
You are the center from which all relations arise.
Carry this knowing with you as you step back into your day or evening.
The seven directions travel with you.
The pattern continues.
You are here/home.
This meditation can be practiced daily, seasonally, or whenever you need to remember: you are not lost. You are exactly here.
These seven trails offer more than beautiful views—they are teaching stations. Each location holds a specific meditation practice designed to deepen your understanding of how we are not separate. At each trail, you will use the Seven Directions practice you just learned, adapted to the specific landscape and teaching of that location.
Pronunciation: wah-NEES-kah
“Waneska” (standardized as Waniskâ in Cree) means “Wake up!” This traditional Cree Sunrise Song is a morning invocation, celebrating the rising sun, the singing birds, and the beauty of the land. Sung to greet the dawn, it reflects the Cree worldview of interconnectedness and gratitude for creation.
Cree: Waniskâ! pêtâpan ôma, âsay piyêsîsak kî-nikamowak, ê-miyonâkwan kitaskînaw
Translation: Wake up! The sun is coming. The birds are already singing. How beautiful this land of ours is.
Source: Shared by Cree cultural knowledge holders, including Art Napoleon (singer) and transcribed by Arden Ogg for the Cree Literacy Network.
These trails weave through Sedona, where dawn’s light sparks wonder. If the desert is far from you right now, find a quiet hill, park, or open sky in your hometown—or wherever you stand—to greet the sunrise and someone else’s sunset.
Let any place become your altar for remembering: you are the spark that never fades.
“The Earth Turning”
Trail Description A short 0.3 mile paved loop atop Airport Mesa offers panoramic views over Sedona. While often busy before sunset, the overlook settles into stillness as dawn arrives.
Sunrise Appeal Here the horizon turns in every direction—red rock silhouettes awaken with first light while the first city lights fade below. Dawn lingers, reminding us that change is not loss but return.
Trail Details
Scenic Reflection This mesa is where the day awakens—red stone wrapped in gold, then purple, then full light. You are not watching light arrive—you are watching its transformation. Shadows shorten, but they do not erase. They reform. What was hidden becomes visible. What was silent begins to glow. The land does not wait for dawn—it reveals another face. And so do you.
Trail Walking Meditation This light is not arriving. It is being revealed. This beginning is not starting—it is emerging. Stand still. Let yourself dissolve and reform. You are here. Just in new light.
CAMPFIRE STORY: When the Old Ones Gathered
The rocks didn’t speak. They remembered.
The match struck against worn leather, flaring bright before catching hold of dry juniper. Fire curled upward, slow at first, then quick, like a creature stretching its limbs after too long a rest. Airport Mesa held the light against the Sedona darkness, pulling it into the vastness overhead.
I’d been sittin’ by the fire for a long while. Didn’t build it big. Just enough flame to keep the chill off and the memory warm.
Tutu crouched low, feeding the flame a handful of brittle twigs, watching the way fire took to them, turning solid to smoke, hunger never-ending. A simple thing, fire. Yet nothing ever felt as old, as knowing.
A tune hummed from Tutu’s lips, unbidden. Soft, steady. The kind of melody that had been sung long before anyone ever thought to question it.
“Twinkle, twinkle, little star…”
The fire popped, sending a shower of sparks up toward the darkness. They rose and faded before reaching the sky, swallowed by the endless stretch of space. Tutu watched them go, following their short-lived path, then tilted a gaze higher.
The stars.
Had they always seemed this vast?
Where did stars come from?
What were they, really?
Not just suns burning far away.
They were stories.
The Big Dipper once called— A cosmic shark named Beizam, A caribou running across the night, Seven boys who became geese, The Great Wagon, Saptarishi, And three hunters, still chasing their elk.
Not just patterns in the sky—reminders, stories. That we once knew how to name the dark. That every light above has been called something sacred.
“How I wonder what you are…”
A children’s song, maybe.
But beneath it—an ancient remembering.
The words left Tutu’s lips quietly, barely more than a breath. A question buried in a children’s song, never meant to be answered.
Where did stars come from?
What were they, really?
The questions pressed heavier than expected. The kind of weight that doesn’t come from ignorance, but from knowing—deep down—that something had always been missing.
There was the sound of a boot against stone.
Not loud. Just true.
Sam stepped into the firelight like he always does — like the earth was expectin’ him and made room.
Same crooked grin. Same old pipe.
He didn’t sit right away. Just looked at the stars, hands in his pockets, like he was checking on old friends he hadn’t seen in a while.
Tutu had a root beer float balanced on the flat rock beside the fire — the foam already settling, the ice cream half-sunk, a spoon standing up in it like a flag planted on the moon. One of those small comforts you bring to the edge of big questions.
Sam eyed it. “That what you’re bringin’ to the end of the universe?”
“It’s a root beer float.”
“I can see that.” He settled onto a low rock, pipe already between his teeth. “Drink it before it loses its religion.”
Tutu took a sip. Set it back down. Looked up again.
“I keep watching them move,” Tutu said. “The stars. They’re drifting. Slow, but — I can see it. That one there, near the horizon? It wasn’t there twenty minutes ago.”
Sam struck a match, cupped it around the bowl, puffed twice. The smoke curled upward and vanished into the dark.
“Lie down,” he said.
Tutu blinked. “What?”
“On your back. Right here on the rock. Lie down.”
“I’m not —”
“You asked a question. I’m givin’ you the answer. But you can’t hear it sittin’ up.”
A rustling beyond the juniper.
“He’s right.” The voice wasn’t Sam’s.
Sophia stepped into the firelight — not arriving, exactly. More like becoming visible, the way wisdom does. Quietly, but undeniable once present. White linen catching the glow. Eyes holding something patient and old.
“Lie down,” she said. “And bring the float.”
Tutu looked between them. Then set the root beer float on the warm sandstone, stretched out on the mesa, and looked up.
And the sky broke open.
Not because anything changed. Because everything changed.
Standing, you watch the sky. It’s a ceiling. A dome. A painting hung above you. Beautiful, sure. But separate. Up there.
Lying down on the mesa — spine flat against warm stone, the back of your skull resting on four billion years of compressed earth — the sky isn’t above you anymore.
It’s in front of you.
You’re not looking up. You’re looking out. From the surface of something. The way a barnacle looks out from the hull of a ship. The way an astronaut looks out from the skin of a station.
And suddenly the ground isn’t ground. It’s the outside of a ball. And you’re clinging to it. Not by effort — by gravity, by grace, by the fact that the Earth is pulling you into itself while it rolls through space at a thousand miles an hour.
Tutu’s breath caught.
“There it is,” Sam said, still sitting, still puffing. “Feel that?”
“I feel… heavy. But not heavy. Like I’m being held.”
“You are. By a rock movin’ sixty-seven thousand miles an hour around the sun. And you can’t feel a damn bit of it.” He grinned. “Until you lie down.”
The stars weren’t a ceiling anymore. They were everywhere — left, right, above, below the horizon line. Tutu was lying on the surface of a planet, pressed against its skin, staring into the open universe. Not watching the sky. Riding the Earth.
“Now watch the east,” Sophia said. She hadn’t sat down. She stood at the edge of the mesa like a figurehead at the prow of a ship, facing the direction the planet was turning. “Don’t look for the sunrise. Feel yourself rolling toward it.”
Tutu watched. The faintest warmth was building at the eastern horizon — not light yet, just the memory of light. The promise of it. And for the first time, it didn’t feel like the sun was coming.
It felt like the mesa was moving. Like the whole planet was turning its face — slowly, silently — toward a star that had been there all along.
“I’m not watching the sunrise,” Tutu whispered.
“No,” Sophia said. “You’re riding toward it.”
Sam reached for his pipe and held it at arm’s length, the long stem silhouetted against the sky. He lined up the tip with a star just above the eastern horizon — a bright one, steady, close to where the first light was gathering.
“Watch,” he said. “Keep your eye on where the stem meets the star.”
Tutu watched. For a moment, nothing. The star sat right at the tip of the pipe stem, like it had been placed there.
Then — slowly, so slowly you’d miss it if you blinked — the star slid. Not falling. Not jumping. Just drifting, upward and to the right, away from the pipe stem, like it was being pulled on an invisible thread.
But the pipe hadn’t moved. Sam’s hand was steady as stone.
“That ain’t the star movin’,” Sam said. “That’s you. That’s this rock. That’s the whole damn mesa turnin’ underneath it. A thousand miles an hour, and you can’t feel it — except right there.” He nodded toward the gap between pipe stem and star. “That little gap? That’s the Earth’s rotation, made visible. That’s you, turnin’.”
Tutu lay there, root beer float forgotten, melting beside the fire. The foam was gone now. The ice cream had surrendered to the warmth. But something else had opened — a feeling in the chest, in the stomach, in the backs of the knees pressed against warm stone.
Not falling. Not flying. Turning. With everything. With everyone.
Sophia’s voice was low and sure. “The Earth turns. And we — all of us — turn with it.”
“And somewhere else,” Sam added, smoke curling from his lips, “someone’s watchin’ this same star set while you watch it rise. Same moment. Same breath. Same planet, rollin’.”
The wind stirred. The fire crackled.
Tutu reached for the float. Took a long sip. The root beer was warm now. The ice cream was gone. But it tasted different — the way everything tastes different when you realize you’re drinking it on the outside of a ball hurtling through space.
“Tutu?”
“Yeah?”
Sam tapped his pipe against his boot. Sparks scattered like tiny orange stars.
“You ain’t never gonna watch a sunrise the same way again.”
Tutu nodded. Still lying down. Still pressing against the warm skin of the world. Still turning.
The old ones had gathered.
The night had begun to speak.
And the Earth — patient, unhurried, holding everyone it had ever known against its chest — kept rolling toward the light.
Practice this meditation at Airport Mesa as the sun rises
Have a seat at the campfire, wonder junkie. Place your hand on your heart. Breathe in. The six directions emerge from your heart. Front – back Left – right Top – bottom They converge at the 7th: your heart. You are here.
Watching the sunrise on the red rocks. Now watch, experience, feel it this way. The earth turning consciousness. Because once you see it… you can’t unsee it.
Somewhere, as you watch the sunrise, the Earth is rolling — slowly, silently — toward the Sun, pulling your sky into light, painting it with fire. We call it our sunrise.
And somewhere else, at that same moment, another person is standing in the hush of evening, watching the sunset, as the Earth rolls them away from the Sun — into darkness, into starlight, into rest.
We are always turning.
Far to the North, at what we’ve called the top of the world, the Earth tilts just so — and the Sun does not set. It circles 360 degrees overhead in slow, glowing loops. A never-ending sunrise. A day without night. There, the Moon slips into silence. And the stars do not rise and set either — they travel that same circle, counterclockwise, around the sky.
Far to the South, at what we’ve called the bottom of the world, the Earth leans away — and the Sun does not rise. Darkness settles in. And the Moon begins its lantern-loop — a wide, slow orbit 360 degrees a circle as well, but here the stars circle clockwise above.
And so it goes. The Earth rolls. The sky shifts. Sunrise becomes sunset — and happens at the same time, in the same breath you are breathing right now. Sunset becomes sunrise — and happens at the same time, in the same breath you are breathing right now.
And always, somewhere, the Moon does the same. As the Sun tucks below one horizon and rises above another, the Moon follows its own quiet arc — always ascending, always descending.
When you stand at the edge of morning, watching the Moon fade into daylight, someone else, in that same breath, is watching the Moon rise — bright against their darkening horizon.
You bid the Moon farewell as they greet its rising. They welcome its silver as you watch it pale. And though your skies are different — though you stand in light and they stand in darkness — you are both watching the same Moon no matter the time of day. One pale in the daytime blue. One silver against the black sky. Breathing in. Breathing out. Together. The same moment. The same Earth. The same breath. A rhythm shared across the turning world.
And though it is the same Moon, it doesn’t always look the same. In Australia, the Moon appears upside down, compared to here in Sedona, AZ. At the equator, it tilts sideways — cradling the sky like a bowl. In the United States, it rises upright. Same Moon. Different eyes. Shaped by where you stand on this spinning Earth.
Even when you cannot see it, the Moon is rising for someone, somewhere — tilted, upside down, or cradled. A quiet tether. A continuous unfolding. The rhythm of light and shadow weaving all of us together.
The Practice: When you watch a sunrise: Stop calling it “the sun coming up.” Feel the Earth rolling you toward the light. Say quietly: “I am turning with everyone.” When you feel alone: Remember—someone is watching the sunset in the same breath you greet the dawn. You are both turning. Together. Breathe out.
“The Fire and the First Light”
Trail Description A 2 mile round-trip trail climbing ~430 ft to a broad mesa-top plateau. Less crowded than nearby Bear Mountain, it offers solitude at dawn and a sweeping stage for light across red stone country.
Sunrise Appeal The flat summit opens 360° in every direction, catching first light as it spills across Courthouse Butte, Boynton Canyon, and the mesas beyond. The rising sun turns the plateau into a sanctuary of fire and silence.
Trail Details
Scenic Reflection This mountain does not ask you to climb—it invites you to rise. The flat mesa is a table set for sky, and the fire in the east stirs like the breath of ancestors waking. You arrive not at a summit, but at a memory—of light warming your chest, of silence deep enough to speak your name. All around you, shadows flee and fire comes gentle. You are lifted not because you conquered the trail, but because the trail lifted you. And in that lifting, you remember what it means to stand sacred and whole.
Trail Walking Meditation The mesa is an altar. The sun is an ancestor. You are the flame waking again in a new form. Stand here and remember: you are sunlight, set loose. You are the match. You are the spark.
Campfire Story: The Fire and the First Light
The fire flickered low.
Tutu reached for a log from the pile — juniper, dry, light enough to lift with one hand but dense with years. Bark still clinging in strips. The kind of wood that doesn’t look like much until you give it to the fire.
“Hold it a second,” Sam said, pipe between his teeth. “Before you toss it in. Just hold it.”
Tutu paused, the log balanced across both palms.
“Feel the weight of it?” Sam asked. “That ain’t just wood. That’s decades. Every sunny afternoon that tree stood there, leaves open, drinking light — that’s in your hands right now. Stored up. Waiting.”
Sophia leaned closer. “Photosynthesis. The quiet miracle. The sun touches a leaf, and the leaf says yes. Carbon dioxide becomes structure. Water becomes sweetness. Light becomes wood.” She touched the bark. “You are holding captured sunlight.”
Tutu turned the log slowly. It didn’t feel different. But the knowing changed its weight.
“Now put it on,” Sam said.
Tutu set the log across the coals. For a moment, nothing. Just the wood sitting there, dark against the glow, refusing to change.
Then the bark caught.
It started at the edges — thin curls of bark peeling back, browning, then brightening as the heat found the oils inside. A wisp of smoke. Then a ribbon. Then the first flicker of flame, small as a fingertip, climbing the underside of the log where it met the coals.
“Watch the color,” Sam said, leaning forward. “See that? Orange at the base — that’s the slow burn, the old light coming out easy. Yellow climbing above it — that’s the fire finding its stride. And right there, at the tips —” He pointed with his pipe stem. “Blue. Hottest part. That’s where the light’s been locked up longest, and it’s runnin’ out fast.”
The flame climbed. The log began to glow from within — not just burning on the surface but releasing from the inside, the wood itself becoming transparent to the heat it had held for decades.
“That light,” Sophia said, her voice barely above the crackle, “left the Sun eight minutes before it hit that tree. Crossed ninety-three million miles of space. Landed on a leaf. Got caught. Got stored. Got turned into cellulose and sugar and bark.” She watched the flame rise. “And now — tonight — it’s leaving again.”
Tutu stared at the log. The fire was inside it now, not just around it. The wood was glowing the way a lantern glows — light pressing outward from the center, finding every crack, every grain, every opening the wood allowed.
“Fire is just sunlight, set loose,” Sam said.
They watched it burn. Not talking. Just watching stored light escape.
“Before the trees held the sun,” Sophia said after a long silence, “before the fire, before all of it… where did the light come from?”
“The stars,” Tutu said.
“And before them?”
Sam exhaled. “Before them, there was only one thing. Hydrogen.”
Sophia nodded. “The very first thing. The simplest thing. The start of all things.”
“Hydrogen gathers,” Sam said. “Pulls itself close. And when enough of it gathers together, when it presses in, when it holds on tight —”
He snapped his fingers. The fire leapt high, sending sparks spinning into the canyon stillness.
Sophia’s voice dropped to a whisper. “The first star was born.”
Tutu held a hand near the flame. Not touching — just close enough to feel the heat pressing against the palm. It came from everywhere at once. Not just from the top of the fire or the side facing Tutu. The heat radiated outward in every direction — toward Sam, toward Sophia, toward the dark behind them, toward the sky above, toward the stone below.
“Feel that?” Sam said. “Going everywhere at once. Not choosing a direction. Not aiming. Just — pouring out from the center.” He nodded toward the sky. “Same thing a star does. Same thing you do.”
Sophia’s voice rose, slow as a tide, almost singing: “Before the stars sang… before the breath moved… there was only the Silence.” She paused. Let it settle. “And the Silence dreamed the Breath… and the Breath stirred the dark… and the sound caught Fire… and the Fire gave birth to Dust… and the Dust became the first Remembering.”
“And what are we, then?”
Sam lifted his head, grinned that slow grin: “Fire. Breath. Old dreams. And maybe just enough foolishness to keep it all dancing. And a little bit of wonder.”
“Then we’re made of them.”
Sam’s grin widened. “Now you’re catchin’ on.”
Tutu looked at the log — half consumed now, its center hollowed out by the flame, edges glowing like a small sun dying in slow motion. The light that had entered a leaf years ago was leaving tonight, joining the dark, joining the sky, joining everything it had once been before it became wood.
“We’re stardust.”
Sophia’s gaze lifted toward the sky. “And the fire never went out.”
The light of the first fire was still here. Still moving through them. Still shaping them.
“And what do you think happens when a star dies?”
“The light keeps going.”
“And so do we.”
The fire pulsed gently, as if answering. The log settled deeper into the coals — not collapsing but releasing. Becoming heat. Becoming light. Becoming what it had always been, briefly disguised as wood.
And the night stretched on, endless, carrying its knowing forward.
Practice this meditation on the mesa at dawn
There’s a Hawaiian saying: He Wa’a, He Honua – The Earth is Our Canoe Buckminster Fuller put it another way: We are all crew members on Spaceship Earth.
Place your hand on your heart. Breathe in. The six directions emerge from your heart. Front – back Left – right Top – bottom They converge at the 7th: your heart. You are here.
Stand outside and look up. The stars you see rising from the edge of the world where you are are also rising and leaving for someone else at that same moment, even if those stars are nowhere in your sky right now. A star sitting high above your head is just lifting off the ground for someone else, and slipping away for another.
Walk far north, all the way to the top of the world. There, the stars never rise or set. They turn in wide, slow circles, round and round the sky, never crossing the horizon at all.
Travel south, to the bottom of the world. The same thing happens there — but the stars turn the opposite way.
Stand in Joshua Tree. Find a constellation and remember its shape. Now stand in Sydney, Australia. Look up at that same group of stars. It is the same picture — but upside down, and reversed.
The Moon does this too. The bright curve you see is not the bright curve someone else sees. People standing on the other side of Earth see the Moon lit the other way.
There is no single “right” way up in the sky. The sky changes with where your feet are.
Imagine a big hoop drawn all the way around the edge of the sky. Every star touches that hoop in its own place when it rises and when it leaves. Those places are different everywhere on Earth, but they can be followed, marked, and known — like hours on a clock.
Some stars never rise where you live. They stay hidden below your horizon forever. Other stars never leave your sky at all.
And very slowly — slower than a lifetime — the whole sky shifts, just a little, in a way people have watched and measured for thousands of years.
Nothing here is rushed. Nothing is random.
Everyone shares the same sky, but no one stands in the same place beneath it. Every time you look up, someone is greeting the stars you are losing, someone is losing the stars you are greeting. Same moment. Same sky. Same breath. The dance of rising and leaving never stops — only your place in the circle changes.
So every time you look up, you are seeing a sky shaped just for you — by where you stand and when you breathe.
The Practice: Find one constellation you recognize. Notice where it rises, where it sets, from where you stand. Remember: someone else sees it upside down. Let this teach you: There is no single “right” perspective. The sky is shaped by where your feet are. Breathe out.
“The Place That Knows Your Name”
Trail Description A quiet spur off the 2.6 mile Fay Canyon Trail leads to an east-facing stone ledge hidden among towering red cliffs. Less visited than the main trail, it offers one of Sedona’s most peaceful sunrise sanctuaries.
Sunrise Appeal This natural alcove catches the first light of morning. Shadows withdraw, and the walls glow warm with silence. The ledge itself becomes a vessel for belonging—a still chamber where presence deepens.
Trail Details
Scenic Reflection This canyon holds its breath until the light arrives. And then it exhales—not in sound, but in warmth and color. The ledge does not shout. It welcomes. The rocks do not move. They listen. You come not to conquer, but to be still. To be remembered. The land does not need your story—it already knows it. This place knows your shape before you step foot here. You are not lost. You are not found. You are recognized. And in that recognition, you begin again.
Trail Walking Meditation This ledge knows your name. The rock does not ask who you are—it remembers. Pause. Breathe. Let the canyon speak its rhythm. The place is not new. You are just hearing it again.
Campfire Story: The One Who Listens to Stars Dadirri — Deep Listening Practice
The fire was small but held the dark like an old friend. Smoke curled—not rising, just wandering, like it had nowhere else to go.
Tutu sat still, palming a stone picked up at dusk, just below the sandstone walls of Oak Creek Canyon. Turning it. Warming it. Listening.
The canyon was hush. No traffic. No city. Just the flowing breath of water and time.
The stars weren’t just above—they were with us. Settled between red rock ridges, closer than they should be.
Sam tilted his chin toward the overlook above the creek. “They’re walking again. The Star People. Wičháȟpi Oyáte. They always return this time of year.”
Sophia was already watching. “The sky isn’t still,” she said. “Even when it looks quiet. The Milky Way—in Nuu-chah-nulth, Sxwiméxw—is a river of light, carrying memory in both directions.”
The wind rustled the cottonwood. Juniper and firewood wove through her voice.
Tutu tried to name the stars. Orion. Cassiopeia. Words that sounded like stone tablets—not stories.
Sam shook his head, soft. “Those names are new. Real new. When these stories were first told, English wasn’t even a whisper. People were already sailing by starlight, planting by Venus, singing to Sirius in languages too old to be written down. They were lived. Danced. Breathed.”
Tutu looked down at the stone in hand. Rust-colored. Still warm. “So how do you get there? How do you stop naming and start… whatever they did?”
Sophia stepped closer. Not answering yet. Instead, she said: “Close your eyes.”
Tutu blinked. “What?”
“Close your eyes. And hold the stone.”
Tutu’s eyes closed. The stone sat in the palm — warm from turning, warm from the day’s sun still held in its grain. Heavier than expected now that there was nothing to see. The fingers curled around it without being told to, the way a hand finds a shape it already knows.
There was the texture — grit along one edge, smooth on the face, a shallow dip where a thumb settled like it had been carved for exactly this. There was the temperature — not hot, not cool, but held. The warmth of something that had been somewhere before it got here. And there was the weight — not much, but present. Real. Pressing into the palm like a small, quiet fact.
The stone wasn’t “a rock” anymore. It wasn’t a word. It was a temperature. A texture. A weight. A conversation between palm and surface that had no language and needed none.
Tutu breathed. The stone breathed back — or seemed to. The warmth pulsed faintly, the way everything pulses when you hold still long enough to notice.
“Now open your eyes,” Sophia said. “And look at a star.”
Tutu opened. Looked up. And the instant the eye landed — before Sophia could say another word, before Sam could shift on his rock, before the fire could pop —
The mind said star.
Not asked. Not chosen. Just — arrived. The naming happened before the seeing finished. The word was already there, stamped across the light like a label on a jar. Star. That one. Bright. Orion maybe. Or part of something. What’s it called —
“You felt it,” Sophia said. Not a question.
Tutu blinked. “I… named it. Before I even looked. My brain just —”
“Grabbed it,” Sam said from his rock, pipe smoke curling. “Like a dog with a bone. Can’t help itself.”
Sophia stepped into the firelight. “With the stone, your eyes were closed. There was no name. Just — feeling. Warmth. Weight. The stone was itself, and you were with it. No distance.”
She looked up at the same star Tutu had landed on. “But the moment you opened your eyes and looked at the sky, the naming started. Star. Constellation. Orion. Position. Distance. Your mind built a whole architecture in less than a second. And the star became a thing — out there, separate, labeled.”
“So English cuts things apart,” Tutu said slowly. “Calls a star a thing. Not a being. Not a brother.”
Sophia nodded. “English sees from above. It names to control. But in many old tongues, naming is invitation. A prayer. A way to listen.”
Sophia leaned in. Her voice barely above flame. “To understand the stars, you can’t just name them. You have to belong to them. You have to listen in the tongue of your bones—not in English, but in the breath of where you’re from. The old ones didn’t think about the stars. They thought with them. In Hawaiian, in Yuchi, in Diné—words don’t describe the sky. They move with it. You can’t translate the stars. You have to live their language.”
Sam tossed a log on the fire. Sparks rose like tiny ancestors finding their way home.
The flames shimmered on the red stone cliffs—shifting, speaking, like something remembered before birth.
“You want to know how Hawaiians read stars?” Sam asked. “You’d have to stop thinking in English. Let it go. Walk barefoot into their language. Because English wasn’t even born when they were already navigating oceans by starlight and story.”
Tutu looked down at the stone. Still warm. Still fitting the palm.
“Maybe my words don’t need to be right,” Tutu whispered. “Just rooted.”
Then — slowly, deliberately — Tutu closed both eyes again. Held the stone. And looked up behind closed lids, not at the sky but toward it. Feeling the stars the way the stone had been felt. Not as names. Not as distances. As warmth. As weight. As something pressing gently against the skin of awareness, asking nothing, offering everything.
When Tutu opened again, the stars hadn’t changed.
But the one looking at them had.
Tutu placed the stone by the fire — not tossing it, not dropping it. Setting it down the way you set down something that taught you something. Gently. With both hands.
The fire breathed. The stars listened. Oak Creek Canyon stood like a sleeping elder. In the hush between cottonwood shadows, the stories kept moving — in sky, in stone, in the silence between languages.
Practice this meditation in the alcove as first light touches the walls
Place your hand on your heart. Breathe in. The six directions emerge from your heart. Front – back Left – right Top – bottom They converge at the 7th: your heart. You are here.
The light of the sun, the moon or the stars on your face leaves no trace it was ever there—but the after-effects of the light being there remain visible forever.
Tomorrow night, light from a star 50 light-years away will arrive—light that left when humans first stepped onto the Moon. Sirius shows you the world as it was in 2015. Vega, 26 years ago, shows you the millennium’s dawn.
Your own light is streaming outward too: who and where you were 26 years ago is just now arriving at Vega. The glow of your city, your birthday candles, every campfire you’ve sat beside—all expanding into space. Photons do not turn back. They carry every human moment outward, forever. We are forever light, traveling.
My father is 84 now. The light of him at 58—whatever he was doing 26 years ago—is arriving at Vega right now. The light of him at 76 is reaching Sirius. In approximately 500 years, his birth will arrive at Betelgeuse: that first breath, that first cry, washing over a dying star. And in 13.8 billion years, every moment of his entire life will reach the edge of the observable universe—the furthest boundary of what exists.
Every age of him is expressing somewhere, all the time. My father at 2, taking his first steps—that’s happening right now, 82 light-years away. My father at 18, becoming himself—66 light-years out. My father at 40, in the thick of life—44 light-years distant.
He’s not a single point moving through time—he’s an expanding sphere of all his moments, radiating outward. Toddler and father and grandfather, all expressing at once, in different regions of space, forever.
And so is everyone else. Your grandmother laughing in 1952 is expressing 72 light-years away. Your child’s first word is just beginning its journey. Shakespeare writing Hamlet is 420 light-years out, still traveling. The Buddha sitting under the Bodhi tree, Jesus in Galilee, the first human to make fire—all of them are still expressing, still arriving somewhere new, always.
Every person who has ever lived is an expanding sphere of light, every moment of their existence propagating outward simultaneously, forever.
The universe doesn’t let anyone go. It keeps everyone—at every age, in every moment—expressing eternally at different distances.
We think of the past as gone, but it’s not gone. It’s just farther away, still traveling, still real, still happening somewhere.
His light will leave no trace here on Earth. But it will never not exist.
The light of you or me—housed temporarily in this physical body like sunlight stored inside trees and released when we have a campfire—is also released when the light of you has run out of fuel and expanded so much that it can no longer be restrained.
Like a star that goes supernova, exploding and sending its physical remnants across the galaxy to become new planets and stars and people like us, we also go supernova. We just call it death.
Light-as-visibility leaves no trace. But the physical trace of what the light allowed to survive—that remains, even without the light that once allowed us to see it.
Life is how awareness becomes visible. Death is when it no longer needs to be.
The body lets awareness be seen the way a tree lets sunlight be seen—but the light was never the tree. You are not the tree. You are the sunlight passing through it.
The Practice: When you grieve someone: Look up at the stars. Know that the light of their life is still traveling. Somewhere, 26 light-years away, they are still taking their first steps. The universe doesn’t let anyone go. Breathe them in. They are still expressing.
Breathe out. Nothing meaningful is lost—only the way it was seen.
Pronunciation: ZOO-nee SUN-set SONG
This traditional hymn of the Zuni people captures the sacred beauty of sunset, a time of transition when the sky paints the desert in vibrant hues. Performed on Native American flute, the song evokes gratitude for the day’s end and the harmony of the natural world. Its soulful melodies reflect the Zuni’s deep spiritual connection to the land and cosmos, making it a profound expression of reverence and balance.
Source: Shared through Zuni musical traditions. Readers are encouraged to seek Zuni elders or cultural knowledge holders for authentic performances and teachings.
These paths cradle Sedona’s red rocks, where the land exhales into starlight. If the desert is distant from you now, seek a rooftop, field, or shoreline in your hometown—or wherever you find yourself—to witness the sunset and someone else’s sunrise.
Let every horizon remind you: you are changing clothes, but never lost.
“Empty the Bowl of Light”
Trail Description A 0.5 mile spur off the Soldier Pass Trail leads to a series of ancient water-carved pools in red sandstone. Intimate and sacred at dusk, the pools gather sky in still reflection.
Sunset Appeal As daylight fades, each pool becomes a vessel of light—mirroring the sky’s last colors before surrendering them back.
Trail Details
Scenic Reflection These pools do not speak, and yet they say everything. Still water receives the last light of the day, holding it only long enough to let it go. You kneel not to take, but to witness. The world empties itself here—quietly, without regret. This is not a place to keep. It is a place to release. The pools remain still, yet never empty. They remember only by letting go.
Trail Walking Meditation Let the bowl of light empty. Let it reflect you back to yourself. You are not here to hold the sky. You are here to offer it back. Be the bowl. Be the letting go.
Campfire Story: Empty the Bowl of Light
The pools were already filling with sky when we got there.
Not water filling — that had happened centuries ago, rain and wind carving sandstone into cups the size of open palms, the size of cradles, the size of a body curled on its side. The water was old. But the sky in it was new — pink at the edges, deepening to violet where the stone cast shadow.
Tutu knelt at the nearest pool and looked down.
A face looked back. Tired. Searching. Familiar in the way only your own reflection can be — the one you recognize but never quite claim.
Sam settled onto a flat rock a few paces back, pipe unlit for once, just rolling it between his fingers like a thought he wasn’t ready to speak. Sophia stood at the far end of the pools where the stone shelf dropped away, watching the last light retreat across the canyon wall. Her white linen caught what was left of the day and held it close, the way certain people hold silence — not empty, but full to the brim.
Nobody talked. The pools didn’t ask for it.
Then Tutu picked up a pebble. Small. Rust-red. Warm from the day.
Turned it over once. Then dropped it in.
The reflection shattered. Ripples ran to the edges and bounced back, crisscrossing, turning the face into pieces. Sediment bloomed from the bottom — a soft red cloud rising through the water like something disturbed from sleep.
The pool went murky. The sky disappeared.
Tutu picked up another stone. Heavier this time. Dropped it in.
The cloud thickened. The water turned the color of old clay — opaque, holding nothing but itself.
Another. And another. Faster now, like something needed proving. Each stone hit the surface with a dull plunk and vanished. The water grew darker. The reflected sky was gone. The first stars beginning to appear overhead had no mirror down below. Just brown water and silt and the weight of things thrown in.
Tutu reached for another stone.
“You about done muddyin’ that up?” Sam said. Not sharp. Just true. The way a man says it when he’s watched someone do the thing he did himself a thousand times before he learned to stop.
Tutu’s hand hovered. Then lowered.
Sophia’s voice came from the far edge, low and steady as the rock beneath her feet. “They say we’re born with a bowl of light.” She still hadn’t turned around. “Not a thing we carry. A thing we are.”
“And every stone we drop in,” Sam said, quiet now, “every hurt we hold, every story we keep tellin’ ourselves about who did what and why — it clouds the water. Fills the bowl with mud instead of sky.”
The pool sat between them. Clouded. Still churning from the last stone.
“An old Hawaiian way,” Sophia said, turning finally, her eyes catching the last pink light along the canyon rim. “Not a punishment. A practice. You don’t force the stones out. You don’t reach in and grab. You stop throwing them in.” She paused. Let the silence do what silence does. “And you wait.”
Nobody moved.
The pool began to clear.
It happened slowly — the way forgiveness happens, the way grief settles when you finally stop stirring it. The heaviest sediment sank first. Then the finer particles drifted down, red dust finding its way back to the bottom, grain by grain. The water lightened. Brown became amber. Amber became copper. Copper became — sky.
And there it was. The first star, reflected in the pool.
Then another. Then three.
The bowl of light, returning. Not because anyone cleaned it. Not because anyone fixed it. Because the water was always clear beneath the mud. It just needed the stones to stop.
Tutu stared at the reflection. The tired face was there again, but different now — not searching. Just present. Framed by stars that were both above and below, both real and reflected, both arriving and already here.
“Hydrogen,” Sam said, almost to himself. “First thing in the universe. You can’t see it — but everything you are begins in it.”
Sophia knelt beside the pool, her reflection joining Tutu’s in the cleared water. “And Argon’s in every breath you just took. Been here since the start. Doesn’t bind with anything. Doesn’t hold on. Doesn’t let go. It just… circulates. And stays.”
“So maybe we’re not the bowl,” Tutu whispered. “Maybe we’re the light that stayed.”
Sam nodded slow. “You’re both, kid. The shape and the shimmer. The holder and the held.”
They all looked up then. The Big Dipper was rising — and there it was, reflected in the largest pool, upside down, cradled in red stone and still water. A bowl in the sky. A bowl in the earth. Both emptying. Both full.
Sam reached into his pocket. Pulled out a stone — smooth, dark, the kind you carry so long you forget why you picked it up. He held it for a long second. Looked at it like he was remembering something he’d told himself a hundred times. Then reached back and placed it gently in the dark behind him.
Said nothing.
Sophia watched. Then she said, so quiet the canyon almost kept it: “Stone by stone. Until the light gets room to breathe again.”
The fire — the small one Tutu had built earlier, just enough flame to keep the chill off — stayed low. Not burning high. Not calling attention. Just being.
The stars turned.
The pools held them.
And the story let go.
Have a seat at the campfire, wonder junkie.
Place your hand on your heart. Breathe in. The six directions emerge from your heart: Front – back Left – right Top – bottom They converge at the 7th: your heart. You are here.
Under a sky of cold starlight, I finally stopped searching. I breathed into my heart. From that simple, terrifying act—accepting exactly this moment, this body, this existence—three answers rose:
Where am I? Here. Not a coordinate. A presence. What am I? Light. Not symbolically. Literally. Stardust arranged just long enough to wonder. Who am I? Awareness emerging from the unknown, the mystery, the mysterious, the All, God. The universe noticing itself through a pair of eyes.
Not Lost, Just Here I am not lost in the darkness. I am the place where darkness discovers itself. I am not a point among stars. I am the origin from which stars become meaningful. I am not searching for center. I am center, learning to recognize itself.
Five hundred nights taught me this. And every breath into the heart confirms it: You are not in the universe. You are the point where the universe becomes aware of itself.
Presence is not something you find. It’s what remains when you stop looking outward. From that presence, everything connects. All directions. All distances. All light and shadow. All relations radiating from here. Mitakuye Oyasin.
Breathe out.
Now let me show you how center works. Before we go to the pools, come with me somewhere colder. Because what I learned in a snow cave one night is the same thing this water has been teaching for centuries.
It’s 19 degrees outside. Pine crackling in the fire. Smoke drifting in the breeze. I can see my breath in the air—vapor rising, leaving, becoming something else.
I’m lying on a bed of branches inside a snow cave built for one—me. Staring up through the opening at the star Vega on the horizon. The moon hangs there too. The line between light and dark on the moon shows me roughly north and south, the same way it has for everyone who has ever walked the earth. North is where we’re headed tomorrow.
I have a pan balanced over a small fire. Snow melting so I’ll have water to drink. The ice doesn’t melt in one direction. It melts everywhere at once.
Up—steam rising and leaving into the night air. Down—water pooling in the bottom of the pan. Outward—spreading to the edges, finding every direction the metal allows.
The center emerges in all six directions at once.
I look up at Vega. Same thing. Light leaving that star in every direction. Some reaching my eye. Most going elsewhere. All of it pouring outward from a single point that happened roughly 26 years ago. I am looking at the past in the present moment, interacting with it, creating the future.
And the light emerging from my body is going toward Vega right now—merging with other light, living forever in the sky. And 26 years from now, that light from me will be arriving at Vega.
The ice. The star. Everything emerging from the center outward. Both participating in keeping me alive tonight.
Steam rises from the pan and disappears into darkness. It doesn’t stay. Can’t stay. It drifts into air, into sky. And somewhere else—some other morning, some other moment—it returns. Dew on grass. Rain on stone. Ice in someone else’s pan, melting over someone else’s fire. Not the same water. Not another water either.
I look at the flames. The wood releasing the light that was captured from the sun—the same way the sun itself does. The way every star the ancients traveled by does. Photons of light freed by heat, rushing outward in every direction—some crossing space for eight minutes to land here, warm my face, keep everything alive.
The past again in the present moment. The ancients knew this without knowing how. They built fires and looked up at the distant fires in the sky and called them kin. I’m doing the same thing tonight.
Ice in my bones. Water in my blood. Breath rising as vapor. Solid. Fluid. Gas. All three at once. Holding form, letting go, becoming what I can’t know yet—the way ice doesn’t know it will be steam. The way a star doesn’t know it may one day become part of a planet.
Everything on its way to becoming something else. Everything was already something else before it became what it is now.
The rock ring I made around the fire looks like a hula hoop. No beginning. No end. Just different places on the circle. All of them home. Just like me.
In the morning, these branches I’m sleeping on will become the morning fire. The snow cave will melt. Leaving no trace I was ever here. Except the chips on the rocks I used to make the ring around the fire. And this—
This pattern emerging from the center, flowing outward—everything on its way to becoming something else. Was already here when I arrived. Will be here when I leave. But not the same. And it too will leave no trace.
Now look around you.
You’re not in a snow cave. You’re beside the Seven Sacred Pools, carved in red sandstone. Twilight settling. Stars beginning to appear.
Before you think about any of this—before you reach for meaning—touch the water.
Reach down. Let your fingertips break the surface of the nearest pool. Feel its temperature. Cool. Not cold. The day’s warmth still held just beneath the skin of it—the way the stone beside you still holds the sun’s heat hours after the sun has gone.
Now pull your hand back. Watch the surface resettle. Watch it become glass again.
Look at what the pool holds now. The sky. The first stars. Your own face looking back at you. The pool doesn’t try to hold these things. It doesn’t reach for them. It simply receives—and reflects.
This is what stillness does. It doesn’t grab. It shows.
Now pick up a pebble. A small one. Feel its weight in your palm—tiny, almost nothing.
Drop it into the center of the pool.
Watch.
The ripples move outward in every direction at once. Not choosing north. Not choosing south. Not favoring your side over the far edge. Every direction. All at once. From one point of contact, the entire surface responds.
The center emerges in all six directions at once.
The pool does what the ice did. What the star does. What you do.
Wait for the ripples to fade. Watch the pool return to stillness. The pebble is gone—resting on the bottom now, invisible. But the surface remembers. For a moment, the whole pool knew something had arrived.
Now look at the water again. Still on the surface. Moving beneath.
Water evaporating upward—rising as vapor, becoming cloud, becoming rain. Water seeping downward—soaking into stone, dissolving minerals, feeding roots. Water spreading outward—following every crack, every channel the rock allows.
It emerges from center in all six directions. Not choosing one. Moving through all.
Place your hand on the warm stone beside the pool. Feel the heat still held from the day’s sun. That warmth is radiating—up into cooling air, down into stone beneath, out toward your palm. All directions. All at once.
The center does not hold still. It pours itself outward in all directions. Ice becomes water becomes steam becomes rain. Light becomes warmth becomes life becomes light again.
You are not separate from this. You are not witnessing it from outside. You are the center, emerging. You are the ice, melting. You are the light, traveling.
Everything moves outward from here. Everything returns to here. The circle has no beginning. The circle has no end. And you—you are standing in it now.
The Practice:
When you feel lost: Stop searching outside yourself. Breathe into your heart. Establish HERE. Feel the six directions arise—front/back, left/right, above/below. Watch how the world re-enters relationship the moment you stop being a coordinate and become an origin.
When you feel stuck or contained: Look at something melting. Ice. Snow. A candle. The water in these pools evaporating. Your resistance. Notice: it doesn’t melt in one direction. It melts everywhere at once. That’s you. Not contained. Not controlled. Emerging from your center in all six directions.
When the thoughts come too fast: Drop a pebble into still water. Watch the ripples move outward in every direction and then fade. The pool returns to stillness. It always returns. So do you.
Not going somewhere. Not coming from somewhere. Just here. Pouring outward. Becoming what you cannot yet know.
Place your hand on your heart. Feel the warmth. That’s starlight, freed. That’s the sun from millions of years ago. That’s the ice from tomorrow’s snow cave. All of it—here. Now. Emerging.
Breathe out.
The center holds nothing. The center gives everything away. And still—somehow—remains full.
And here’s the astonishing part: When two people do this simultaneously—two centers, both awake—they don’t collapse into one. Something new appears between them. Something neither could generate alone. Now imagine eight billion centers.
This isn’t philosophy. Or meditation technique. Or spiritual bypass. This is consciousness doing what consciousness does.
He Wa’a, He Honua — The Earth Is Our Canoe. As Hawaiian elders have long taught, “He waʻa he honua — The Earth is our canoe,” a reminder of our connection to each other, land and sea.
May we remember: No matter where we stand, in dusk or in dawn, we are always moving toward one another.
There is a phrase from the Pāli tradition — nacha so nacha añño — “not the same, and yet not another.”
“The Fire Beneath the Fire”
Trail Description An easy 0.7 mile round-trip walk over open slickrock, with only ~80 ft gain. Wide sandstone slabs and west-facing views of Cathedral Rock make this a quiet sanctuary at dusk.
Sunset Appeal Perfect alignment of fire-lit sandstone and lengthening shadows. A natural altar for reflecting on change and continuity.
Trail Details
Scenic Reflection The land lies open here, smooth and strong like the back of a giant hand. As the sun lowers, fire spills across the stone like memory—old, slow, sacred. You do not rush this walk. You let it happen. The rock receives your weight. The light sees your shape. This is not the end of day; this is a passing of the torch. A promise whispered through color. You were never meant to keep the flame. Only to carry it forward, glowing and alive.
Trail Walking Meditation The fire has not gone out. It simply changed hands—and now it’s yours to tend. As the light retreats, remember: you are the hearth. You are the breath. You are the return.
Campfire Story: The Fire Beneath the Fire
The fire snarled, flames clawing at the night like they had secrets to burn.
Tutu stared as a log splintered, embers flaring, spiraling into the canyon void above. “Sam,” he said, voice steady as stone, “what’s this really? Beyond what I see.”
Sam’s pipe glowed, smoke curling like a thought half-formed. “That’s a question that bites, kid. It don’t let go.”
Sophia’s voice slipped in, soft as moonlight on ash. “Careful, love. Pull that thread too long, and you might unravel.”
Tutu’s lips twitched, but his eyes held the fire. “I want to.”
Sam tapped his pipe on his heel, sparks scattering. “Let’s dive, then.” He jabbed a finger at the log, its edges smoldering red. “Start here. Wood. Just a dead tree.”
Sophia’s voice wove through the crackle. “Not just wood. Cells—tiny cathedrals where the tree once breathed.”
Tutu’s gaze sharpened. “What’s in the cells?”
“Molecules,” Sam said, “chains of cellulose, like a language written in sugar and strength.”
“And the molecules?” Tutu pressed, leaning closer.
“Atoms,” Sophia murmured, her voice a flicker. “Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen—spinning like worlds in a dance.”
Tutu’s eyes burned brighter than the coals. “And inside them?”
Sam’s voice dropped low. “Nuclei—protons and neutrons, locked tight. Electrons whirling around, fast as thought.”
Tutu didn’t blink. “Deeper.”
“Quarks,” Sam said, “held by gluons—threads of force, stitching the heart of everything.”
Sophia’s whisper was a breeze across embers. “But that’s not the bottom.”
“More,” Tutu said, his voice a spark.
Sam’s grin was sharp as flint. “Elementary particles. Quarks, electrons, photons—ripples in fields that stretch across the universe.”
Tutu’s thumb circled a dent. “But what makes them… heavy?”
“The Higgs field,” Sophia said, her words soft as starlight. “It hums through all things. The Higgs boson? Just a shiver in that endless song.”
Tutu’s fingers dug into the red dust, tracing spirals. “Without it?”
Sam’s eyes glinted. “No mass. No you, no me, no fire. Just energy, slippin’ through the void like ghosts.”
Tutu’s voice was barely there now. “So this fire… it’s the Higgs field dancing?”
Sophia’s smile was a crescent moon. “More than that. It’s not just fire. It’s fields—quantum fields. Particles aren’t beads, kid. They’re ripples. Little waves in the hum of forever.”
Tutu’s breath caught. “Everything’s… music?”
Sam nodded, slow. “Maybe even deeper. Some say those ripples are strings—tiny loops vibrating like the first notes of a song. A quark’s one note. A photon’s another.”
Tutu’s spiral tightened in the dirt. “And under the strings?”
Sam’s voice was ash falling. “The Planck scale—where space and time fray. Beyond? Maybe nothin’. Maybe everythin’. Maybe the universe forgets how to be a place.”
Sophia’s hand rested on Tutu’s shoulder, warm as dawn. “Maybe the smallest spark and the widest sky are the same.”
Tutu looked up. Polaris burned, fixed while the other stars spun slow around it. The moon hung full above the rim of Devil’s Kitchen, its glow a quiet rival to the fire’s pulse.
“So,” Tutu said, voice steady as the earth, “this log, this flame, me—we’re all the same?”
Sam’s pipe flared, a tiny sun. “Same fire, different shadows.”
Sophia’s voice was a vow. “From this ember to the farthest galaxy, it’s one breath, wearing different masks.”
Tutu exhaled, the weight settling like dust. “And when my flame fades?”
Sam’s grin was a spark in the dark. “The shape shifts, but the fire stays. Always has. Always will.”
Sophia’s words were a melody. “The field hums. The stars turn. The song plays on.”
Tutu’s smile broke, bright as the embers soaring toward Polaris, each a fleeting galaxy in the night.
Here. Now. In you.
The stars held steady. Polaris watched. The moon cradled its quiet light.
And the canyon wove it all together.
Tutu’s spiral in the red earth shimmered faint under the fire’s glow—unfinished, but forever turning.
Practice this meditation on the slickrock as darkness settles
Iwígara — No One Breathes Alone
Have a seat at the campfire, wonder junkie. Place your hand on your heart. Breathe in. The six directions emerge from your heart. Front – back Left – right Top – bottom They converge at the 7th: your heart. You are here.
Right now, as you breathe, you are inhaling atoms that once passed through the lungs of everyone who has ever lived. Not symbolically. Literally.
The Rarámuri people of northern Mexico call this iwígara— the sacred recognition that all things are related and share breath. No one breathes alone. No one ever has.
Breathe in. This breath— the one filling your lungs right now— contains atoms that once filled Gandhi’s lungs as he walked to the sea. Atoms that moved through Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. Atoms that sustained Joan of Arc as she stood before the flames.
Your great-grandmother’s last breath— some of it is in your lungs right now. Your great-grandfather’s laughter at a joke you’ll never hear— you’re breathing it. The cry of a newborn in a hospital three states away yesterday— you’re breathing that too.
Here’s how it works: When you exhale, your breath contains roughly 10²² molecules— that’s 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 molecules released into the air. Those molecules mix with Earth’s atmosphere— all 10⁴⁴ molecules of air that wrap around our planet. Within a year, your exhale has spread across the entire globe. Within a few years, it has mixed so thoroughly that every breath anyone takes contains at least a few molecules you once breathed out.
This means: Every breath you take contains molecules from: Caesar crossing the Rubicon The Buddha sitting under the Bodhi tree Your grandmother baking bread in her kitchen Shakespeare writing Hamlet A child laughing in Morocco this morning. The twelve astronauts who walked on the moon— while they were on the moon.
Atoms in your lungs right now once left Earth entirely. They stood on lunar dust inside spacesuits, looking back at the blue marble of home. Then they returned— re-entered our atmosphere as fire— and mixed back into the breath of the world. If you can see the moon tonight, know this: breath that touched that surface is touching your heart right now.
Breathe out. And now— your breath joins theirs. The molecules you just released will travel. They will cross oceans. They will rise into clouds and fall as rain. They will be absorbed by trees and released again. They will be breathed by a stranger in Tokyo. By a newborn in Lagos. By someone you will never meet but who will carry a part of you forward.
Your breath is not private. It is not separate. It is not yours alone to keep.
The ancestors are not gone. They are in your lungs. The people you have loved and lost— they are not absent. They are in every breath.
Your great-grandparents’ final exhale— it did not vanish. It mixed with wind, with rain, with the breath of trees. And now it returns to you. Not the same breath. Not another breath. But continuous. Unbroken. Shared.
Breathe in. You are breathing: The sigh of relief from a mother whose child just came home safe The last words whispered by someone saying goodbye The first cry of every baby born this year The laughter of friends gathered around a fire The prayers sung in temples, mosques, churches, and under open sky The exhalation of every tree in every forest The breath of the ocean rising as mist The wind that once moved through your ancestors’ hair
All of it— here. Now. In your lungs.
You don’t have to believe it. You’re already in it. .
Argon-40 is an inert gas that makes up about 1% of the air you breathe. It does not bond with other elements. It does not break down. It simply circulates— through lungs, through atmosphere, through time.
Every breath you take contains roughly 10²¹ atoms of Argon-40. Those same atoms have been cycling through Earth’s atmosphere for billions of years.
This means: With every breath, you are inhaling atoms that once sustained: Dinosaurs The first humans to make fire Cleopatra Leonardo da Vinci Harriet Tubman Martin Luther King Jr. Your grandmother The person sitting next to you right now
Breathe out. The breath you just released— it will be inhaled by someone else. Maybe today. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe a hundred years from now. But it will be breathed again.
Your exhale becomes their inhale. Their exhale becomes yours. This is iwígara. This is the sacred connection. This is the literal truth that we are never separate.
The Practice: When you feel alone: Breathe in—and remember you are breathing ancestors. Breathe out—and know you are giving breath to the future.
When you grieve: Breathe in—they are here, in your lungs. Breathe out—you are sending them forward.
When you feel small: Breathe in—you contain multitudes. Breathe out—you are becoming the wind.
When you forget you belong: Breathe in—iwígara: we share the same breath. Breathe out—you are woven into everything.
Place your hand on your heart. Breathe in. Breathe out. You are not a separate self breathing alone. You are a thread in the breathing of the world.
The six directions emerge from your heart— and with them, the breath of everyone who has ever lived. Front – back Left – right Top – bottom And the 7th: here. Where all breath converges. Where all breath begins again.
You are here. You have always been here. You will always be here. Breathing with everyone who has ever drawn breath. Breathing for everyone who ever will.
Mitakuye Oyasin. All my relations. Iwígara. We share the same breath.
Breathe in. Breathe out. You are not alone. You have never been alone. You will never be alone. You are the breath of the world, remembering itself.
nacha so nacha añño “Not the same, and yet not another.”
“The Center Emerging”
Trail Description A 1 mile round-trip trail with ~300 ft of elevation gain, climbing gently to a red rock summit. Tucked close to town yet offering wide horizons, this peaceful sunset location offers solitude as day transitions to night. From the top, Coffee Pot Rock, Chimney Rock, and Courthouse Butte glow with last light.
Sunset Appeal The summit opens to the west, offering views of the sun’s descent behind Sedona’s western mesas. Twilight here feels less like an ending and more like a releasing—the day exhaling itself back into mystery.
Trail Details
Scenic Reflection Here, the earth opens her palms to the west. Red sandstone releases the day’s warmth, juniper leans into stillness, and piñon scents the air like prayer. Sunset is not spectacle here—it is ceremony. You do not come to watch the sun leave. You come to feel the Earth turning you away from the light, into the embrace of stars.
Trail Walking Meditation Walk slowly. Let each step be an exhale. This is not ending—this is releasing. Feel the silence after light. The breath after speech. You are not here to hold on. You are here to remember how to let go.
Cassiopeia’s Web — Thought vs. Silence
The fire had softened to a glow. Not dying — resting. The kind of fire that knows its work is done and lets the stars take over.
From the summit of Sugarloaf, the sky was enormous. Not just overhead but everywhere — pouring into the spaces between Coffee Pot Rock and Chimney Rock, filling the gaps between ridges, pressing down against the juniper like it had weight. The last violet was draining from the west. In the east, the dark had already won.
Tutu sat cross-legged on the warm sandstone, chin tilted up, eyes open, trying to take it all in. The way you do when the sky is too big and your mind is too loud and the distance between the two feels like something you should be able to close but can’t.
Sam leaned against a boulder, pipe smoke curling slow. He wasn’t looking up. He was watching Tutu look up — the way a man watches someone stand at the edge of something they haven’t named yet.
Sophia stood a few paces behind, her white linen pooling around her ankles like spilled moonlight. She hadn’t spoken since the trail. Her silence wasn’t absence. It was the kind of silence that listens to you think.
Then she spoke. Not to explain. To direct.
“Pick a star.”
Tutu blinked. “What?”
“Any star. Don’t think about it. Just let your eye land.”
Tutu’s gaze drifted northeast, past the last glow of the horizon, and settled on a bright point low in the sky. Steady. Warm-colored. Not flickering.
“That one,” Tutu said. “The bright one.”
“That’s Schedar,” Sophia said. “The breast of the queen. She’s been there a long time. Now — pick another.”
Tutu’s eye moved right and slightly up. Another bright star, a few finger-widths away. “There.”
“Caph. The stained hand. Good. Now — look at the space between them.”
Tutu looked. Dark. Just dark. A small stretch of black sky between two points of light.
“What’s there?” Sophia asked.
“Nothing.”
“Stay with it.”
Tutu stayed. The dark didn’t change. But something in the looking did — the way your eyes adjust in a dark room and shapes begin to emerge that were always there. Not stars. Not light. Just… depth. The dark between Schedar and Caph wasn’t flat. It had dimension. It held the two stars apart the way a hand holds two stones — not empty, but full of the holding.
“Now pick a third,” Sophia said.
Tutu’s eye dropped down and right. Another star — slightly dimmer, sitting below the line of the first two. A triangle now. Three points. Three stretches of dark connecting them.
“Ruchbah,” Sophia said. “Now you have three stars. And between them — three threads of dark. See it? The dark connecting all three? That’s not nothing. That’s the web.”
Sam exhaled a long curl of smoke. “Damn,” he said, quiet. “She’s doin’ it again.”
“Now find two more,” Sophia said. “The shape will tell you where.”
Tutu’s eye moved — up from Schedar to a star between and above the first two, then further right from Caph to a fifth point. Five stars now. A crooked line. A zigzag. A shape that looked like —
“A W,” Tutu breathed.
“Or an M,” Sam said, “dependin’ on when you catch her. She flips over Polaris every night. Half the time she’s sittin’ on her throne. Other half she’s hangin’ upside down, holdin’ on for dear life.” He grinned. “Sounds like most folks I know.”
Sophia stepped closer. “Grandmother Spider,” she said. “That’s her web in the sky. Five knots of light. And between them — the threads that hold everything together. The dark between the stars isn’t empty.” Her voice dropped, and it landed like a stone on still water. “It’s the loom.”
Tutu traced the shape again. Five stars. The W of Cassiopeia. But now the dark between them wasn’t background — it was structure. The stars were bright points, yes. But the dark was what gave them relation. Without the dark, they were just five scattered lights. With it, they were a shape. A pattern. A web.
“See how the web isn’t the stars?” Sophia said. “The stars are just where the threads catch light. The web is the dark that holds them.”
Tutu nodded slowly, still looking up. Still tracing. Still —
“Now,” Sophia said, and her voice shifted. Quieter. Closer. “While you were doing all that — looking at the stars, tracing the shape, seeing the web — what was happening in here?”
She touched her own temple.
Tutu’s mouth opened. Then closed. Because the answer was immediate and embarrassing and true.
“I was… narrating,” Tutu said. “The whole time. Naming them. Counting them. Thinking about what you were teaching me. Thinking about what I was thinking. A voice in my head was — describing. Everything. Like a running commentary on a thing I was already doing.”
Sam chuckled. Low and knowing. “There it is.”
Sophia didn’t smile. She held Tutu’s gaze like she was holding a glass steady so nothing spilled. “Two things,” she said. “Grandmother Spider brought two things when she came from the dark between. Thought —” She pointed to the stars. “Each one a flicker. A spark. A question. Scattered across the sky like seeds tossed from a storyteller’s hand.”
Her hand moved to the dark between.
“And Silence. Not emptiness. Not void. The holding. The loom. The everything that lets anything be.”
She let it settle.
“You just felt both,” she said. “The stars were silence — they were just there, being. Your mind naming them? That was thought. The narrating voice. The commentary. The echo that doesn’t wait.”
Tutu looked from the stars back to Sophia. “So I was weaving the web while I thought I was looking at it.”
“Yes.” Sophia’s voice carried the weight of something she’d known a long time and had waited a long time to say. “Thought is anywhere — bright and leaping, forever chasing shape. But silence? Silence is everywhere. It’s what the shape rests in. And you — the one who noticed both the stars and the narrating — you’re not the web. You’re not the thought.” She paused. “You are the weaver.”
Sam tapped his pipe against his boot, watching the sparks scatter like tiny orange stars of their own. “So the kid’s been spinnin’ thread this whole time and didn’t even know it.”
“We all do,” Sophia said. “Every thought you’ve ever had, ever repeated, ever feared, ever sung — came from you. From your silence first. Then from your spark. A conversation about the conversation inside the conversation. Like a painter painting a picture of a painter painting a painting.”
Tutu laughed softly. “It’s endless, isn’t it? Thought thinking about thought. Spiraling until you forget who first picked up the brush.”
“Yes,” Sophia said. “And here is what Grandmother Spider came to remind you.” She looked up at the crooked W burning steady above the canyon rim. “You are not the painting. You are not even the thought. You are the one who notices. The awareness behind the narrating. The space behind the spark.”
Tutu fell quiet for a long time. The fire breathed. Chimney Rock stood black against the deepening sky. An owl called once from somewhere down the slope and didn’t call again.
When Tutu spoke, the voice was different. Steadier. Like something had been set down.
“There’s a word for that,” Tutu said. “For when the narrating stops.”
Sophia turned. Not surprised — but listening. The way you listen when someone is about to give you something back.
“Dadirri,” Tutu said. “It’s from the Aboriginal Australians. Miriam-Rose Ungunmerr-Baumann — she’s the one who shared it. It means deep inner listening. A quiet, still awareness. Not thinking about what you heard. Not commenting on the silence. Just…” Tutu pressed a hand to the warm stone. “Being with. The way the land is with itself. When the narrating stops and you’re just… there.”
Sophia repeated the word, slow, letting each syllable land on its own feet. “Dadirri.” She breathed it more than said it. “Yes. That’s the silence Grandmother Spider speaks of. Not absence — but presence. The weaver at the loom doesn’t fight the thoughts. Doesn’t chase them. She pauses.” Her eyes moved to the sky. “She notices the thought — like a star in Cassiopeia’s web — but she doesn’t become it.”
“Look up again,” Sam said. Not urgent. Just an invitation. “That W up there. You traced it with your eyes. Your mind named every star, drew every line, told the whole story while it happened. But the W was already there before you looked. It’ll be there after you look away. Your thinkin’ didn’t make it. Your thinkin’ just… visited.”
Tutu looked up. Cassiopeia hung there, quiet and crooked, the same shape it had been before any of this started. But it looked different now. Not because the stars had moved. Because the one watching had shifted.
“So the web in the sky —” Tutu started.
“Is the glimmer,” Sophia said. “Five knots of light where the threads catch fire. But the web itself? The real one? It’s the dark. The silence. The holding that lets everything shine.” She looked at Tutu. “And the one who sees both the glimmer and the dark — who notices the narrating and the stillness — that one is the weaver. That one came before the first thread.”
Tutu’s hand still pressed the warm stone. The fire had gone to ember. Above them, the W of Grandmother Spider’s web turned its slow arc around Polaris — the still point, the one star that doesn’t move while everything else wheels around it.
“So we were never outside the web,” Tutu said.
“No,” Sophia said. “Not watching it. Not trapped in it. Weaving it. With every breath. Every noticing. Every silence you let stay.”
Sam knocked his pipe out on the boulder, pocketed it, and looked up one more time at the crooked W. “You know what gets me?” he said. “That whole shape up there — five stars, one web — and not a single one of ’em knows it’s part of a pattern. Takes somebody down here, lookin’ up, to see the whole thing.” He scratched his jaw. “Maybe that’s us. Maybe we’re the universe’s way of noticin’ its own web.”
Sophia’s voice was a whisper now, but it carried. The way certain voices do when they’ve stopped trying to reach you and started trusting you to lean in.
“You are not your thinking,” she said. “You are the one who watches. And weaves.”
The fire breathed low. The night leaned in. Grandmother Spider’s web turned overhead — silent, crooked, bright where the threads caught light, dark where the holding was.
And the breath moved on.
Have a seat at the campfire, wonder junkie.
Place your hand on your heart. Breathe in. The six directions emerge from your heart: Front – back Left – right Top – bottom They converge at the 7th: your heart. You are here.
But notice something: You did not go looking for the directions. They arose with you.
Front and back don’t exist until you arrive. Left and right don’t exist until you stand. Above and below don’t exist until you look.
The world is not “around you.” The world arises with you.
You are not lost. You are the center that makes directions possible.
Breathe out.
Now look out from this summit. Coffee Pot Rock. Chimney Rock. Courthouse Butte. Each one catching the last light — glowing warm against a sky already beginning to cool.
Watch the shadows.
Not quickly. Slowly. The way twilight asks you to.
See that shadow moving across Courthouse Butte? It’s not the rock changing. It’s the Earth turning. The rock stays. The shadow moves.
You are the rock. Your thoughts are the shadow.
Stay with the shadow for a moment. Watch it lengthen across the red face of the butte. Watch it climb. It doesn’t rush. It doesn’t ask permission. It simply follows the Earth’s slow roll away from the Sun — the same turning you’ve been feeling since Trail 1.
Now notice something subtle—almost uncomfortable: Everything that is “not here” was already here.
The moment you establish HERE, the past arrives. Not as memory. As structure.
Because awareness comes first. Thought comes second—like a footprint after a step.
Like a shadow after a rock.
So if you’re watching your mind, you’re not watching the present. You’re watching the immediate past being made.
A thought is a thing that already happened. Even if it appears “right now.”
Look at Coffee Pot Rock. Its shape hasn’t changed in the time you’ve been sitting here. But the light on it has. The color has. A minute ago it was amber. Now it’s copper. Soon it will be violet.
The rock didn’t move. The light moved. And your thought about the rock? That moved too — it was always one step behind what the light was actually doing.
Watch the exact moment a shadow crosses a ridge. That’s awareness catching thought in the act of being made.
Breathe in.
Notice how quickly the mind makes a world: Thoughts about yourself. Thoughts about the six directions surrounding you. Thoughts about other people. Thoughts about what you think other people think about you. Thoughts about your thoughts about their thoughts.
A hall of mirrors.
And here’s the twist: All of that is the past. Not “the old past.” The immediate past. The only kind thought can ever be.
And without HERE—without awareness— there is no past and no future. There is only present.
Look at Chimney Rock. It doesn’t think about Courthouse Butte. It doesn’t compare itself to Coffee Pot. It doesn’t wonder what the sky thinks of it. It just stands — receiving light, releasing light, casting shadow, holding still.
It is HERE without effort.
So what are you, really?
You are the one who establishes HERE. And everything else follows.
Breathe out.
Now let’s talk about creating.
Because once you establish HERE, you can never not create.
Every action is an interaction with what is already here. You touch what exists. You respond. You move. You speak. You choose.
And the moment you interact with what was already here— you create what comes next.
That’s all “future” is: The result of interacting with the past that is surrounding you.
So you are creative by default. Not because you’re an artist. Not because you’re special. Because you are here.
You cannot stand in the universe without changing it. The same way you cannot stand near a fire without being warmed.
Breathe in.
And now—the strange part your bones already know:
The past can be encoded with an “event” that looks like it takes place in the future. But it is not in the future. It is already here—unfinished.
Like a song that’s already written but not yet sung. Like a seed that already exists but hasn’t met rain. Like a star whose light already left, but hasn’t reached your eyes.
Like the shadow that is already crossing Courthouse Butte — you just haven’t looked up to see where it’s arrived.
The “future event” is not a blank space ahead of you. It is a pattern already present around you— a shape waiting to be completed.
And because energy doesn’t die—because what is created doesn’t vanish— that event stays in the field of your life until it resolves.
Not as punishment. As physics. Not as fate. As momentum.
Breathe out.
So what is your birthright?
Surrender.
Not surrender as collapse. Surrender as returning. Surrounding yourself back into HERE.
Because when you return to HERE, you establish a different HERE. And a different HERE creates a different past.
Not “changing history.” Changing the past that is emerging right now as thought, meaning, story, identity. The past you are making out of the present.
And when the past changes— the event can complete in a different way.
The completion doesn’t happen “later.” It happens the moment HERE changes.
You don’t wait for the future. You shift the center.
And the future reorganizes itself around the new HERE because the past reorganized first.
Breathe in.
Feel it in your chest: You are not trapped in what happened. You are not trapped in what you think happened. You are not trapped in what you think they think happened.
Those are thoughts. And thoughts come after awareness.
Like shadows after rock.
So return to awareness. Return to HERE.
Let the thoughts be the weather. Let HERE be the sky.
Breathe out.
Look out from this summit one more time. See Coffee Pot Rock, Chimney Rock, Courthouse Butte—each holding the last light. See the wide horizons opening in all directions. See the day releasing itself into twilight without regret.
The shadows have moved since you began this meditation. The light has changed. Your thoughts have changed. But you — the one watching — haven’t gone anywhere.
The rock stayed. The shadow moved. You stayed. The thoughts moved.
This land knows how to complete cycles. It didn’t fight the sunset. It transformed with it.
You can do the same.
Not by forgetting what happened. By establishing a new HERE so completely that the past reorganizes itself around your presence.
The event doesn’t need you to fix it. It needs you to be here differently.
And when you are— when you really are— the pattern completes.
Not later. Now.
The Practice:
When you feel lost in the hall of mirrors: Place your hand on your heart. Say quietly: “Awareness first. Thought second.” Let the weather pass. Be the sky.
When you need to create differently: Establish HERE completely. Ask: “what more can I surrender?” Then release the smallest thing. Not to control the future—to establish a different HERE right now.
When an unfinished event circles back: Don’t try to fix it. Return to HERE. Let the pattern complete itself around your presence. The event resolves when the center shifts.
When the thoughts won’t quiet: Find a rock. Any rock. Watch its shadow move. The rock doesn’t chase the shadow. The rock doesn’t become the shadow. The rock stays. The shadow passes. You are the rock.
Place your hand on your heart. Breathe in. Breathe out.
You are not trying to control the future. You are remembering the only power you ever had: The power to establish HERE.
And from HERE— everything moves.
Something notices. The noticing is you.
You are not lost. You are here.
nacha so nacha añño “Not the same, and yet not another.”
“Where the Stars Remember”
Trail Description Cathedral Rock stands as one of Sedona’s most iconic formations. While the full hike is challenging, the viewpoints at the base offer powerful sunset meditation spaces where red stone meets sky.
Sunset Appeal As the sun descends, Cathedral Rock becomes a silhouette of ancient knowing. The formation holds the last light like a vessel, then releases it to the stars.
Trail Details
Scenic Reflection Cathedral Rock does not demand worship. It invites witness. As twilight deepens, the spires become doorways—not to somewhere else, but to here, more deeply. The rock remembers every sunset it has ever held. Every star that has wheeled overhead. Every person who has sat in its shadow and felt the Earth turn. You are not the first to wonder here. You will not be the last. But you are the only one standing here now, in this breath, in this light.
Trail Walking Meditation This rock is ancient. You are new. This rock is still. You are turning. This rock remembers. You are remembering. Stand in the space between memory and presence. You are both the observer and the observed. The rock holds you. The sky sees you. The fire never left. And the voice telling this story? It was always yours.
Campfire Story: Walking Backward Into the Future
Māori Time — Kei mua te wā
That final night at Cathedral Rock, the voice changed. Not Sam’s drawl. Not Sophia’s hush. Something closer. The teaching came not through parables or questions, but through direct knowing:
Before there was a path, there was a rhythm…Before there was a future, there was memory. You don’t begin here. You arrive.
The red rocks weren’t old. They were already here. Even the sky was a memory. Stars don’t shine in real time. They send their light ahead like messengers who already forgot the letter they were carrying. You’re not watching the present. You’re watching arrival from long ago.
I sat with my palms open on the sandstone floor beneath me, breathing deep. The trail near Devil’s Bridge, nestled against the red bones of the canyon, held warmth even after the sun left. Sedona’s rocks aren’t just red. They’re layered—striped with memory, pressed into shape by oceans and time. I ran my thumb along a shallow groove in the earth. It wasn’t a crack. It was a wrinkle. A sign the land had lived something. That it had held on, just long enough to tell me about it.
Sophia stood a few paces away, starin’ up at one of those high formations—arched like the back of an old elder bowin’ toward the sky. She didn’t speak yet. Didn’t have to. Her presence felt like a long, slow inhale stretched across a thousand years.
Sam, sittin’ behind me, cleared his throat. “You ever think about how weird it is,” he said, “that everything you’re lookin’ at right now came before you?” He tapped his pipe against his boot. “I mean hell, even this fire—wood came from a tree, tree came from a seed, seed came from another tree. You’re just showin’ up in the middle of a conversation that started way before you knew how to listen.”
I nodded. Quiet. It’s true. Even my breath didn’t start with me.
Sophia spoke, finally. Her voice didn’t break the silence. It completed it. “In te ao Māori,” she said, “time is not a road you walk forward.” She touched the rock wall beside her. “You walk backward—into the future—with your eyes on the past. Kei mua te wā.”
I looked up at her. “Mua means in front?”
She nodded. “The past stands before you. Because it’s visible. Because it brought you here.”
Sam laughed, puffin’ smoke like a lazy comet. “That’s a hell of a thing, ain’t it? Everybody out here squintin’ ahead like the future’s a billboard—and all the while the truth’s sittin’ behind their own ribs.” He leaned forward. “Your mama carried you. You’re her future. She came before you. So your first breath was already breathin’ in her time.”
I felt that. Deep. Not just as an idea. But like it unlocked somethin’ soft in my chest.
That night, the stars were clear. No moon. Just sky—full of light that left its source long ago.
Mintaka was there too. Orion’s belt. Shows up right on time, like always. Not new—just returning, steady as memory. Waiting like an elder who’s been here the whole time.
I lay back against the stone, chest rising slow. “The stars weren’t lookin’ at me,” I said. “They were waitin’ for me to look at them.”
Sophia nodded. “Elders don’t force stories,” she said. “They offer. You just gotta be still enough to listen.”
Sam pointed upward with his pipe. “You ever notice how we call the stars ‘the future’—when all we’re really seein’ is the past?”
Sophia’s voice was like a hush inside the hush. “We do not see them as they are. We see them as they were.”
Each night, one star dips out, and another steps in. Like a quiet handoff. A slow dance in the dark sky—ancient light trading places. What was true for a rising star ain’t true for a leaving star. Same light, different lesson.
“They flipped it,” Sam muttered.
“Who did?” I asked.
“We did. Or maybe it got done to us. Either way, we started livin’ like the future was something we had to chase—and the past was just dead weight behind us.”
Sophia added, “The elders call it the reverse society. A world that forgot how to walk with the land, so it started walkin’ against it.”
But those same elders—they’ve seen what we ain’t even dreamed up yet. The future already stretches behind them like a shadow we haven’t earned. Not ’cause they’re chasin’ it—but ’cause they remember forward.
“In the old ways, you walked backward into the future. You faced the past—your ancestors, your teachings, your earth. But now we walk blind.”
I blinked, and the stars faded from my eyes—replaced by footsteps in sand. The sky became the trail. The past was movin’. And we were tryin’ to keep up.
Sam and I wandered off without a trail. Just starlight—still arrivin’.
“You know what the old ones knew?” Sam said.
“They knew not to move faster than the slowest animal.”
“Why?”
“‘Cause the slow one’s carryin’ somethin’ important. You run ahead without ’em, you lose the medicine.”
Sophia’s voice came from everywhere and nowhere. “You must walk at the pace of all your selves,” she said. “Or you will arrive alone.”
What was true in the morning of life don’t always hold in the afternoon. The 12th grader ain’t tryin’ to be in 1st again. But they remember. And they see the path the little one’s still walkin’.
The 1st grader in you? Just sees stars. But the 12th grader? Sees what they mean. A rising star to one… might be a leaving star to the other.
I saw it then. A caravan. Elders at the front. Children playin’. Mothers singin’. And at the back—the parts of us still catchin’ up. No one rushed. No one left behind. Just the rhythm of rememberin’.
Back at the fire, Sam and Sophia’s voices drifted in again—low and warm, like embers talkin’ in their sleep.
“You ever notice,” Sam said, “how some folks live like their real life’s always… somewhere else?”
Sophia was drawin’ circles in the dust. “When your place is always… some other place,” she said, “then you’ve got no sense of place to call home.”
“So what do you do when you don’t feel at home anywhere?” Sam asked.
“You remember,” she said. “Something older than geography.” She pointed to the sky.
We’re the ones spinnin’, not the stars. But we forget that. We call it motion, but it’s really perspective. Even the same stars—summer, winter—they don’t speak the same. Not ’cause they changed. But ’cause the one watchin’ did.
“That the stars… are always overhead. Deserts. Cities. Mountains. Canyons. They don’t change. You do.”
“The sky,” Sophia said, “is your pattern. And you move through it. Whether you mean to or not.”
Sam tipped his hat toward her, then placed his hand over his chest. “Maybe home ain’t a spot on the map.”
“No,” she said, “it’s the pattern that recognizes you. The rhythm that lets you belong, even when you’re far.”
He tapped his temple. Then his chest. “And that rhythm’s in here… …and here.”
And together, they whispered: “You’ll be in place. Everywhere.”
I didn’t need a map anymore. Just rhythm. Just remembering. Just the courage to stop moving long enough to arrive.
Practice this meditation at the base of Cathedral Rock under the emerging stars
Solar Bodies — How Light Becomes You
Have a seat at the campfire, wonder junkie. Place your hand on your heart. Breathe in. The six directions emerge from your heart. Front – back Left – right Top – bottom They converge at the 7th: your heart. You are here.
Now place your other hand on your belly. The place where fire becomes flesh. The place where light becomes you. Breathe in.
Right now, your body is running on sunlight. Not metaphorically. Literally.
Every calorie you have ever eaten began as light leaving the Sun. Eight minutes from the Sun to Earth. Captured by a leaf. Stored as sugar.
Photosynthesis. The quiet miracle. A plant opens itself to the sky and light becomes food. Carbon dioxide becomes structure. Water becomes sweetness. The Sun is dismantled— photon by photon— and rewritten as leaf, stem, fruit, seed.
Breathe out.
When you eat a plant, you are eating sunlight that learned how to wait. When you eat an animal, you are eating sunlight that passed through muscle and bone before finding you.
There is no other source. No exception. All food is solar. All hunger is solar. All bodies are made of slowed-down light.
Breathe in.
Think of the last thing you ate. Bread. Fruit. Meat. Rice. Trace it backward. Grain to grass. Grass to leaf. Leaf to light. The Sun touched something green— and that touch became you.
Your warmth right now? Released photons. Your thoughts? Electrochemical reactions powered by sugars that were once light. Your heartbeat? Sunlight, spending itself.
Breathe out.
The ancients knew this without equations. They planted by the Sun. Harvested by the Sun. Stored the Sun for winter. They said prayers over food because they were eating a star.
Fire knew this too. The wood in the flames releases the same light it captured decades ago. The fire does not create energy. It frees it. Just like you do. Every movement you make today is light escaping its storage.
Breathe in.
Feel your body. Bones built from calcium drawn up by roots. Blood carrying iron forged in stars. Muscle contracting because sugar says yes. You are not made of Earth alone. You are made of sky that learned how to stay.
Breathe out.
The Sun feeds the plants. The plants feed the animals. The animals feed you. And one day, you will feed the plants again. Carbon returning to leaf. Nitrogen to soil. Minerals to root. The Sun will find you again— through grass, through grain, through something green. Not the same light. Not another light either.
Breathe in.
Place your hand back on your heart. The six directions emerge again. Front—what you are becoming. Back—what once fed you. Left—those who ate before you. Right—those who will eat after. Above—the Sun, still giving. Below—the soil, still receiving. And the 7th— here. Where light becomes life. Where eating becomes remembering.
Breathe out.
You are not separate from the food chain. You are not above it. You are not outside it. You are a temporary arrangement of sunlight and water and time. This is survival. This is fire recognizing fire.
The Practice: When you eat—anything— pause before the first bite. Place your hand on your heart. Then on your belly. Say quietly, if you wish: This is sunlight, learning my name. Chew slowly. Release the light.
When you feel depleted: Step outside. Let the Sun touch your skin. Remember— it is already inside you.
When you feel disconnected: Eat something grown from the ground. You are participating in a conversation older than language.
Place your hand on your heart. Breathe in. Breathe out. You are not consuming the world. You are borrowing light. And you will give it back.
nacha so nacha añño “Not the same, and yet not another.”
The wind had gone quiet. At the base of Bell Rock, with the Yavapai and Diné (Navajo) ancients, the canyon hush held steady.
Only the fire moved— slow and certain, like it had something to reveal.
Tutu stepped toward the circle.
Sam and Sophia sat across from each other, the fire breathing gently between them, the red sandstone around them seeming to breathe light.
And there, placed with reverence at the center, was a book.
Tutu blinked. It hadn’t been there a moment ago. But now— it glowed with a quiet presence, edges soft, cover weathered as if it had traveled long.
He knelt beside it, slowly.
At first, the book appeared blank— pages pale as canyon sky before dawn. But as the firelight danced, letters began to appear— not printed, but forming like constellations, etched in motion, as if memory were surfacing.
Tutu reached out, fingers trembling. But when he touched the cover, he felt not leather— but stone. Warm. Familiar.
The same red stone he had once held by another fire. The one that had pulsed like a living heart.
As if the book and the stone were never separate. As if the stories had always been held in the earth.
He looked up, eyes wide. “What is this?”
Sophia smiled softly. “It’s the book you will write.”
Sam added, “And the book that was always written. This one— the one they now hold in their hands.”
Above them, the sky opened wide. A cluster of stars shimmered— the Pleiades. The Seven Sisters. Matariki rising. Signals of a new year, a time to remember the dead, to plant new stories, and to honor the breath between.
Tutu turned to the fire. Its flames curled higher, but not in hunger. In blessing.
“But how can it be finished and unwritten?”
Sophia leaned closer. “Because stories aren’t written with ink. They’re breathed. And remembered. And lived.”
“Tonight is not about writing. It’s about exhaling. Releasing the breath you’ve carried— so that someone else may breathe it in.”
“Like a diya lit during Diwali— passed from hand to hand, flame to flame— what was one spark becomes many. What was hidden becomes seen.”
“Like Matariki shining in the winter sky— a constellation of memory and guidance. Each star a doorway. Each name a calling.”
Sam knelt across from him. “The Apache say: Wisdom sits in places. But now— the place is you.”
“You are the firekeeper. The stories will stalk you now— not to haunt, but to awaken. They’ll strike like arrows when your life bends toward them most.”
Tutu bowed his head. No words. Just the quiet knowing.
The stories had never belonged to the fire. Or the book. Or even the voice. They belonged to the flame passed on. To the one who carries it forward. To the one who walks.
And now we speak to you, the one holding these pages. This is not a book to keep. It is a book to release. You have heard its breath. Now exhale. Now remember. Now begin.
Let the fire speak through you. Let the arrows land when they must. Let the stars rise in your silence.
Let Matariki guide you—seven lights, seven directions, seven promises to the earth. Let Diwali remind you— that light multiplies only when shared.
And when the time is right— give this book away. Not to forget it. But to set its light free.
Like a lamp placed in a window during Diwali— its glow reaching farther than you’ll ever know. Like the rising of Matariki— a signal that what ends has only made space for what can now begin.
Let someone else kindle their fire from yours. Let the stories leap, ember to ember. Let the wisdom sit in them now.
The book is already written. But only you can remember it. And only you can write it again— by living its truth. By walking it. Breath by breath. Step by step.
Hózhó Naashá. I walk in beauty.
The fire had gone to whisper.
Just a few glowing coals nestled in the belly of the sand.
Above, the stars held still. Not in silence, but in reverence.
Sam sat by what was left of the warmth, pipe in hand, puffin’ slow like he had nowhere to be and all the time in the world to get there.
Sophia walked the shoreline barefoot, her robe brushing against the foam as if the ocean recognized her and bowed at her feet.
“You feel that?” he asked, his voice more gravel than sound.
She didn’t turn. Just let her fingers trace the edge of a tide that didn’t care about time.
“The shift?” she breathed.
“Nah. The hush,” he said. “That big exhale after someone remembers they were never really lost.”
He tapped his pipe against his boot, watching the sparks flicker up like little thoughts escaping the mind.
“We lit a fire, Sophia. Not a bonfire. Just a little spark in a storm. And somehow they found it.”
“Because the storm was inside,” she said. “So was the fire.”
She turned to face him then, not as a guide, not as a teacher. Just as herself.
The breath of all things. The hush between thunder and understanding.
“They remembered how to breathe,” she said. “How to be water when the world demanded stone. How to hold pain without making it a prison.”
She stepped toward the fire.
“They didn’t learn the laws,” she added, kneeling beside the coals. “They became them.”
Sam leaned back, looking at the ember-glow like it was an old friend he was fixing to miss.
“You know what gets me?” he said, smoke curling from his lips. “All over this world—different deserts, different mountains, different tongues—folks been sayin’ the same damn thing for thousands of years. And most of ’em never met each other.”
Sophia nodded, her fingers still tracing invisible patterns in the sand.
“The Diné speak of six directions,” she said softly. “East and west. North and south. Sky above, earth below. And from these six emerges Hózhó—not a place, but a state. Beauty. Balance. The harmony when all things remember their relation.”
Sam grinned. “And halfway around the world, some Sanskrit-speakin’ mystic’s sittin’ under a tree sayin’ the same thing—callin’ it Ātman. The witness. The one who don’t move while everything else spins.”
“And the Buddha,” Sophia added, her voice like wind through canyon walls, “called it Śūnyatā—the emptiness that isn’t empty. The unfixed center where nothing clings and everything flows.”
“And them old Greeks?” Sam chuckled, tapping his pipe. “They had a word too. Logos. The ordering intelligence. The reason behind the rhythm. The key that makes the whole song make sense.”
He stood, stretching like a man who’d been sitting by fires for a very long time.
“Different words,” he said. “Same fire.”
Sophia rose beside him, her robe catching the last light of the coals.
“The words change,” she said, her voice rising like smoke and settling like breath:
“Hózhó — the Diné concept of harmony, beauty, balance in the world.
Ātman — the Sanskrit witness, the observer that remains.
Śūnyatā — the Buddhist teaching of unfixed openness.
Logos — the Greek ordering intelligence of the cosmos.”
She paused, letting the ocean fill the silence.
“But the insight is the same:
Everything moves.
Something notices.
The noticing is the center.“
Sam nodded slow, like he’d heard that truth a thousand times and it still landed fresh.
“You didn’t invent this,” he said, looking out at the stars. “You remembered it—the same way sunrise isn’t created, only noticed as the Earth turns.”
“And the noticing,” Sophia whispered, “never moves.”
They stood there, side by side, watching the last ember pulse.
“Think they’ll get it?” Sam asked.
“Some will,” Sophia said. “Some already have. Some are still walking toward the fire.”
Sam tapped his pipe one last time. Watched the smoke curl and disappear.
“Reckon it’s got a name?” he said.
Sophia smiled. The kind that didn’t need teeth.
“Out here… we call this Ahwon.”
He didn’t ask what it meant. He didn’t need to.
“And we’re leavin’ this here,” Sam said, gesturing to the sand, the embers, the unseen thread woven into the night. “Not just here. Everywhere. Every canyon. Every shoreline. Every quiet hill where someone stops long enough to listen.”
“Not as a teaching,” Sophia said. “As a remembering.”
Sam scratched his chin, watching the stars try not to blink.
“Still say it’s all about rhythm,” he muttered. “That’s what saved me. Ain’t about knowin’ when to move—it’s about knowin’ when to float.”
“And when to sink,” she said. “And when to rise. And when to wait.”
“You always were better at the waitin’,” Sam grinned. “Me, I get twitchy when things get too quiet.”
“The quiet is where things are born,” she said. “The dark between stars isn’t empty. It’s listening.”
She closed her eyes, letting the ocean touch her toes and retreat like it had heard enough for now.
“They remembered that, too,” she said. “That seeing isn’t about eyes. It’s about choosing to stay. To witness. To open.”
Sam stood, creaking like an old door in a chapel.
“Yeah, but it don’t hurt havin’ a few stars to stare at while you open up.”
He looked up, pipe dangling.
“You think they’ll keep lookin’ up?”
“If they’re quiet enough to hear themselves,” she said, “they will.”
“You think we’ll see them again?”
“I think,” she said, “they’ll see us. In the waves. In the fire. In the stillness. In every teaching that says the same truth in a different tongue.”
Sam brushed the sand from his pants, like he was gettin’ ready for a long walk or a short goodbye.
“Well, I’ll be around,” he said. “I always am. Probably sittin’ on some rock, talkin’ to the moon, soundin’ wiser than I am.”
“I’ll be in the breath between questions,” she said. “The silence before an answer. The echo in a well they forgot they could drink from.”
The fire sighed its last ember.
“So this is goodbye?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “This is just… a pause in the rhythm.”
The tide leaned in to listen.
And then they were walking.
Him up the beach, her along the waterline.
Not fading. Just… blending.
Into starlight. Into wave.
Into the story that had no last page.
And above, the stars?
They didn’t blink.
They didn’t answer.
They just waited.
Like a mirror turned skyward.
Like a question that didn’t need a reply.
Only one set of footprints in the sand.
And yet—
That was never the end.
Something stayed behind.
Not a voice.
Not a flame.
Just a knowing:
That life goes on.
Not in straight lines.
Not in neat endings.
But in spirals. In breath. In echo.
You don’t vanish.
You return.
You expand.
You become part of everything you ever loved.
And everything that ever loved you.
You carry your name—
but also the silence behind it.
You walk as yourself—
but larger than you ever thought possible.
You remember you were never alone—
because you were always part of the fire,
part of the breath,
part of the sky.
And this knowing—
this remembering that the center is not a direction but the state where all directions harmonize—
they left it everywhere.
In canyon echoes.
In desert golf course ponds.
In the pause between breaths.
In every language that ever learned to say:
Everything moves. Something notices. The noticing is you.
So if you ever find yourself sitting by a quiet ember, wondering if it meant something,
if you’re still part of something—
The answer is yes.
Even now.
Even here.
Even in you.
Ahwon
These teachings can be practiced at any location, any time
Algol — Letting Others Change
The fire had quieted to a breath. Not reaching. Not flickering. Just being.
Tutu sat cross-legged in the dust, a slow line drawn between two fingertips. Not speaking—not yet. But the silence around felt full.
“You ever think about going back?” Tutu said to the fire.
The words hung there.
From the edge of the circle, Sophia’s voice drifted in. Low. Measured. “The question is… would you see them?”
Tutu looked up. Sophia wasn’t sitting near the fire this time. She stood a little apart, facing the canyon rim, where the red walls of Fay Canyon rose around them like a quiet cathedral.
“You see that one?” she asked, lifting a hand toward the dark sky above the canyon’s lip. “A little to the left of Perseus. The one that blinks.”
Tutu followed her gaze. A faint flicker. Almost rhythmic.
“That,” she said, “is Algol. Some call it the Demon Star. But in the old stories—the ones that remember—she was known as Medusa’s Head.”
She stepped closer, firelight soft against the red sandstone around them. “Let me tell you something about leaving—and returning. You go. Maybe for truth. Maybe to run. Maybe just to feel the wind on your back. You say goodbye. You cross the threshold. And out there… you change. You gather moments like seeds in your pocket. Some bloom. Some scar. But either way, the one who left is not the one who returns.”
She crouched beside the fire, her eyes reflecting its glow. The canyon hush held her words.
“And here’s the part most folks miss: The ones you left behind? They changed too.”
Tutu’s brow furrowed.
Sophia’s voice dropped, steady as the canyon night. “There’s a saying from the Pāli tongue: nacha so nacha añño. Not the same. Not another. You are no longer who you were. But you are not someone else, either. And neither are they.”
A long pause. No one moved.
“And if you go back,” she continued, “and speak to them like they stayed still while you wandered—if you treat them only as who they were—you become Algol. You become Medusa.”
Tutu blinked. “Medusa… turned people to stone.”
Sophia nodded. “Not out of cruelty. Just out of seeing with old eyes. Eyes that refused to change.”
“So we freeze each other in memory,” Tutu whispered.
“Yes,” Sophia said. “We trap each other in yesterday. And that’s how we lose each other—not through distance, but through refusal.”
The fire cracked gently, sending a brief glow against the canyon wall.
Sam’s voice rolled in like slow thunder. “World’s full of statues wearin’ familiar faces. Takes real courage to let someone change in front of you.”
Sophia smiled. “Compassion is letting someone be new. Wisdom is knowing you are, too.”
Tutu exhaled, long and slow. “What if I forget?”
Sam leaned closer, voice soft. “Then look again. And again. Until you see who’s really there.”
Sophia stood. Her gaze returned to the stars above the canyon rim. “Algol still blinks,” she said. “But we don’t have to.”
The fire pulsed once—a breath held, then released. Not an ending. Just the space before something begins again.
Polarity and Balance
Tutu didn’t come looking for answers that night. Space. Silence. Maybe both.
The quarter moon hung above Cathedral Rock’s red spires, the sun slipping away with one last kiss of crimson and gold. Tutu sat where sandstone met slickrock, back leaning against a wall still holding the day’s warmth. Boots off. Red dust clung to toes.
Above, the constellations spun their slow arc—rising, fading, breathing in, breathing out. Tutu tried to match their rhythm. If breath could match the stars, maybe thoughts would quiet.
But thoughts scatter like coyotes—wild, untamed, kicking up dust in the stillness.
Then—flickering low from the canyon floor. A small fire. Its light danced on the cliff wall beside it.
Sam was there, pipe between his teeth, straw hat tilted low, smiling like he’d been carved straight from the stone. He tossed a smooth red pebble into the flames. “Everything’s either fire or starlight,” he said, eyes still on the blaze. “Which one are you?”
Tutu didn’t answer.
Then her voice came, soft as a night breeze weaving through the juniper and piñon. “Or maybe,” Sophia said, “you’re the space in between.”
Sam chuckled, ember-deep. “You gonna sit there thinkin’ all night, or you gonna let it teach you?”
Before Tutu could speak, Sophia stepped from the shadow of a red rock spire, wrapped in white linen like spun starlight. She looked through Tutu—not unkind, but clear. “There are things the stars remember,” she said, “and things you’ve forgotten.”
Sam stretched, puffing his pipe. “Come on, kid. We’ve got constellations to follow. Rocks to listen to.”
They walked between sleeping giants of stone. The cliffs rose like old gods, their faces etched against the indigo sky. Sam pointed toward the Pleiades—shimmering like a distant campfire. “They follow their rhythm,” he said. “Same as breath. Same as grief. Same as you.”
Sophia stood at the canyon’s edge, arms lifted like she could feel the pulse of the sky. “The world’s not made of things,” she said. “It’s made of thought. Dreams that refused to stay small.”
Tutu hesitated, then asked, “What does this one mean? Gender. Sounds like it’s about people, but I got a feelin’ it’s bigger than that.”
She glanced toward the moon. “The moon pulls the creek… and the creek surrenders. Not in weakness, but in knowing. They are not opposites. They are partners.”
Sam gave a dry chuckle. “It ain’t got nothin’ to do with who wears what pants. It’s about how the whole damn universe moves.” Then he grinned toward Sophia. “I bring the match. She brings the wind.”
“You bring the fire,” she said, smiling. “I bring the breath.”
Tutu saw it then—Sam’s grit and spark, Sophia’s quiet, tidal pull. Not opposites. Harmony. Balance. Like the stars and the sky. Like the creek and the moon.
“I used to think I had to be all one thing,” Tutu said. “All strength, all control… or all surrender.”
“Damn right,” Sam said. “You got a hammer in one hand and a song in the other. The trick is knowin’ when to use which.”
Sophia added, “There is a time to speak, and a time to listen. A time to rise, and a time to rest. The world within you is not at war—it is waiting to remember harmony.”
A pool tucked between red stone caught the stars. A lizard paused at its edge, caught between moving and staying. Tutu knew that feeling—between who they were and who they hadn’t yet become.
The fire warmed Tutu’s left side, the canyon breeze cooled the right. One part reaching. One part receiving. One part sky. One part stream.
“The stars…” Sam said, “they got polarity too. Hydrogen and helium dancin’ in every direction. Explosion and gravity. Heat and pressure. Masculine and feminine ain’t about boys and girls. It’s about creation. And all of that up there? That ain’t chaos. That’s a romance.”
Sophia pressed a red stone into Tutu’s hand. “Drop it.”
Tutu let it fall. Dust curled wide.
“Even the smallest shift moves everything,” she said.
Sam’s smile turned sly. “Don’t let one bad chord convince you you ain’t music.”
They sat long enough for the breeze to erase their footprints. Stars rose. Stars burned out. None without purpose.
Sophia knelt in the dust, drawing a spiral with her fingertip. “Your life is a map,” she said. “Of breath. Of wind. Of forgetting and remembering.”
“The moon moves the creek,” she whispered, “and the creek shapes the shore. Both forces are needed.”
Tutu breathed—not to control, but to attune.
Sam whistled low. “Some folks try to stand still. The wise ones? They dance.”
Sophia’s eyes caught Tutu’s. “Nothing in this canyon is still—not the wind, not the stars, not you.”
So Tutu danced—forward, back. Warmth, cool. Breath, stars. It wasn’t silly. It was peace.
Sam tipped his hat. “Fire and wind,” he said. “Both needed.”
Sophia smiled. “Creation always becoming.”
The stars held steady. The moon cradled its quiet light. And the canyon wove it all together.
As above, so below — the sky moves in you. Every star keeps rhythm, each breath returns again. Each thought casts its shadow, each cause finds its flame. Fire and wind entwine — creation always becoming.
Practice this meditation at Bell Rock with Oak Creek flowing below
Have a seat at the campfire, wonder junkie. Place your hand on your heart. Breathe in. The six directions emerge from your heart. Front – back Left – right Top – bottom They converge at the 7th: your heart. You are here.
Now place your other hand on the red rock beneath you.
Feel the iron in your blood calling to the iron in this stone. Not metaphorically. Literally. Both forged in the same stellar furnace, billions of years ago.
The red you see in these cliffs? Iron oxide. Rust. The same iron that carries oxygen through your arteries right now. When massive stars exploded—supernovas scattering their hearts across space—that iron became this sandstone. And that iron became you.
Pick up that cottonwood leaf beside you—brown, brittle, already returning. Feel its edges crumble between your fingers. This leaf was once air and sunlight. Now it’s becoming soil, releasing its minerals back to the stone, back to the creek. Watch it decompose in your palm. You are holding tomorrow’s red rock. You are holding yesterday’s tree. You are holding the conversation between earth and sky.
Listen to Oak Creek flowing below, carrying dissolved red rock toward the Colorado River, toward the Gulf of California, toward clouds that will become rain over mountains you’ll never see.
Now breathe deeper.
The dust in this breath—some of it traveled 5,000 miles from the Sahara Desert. Saharan dust crosses the Atlantic Ocean every summer, carrying iron and phosphorus that feeds the Amazon rainforest. The same dust that nourishes the lungs of the Earth now sits in yours.
You are breathing Africa. You are built from stellar explosions. You are temporary stone, walking on permanent stone, both of you cycling through Oak Creek’s endless conversation with the sky.
Now the orange in your pack—peel it here. Feel the spray of oils, the burst of citrus on the wind. This orange grew in sunlight, pulled minerals from soil, concentrated them into sweetness. Vitamin C that was once carbon dioxide. Sugars that were once photons.
Eat it slowly.
With each bite, you’re becoming the orange tree. The calcium in this fruit becomes your bones. The potassium becomes your heartbeat. The water becomes your blood. You don’t just eat the orange—you become continuous with it.
The tree’s roots once pulled iron from ancient soil. That iron flows through your arteries now. The tree breathed out oxygen. You breathe it in. The tree dropped leaves that became the soil that fed new trees that made this orange that makes you.
Feel it now:
The leaf in your hand returns to minerals, feeding the red rock that feeds the creek that feeds the sky. The orange returns to you. You will return to soil. The soil will return to trees. The trees will return to fruit. The fruit will return to future hands, future mouths, future wonder.
You are not separate from the leaf, the rock, the creek, the distant desert, the orange tree. You are all the same minerals, cycling. The same atoms, dancing. The same stardust, temporarily organized into wonder, wind, water, stone, sweetness.
Place both palms flat on Bell Rock.
You are geology becoming aware of itself. Sedona’s red sandstone, once ancient dunes, compressed into prayer. The minerals dreaming themselves awake through your eyes.
The iron in your blood once glowed in the core of a dying star. The dust in your lungs once swirled through Saharan dunes under the same constellations now wheeling overhead. The orange on your tongue once pulled sunlight through leaves on a tree whose roots touched groundwater that touched this very creek.
Place the crumbled leaf on the rock beside you.
You are not consuming the world. You are joining its circulation. Nothing separate. Everything cycling. All of it here, now, in you.
The Practice: When you eat anything: Pause before the first bite. Feel the minerals in the food calling to the minerals in your bones. When you see something decomposing: Touch it gently. You are witnessing your own future return. When you feel the wind: Know you are breathing the dust of distant continents, the breath of ancient forests, the exhalations of mountains wearing themselves down to feed the sea.
Place your hand on your heart. Breathe in. Breathe out. You are not standing on the Earth. You are the Earth, standing. You are the minerals we are—temporarily organized into the temporary joy of tasting sunlight, breathing Africa, sitting on stellar iron, listening to water write its eternal letter to stone.
nacha so nacha añño “Not the same, and yet not another.”
Before the match was ever struck.
Before the fire caught hold.
Before the breath even knew it was breath —
They were already here.
Sam and Sophia.
Two names.
Two faces.
Two ways the fire talks back when you’re quiet enough to listen.
Now, if you think they were just friendly old wanderers who happened to be good at staring at stars and remembering old songs, well… you’re not wrong.
But you’re not entirely right either.
See, Sam carries a secret tucked deep in his pocket.
Long before he was stomping around the desert with a pipe and a chuckle, his name was already humming through the oldest campfires —
Shem — the Name — the sound that pointed to the Unspeakable without trying to catch it in a net.
But his name, Sam, hides something even deeper.
It traces back to “Shem” (ם ֵׁש — (the Hebrew word for “Name”. And not just any name — The Name — the whispered word for the Infinite when you didn’t dare say too much out loud.
Go even deeper, and “Shemuel” (שמואל (surfaces — “Heard by God” or “Name of God.”
So every time Sam tells a story or lights a fire, he’s not just passing time — he’s stirring the embers of who you’ve always been, before you even knew what questions to ask.
And Sophia?
You probably felt her before you even noticed her —
the soft question inside the loud answer,
the pause before you say something you’ll actually mean.
Her name comes from the old Greek word “Σοφία” — meaning Wisdom.
But not the dusty old kind.
This Wisdom danced before the stars knew they were stars.
In other traditions, she was called Chokmah (ה ָמ ְכ ָח — (the second emanation of existence itself — the first breath of conscious thought after the Great Stillness.
Sophia is that quiet remembering you feel when you realize the ocean doesn’t ask where the shore begins.
She’s the Breath under the Fire.
The Knowing under the Asking.
The Home under the Journey.
Fire and Breath.
Name and Wisdom.
Sun and Moon.
Sam and Sophia.
Two notes of the same song you’ve been humming without realizing.
Two sides of the same ember you’ve been carrying inside your chest, even when you thought it had gone cold.
They’re the parts of you that already knew —
The parts that just needed a fire, a wave, a starlit hush to lean into.
So if you find yourself sitting quiet someday,
watching a fire that’s more memory than flame,
and you hear a voice like a chuckle in the embers
or feel a presence like a whisper in the tide —
Don’t be surprised.
You didn’t imagine them.
You didn’t lose them either.
Sam and Sophia were never really “there” or “gone.”
They were always here —
same as you.
Before we dive into equations, let me tell you about a teaching that guides this entire book.
Etuaptmumk (pronounced eh-doo-APP-da-muk), or Two-Eyed Seeing, is a gift from Mi’kmaq Elders Albert and Murdena Marshall of Unama’ki (Cape Breton), Nova Scotia. Elder Albert Marshall, of the Eskasoni First Nation, shared this teaching around 2004 as a way forward—not just for science, but for understanding itself.
The teaching is simple but profound:
Use one eye to see with the strengths of Indigenous knowledges.
Use the other eye to see with the strengths of Western knowledges.
Use both together for the benefit of all.
This is not about picking sides. It’s not about one system being “right” and the other being decoration. It’s about recognizing that both ways of knowing hold truth—and when used together, with mutual respect, they reveal what neither could see alone.
Throughout this book, you’ve encountered Indigenous teachings: Iwígara (we share the same breath), Mitakuye Oyasin(all my relations), He Wa’a He Honua (the Earth is our canoe), Dadirri (deep listening), nacha so nacha añño (not the same, not another). These are not metaphors. They are lived truths, carried through generations, describing the relational nature of existence.
And now, in this appendix, you’ll encounter Western science: equations, molecular counts, thermodynamic laws. These are not cold abstractions. They are measurable truths, tested and verified, describing the physical mechanics of existence.
Elder Marshall’s teaching reminds us: These are not opposing forces. They are complementary eyes.
One eye sees how we are connected (the science).
The other eye sees why it matters (the spirit).
Together, they reveal the whole sky.
The science in this appendix doesn’t replace the wisdom in the meditations. It confirms it. The Indigenous teachings don’t reject the physics. They complete it.
This is Etuaptmumk in practice: honoring the integrity of both systems while creating a richer, more holistic understanding—for the benefit of the next seven generations and the Earth we all belong to.
This book honors wisdom from Indigenous peoples whose relationships to land, sky, and spirit run deeper than I can claim. I am not Indigenous. I am a student of these teachings.
The words and concepts shared here are not my inventions. They are gifts—carried through generations, held by those whose lineages extend back to the first fires. Where I know the source, I name it. Where I don’t, I honor the silence behind it and direct you to those with the authority to teach.
I am not here to teach Indigenous wisdom. I am here to acknowledge that what Western science is “discovering” about interconnection, Indigenous peoples have known and lived for millennia. This book attempts to listen with both ears—what Mi’kmaq Elders call Etuaptmumk: Two-Eyed Seeing.
Waneska (Waniskâ) — Cree Sunrise Song
Pronunciation: wah-NEES-kah
Meaning: “Wake up!” A traditional morning invocation celebrating the rising sun
Source: Shared by Cree cultural knowledge holders, including Art Napoleon (singer), transcribed by Arden Ogg for the Cree Literacy Network
Use guidance: This song is offered in cultural context as part of Cree morning practice. If it speaks to you, use it privately with respect and gratitude.
Zuni Sunset Song
Context: Traditional hymn capturing the sacred beauty of sunset, performed on Native American flute
Source: Shared through Zuni musical traditions
Important: Readers are encouraged to seek Zuni elders or cultural knowledge holders for authentic performances and teachings. This book does not presume to teach Zuni ceremonial practice.
The following concepts appear in this book with deep gratitude to the knowledge keepers who hold them:
Etuaptmumk (eh-doo-APP-da-muk) — Mi’kmaq
Two-Eyed Seeing: using Indigenous and Western knowledge together
Elder Albert and Murdena Marshall, Unama’ki (Cape Breton), Nova Scotia, ~2004
Iwígara (ee-WEE-gah-rah) — Rarámuri (northern Mexico)
“No one breathes alone”—sacred recognition that all share breath
Rarámuri spiritual tradition
Mitakuye Oyasin (mee-TAH-koo-yay oy-AH-seen) — Lakota
“All my relations”—recognizing connection to all beings
Lakota prayer/worldview
Dadirri (dah-did-dee) — Aboriginal Australian
Deep inner listening; quiet, still awareness
Miriam-Rose Ungunmerr-Baumann, Ngangikurungkurr elder
He Wa’a, He Honua — Hawaiian
“The Earth is our canoe”—recognizing shared vessel
Hawaiian traditional teaching
Hózhó (HOH-zhoh) — Diné (Navajo)
Beauty, balance, harmony—walking in right relationship
Diné spiritual philosophy
Kei mua te wā — Māori
“The past stands before you”—walking backward into the future with eyes on ancestors
Te ao Māori (Māori worldview)
Bowl of Light — Hawaiian
Teaching that we are born with a bowl of light that becomes clouded by stones (hurts, grievances) we carry
Hawaiian spiritual teaching
nacha so nacha añño — Pāli
“Not the same, and yet not another”—describing continuity and change
Buddhist/Pāli tradition
Waniskâ (wah-NEES-kah) — Cree
“Wake up!”—traditional sunrise song celebrating the rising sun
Shared by Cree cultural knowledge holders, including Art Napoleon (singer), transcribed by Arden Ogg for the Cree Literacy Network
Puʻuwai (poo-oo-VAI) — Hawaiian
Heart; the seventh direction; center
Hawaiian traditional teaching
Hikina (hee-KEE-nah) — Hawaiian
East; the rising; the beginning
Hawaiian directional term
Komohana (koh-moh-HAH-nah) — Hawaiian
West; the leaving; the return
Hawaiian directional term
I am not claiming to:
These teachings appear in this book because:
If these teachings speak to you, I encourage you to:
Learn from Indigenous Knowledge Keepers:
Recommended Starting Points:
If you share teachings from this book:
To the Yavapai and Apache peoples—on whose ancestral lands Sedona rests.
To the Serrano, Cahuilla, Mojave, and Chemehuevi peoples—on whose ancestral lands Joshua Tree stands.
To all Indigenous knowledge keepers who have chosen to share teachings publicly so that the whole world might remember how to belong.
Mitakuye Oyasin. Thank you.
So if you’ve made it this far, you might be wondering: Is any of this actually true?
The answer is yes. Every claim in this book—from breathing your ancestors to eating sunlight—is grounded in physics, chemistry, and cosmology. This appendix is for those who want to see the math behind the mystery.
Skip it if numbers make your eyes glaze over. The fire doesn’t need equations to burn. But for those who find wonder in precision, this is how the universe keeps its books.
Both eyes open. Both truths honored. Both ways of knowing the fire.
If you’re reading this appendix thinking, “This is legitimate,” you’re right.
If you’re reading this thinking, “This trivializes complex physics,” you’re also right.
The equations here are simplified. The explanations are compressed. But the core claims are verifiable:
✓ You breathe molecules that once passed through historical figures
✓ Every calorie you eat was once sunlight
✓ Light from the past is still traveling (and carries information about its source)
✓ Energy transforms but never vanishes
The mystery isn’t whether these things are true.
The mystery is why we don’t live like they are.
In the first three minutes after the universe began, the balance between neutrons and protons determined how much hydrogen would form—and therefore, how much of you would eventually exist.
The neutron-to-proton ratio was dictated by this equation:
$$\frac{n}{p} \approx \exp\left(-\frac{\Delta m c^2}{kT}\right)$$
Where:
What this means: Most protons remained free, unfused—leaving roughly 75% of baryonic matter as hydrogen. That same hydrogen became the first stars. And now flows in your blood with every breath you take.
You are literally made from the math of the Big Bang’s cooling.
Before there were stars, the early universe rang like a bell.
Fluctuations in the density of the hot plasma created pressure waves—actual sound echoing through cosmic fire:
$$\frac{\partial^2(\delta \rho)}{\partial t^2} = c_s^2 \nabla^2(\delta \rho)$$
Where:
What this means: These sound waves left their fingerprint on the Cosmic Microwave Background—the faint thermal echo of the first light. We can still measure it today. The universe once sang. We have the recording.
When Sam says “the silence dreamed the breath,” this is the silence he means. The one that learned to vibrate. The one that became sound, then light, then you.
This is not poetry. This is probability.
Every breath you take contains approximately:
Earth’s atmosphere contains:
Over a lifetime, a person exhales:
Within a few years, atmospheric mixing means:
$$N_{\text{shared}} = \left(\frac{N_{\text{exhaled}}}{N_{\text{atmosphere}}}\right) \times N_{\text{breath}} \approx 10^5$$
Translation: Each breath you take includes, on average, 100,000 molecules once exhaled by someone else.
Gandhi. Joan of Arc. Your grandmother. A child laughing in Morocco this morning. The Buddha under the Bodhi tree.
Their breath is in your lungs right now. Not symbolically. Literally.
This is why the Rarámuri people say: Iwígara—no one breathes alone.
The math proves it.
Argon-40 makes up about 1% of the air you breathe. It’s an inert noble gas—meaning it doesn’t bond with other elements. It doesn’t break down. It simply circulates.
Here’s what makes it sacred:
Argon-40 has been cycling through Earth’s atmosphere for billions of years. It passed through:
Every inhalation contains roughly $10^{21}$ atoms of Argon-40 that have been here since before life existed.
You are breathing witness molecules—atoms that remember everything, change nothing, and keep circulating forever.
When Sophia says “the breath never leaves,” she means it both mystically and molecularly.
Every calorie you’ve ever consumed began as photons leaving the Sun.
The photosynthesis equation:
$$6CO_2 + 6H_2O + \text{light energy} \rightarrow C_6H_{12}O_6 + 6O_2$$
Translation: Plants take carbon dioxide, water, and sunlight—and convert them into glucose (sugar) and oxygen.
What this means:
You are solar-powered. Not metaphorically. Thermodynamically.
The warmth you feel in your body right now? That’s photons from the Sun, released from storage. Every thought you think is powered by light that left the Sun 8 minutes ago, got caught by a leaf, stored as sugar, and freed by your metabolism.
Fire is the sun exhaling.
Breath is the sky inhaling.
You are both.
Light travels at 299,792,458 meters per second (approximately 300,000 km/s).
A light-year is the distance light travels in one year: $$1 \text{ light-year} = 9.46 \times 10^{12} \text{ kilometers}$$
Vega (the star mentioned in Meditation 3) is 26 light-years away.
What this means:
Here’s the profound part:
Your father is 84 years old now. But:
Every age of him is expressing simultaneously at different distances in space.
He’s not a single point moving through time—he’s an expanding sphere of all his moments, radiating outward forever.
And so is everyone you’ve ever loved.
And so are you.
The universe doesn’t let anyone go. It keeps everyone—at every age, in every moment—expressing eternally.
This is not philosophy. This is special relativity.
The First Law of Thermodynamics:
$$\Delta E = Q – W$$
Where:
Translation: Energy cannot be created or destroyed—only transformed.
What this means for you:
When Sam says “the fire never went out,” he’s invoking the First Law.
Not as poetry. As physics.
The light that once warmed your face will continue as:
Nothing meaningful is lost. Only the form changes.
If numbers brought you closer to wonder—welcome.
If numbers felt like a distraction from the fire—skip them.
The universe speaks in both languages.
Listen with whichever ear hears clearest.
Cosmology & The Early Universe:
Atmospheric Chemistry & Breath:
Light & Relativity:
Thermodynamics & Energy:
END OF APPENDIX
Indigenous Words & Worldviews Referenced
This book honors teachings from:
These are not my inventions. They are teachings—carried through generations. Held by those whose relationships to land, time, and spirit run deeper than I can claim.
I am not Indigenous. This is not a book to teach Indigenous wisdom. It is a gesture. A remembering by the fire. A circle drawn in reverence.
Each word is offered with care. Where I know its origin, I name it. Where I don’t, I honor the silence behind it.
I am not the fire. I am a firekeeper. Not the voice— but one who has listened.
I don’t bring these threads to define, but to honor. And wherever possible, I invite you to seek the elders, voices, and lineages who carry these teachings in their bones.
With Gratitude:
To the International Dark Sky Association for protecting the darkness so the stars can speak.
To the 500+ guests who have sat with me under desert stars and trusted the mystery.
To Molli, who keeps the fire organized while I stare at the sky.
To Sam and Sophia—whoever you are, wherever you came from—thank you for showing up in the spaces between my thoughts.
To the red rocks of Sedona and the dark skies of Joshua Tree—for holding this teaching long before I arrived.
To my father—whose light is still traveling, 82 light-years away, taking his first steps.
And to you, wonder junkie—for sitting at this campfire. For breathing these words. For becoming the firekeeper.
May what follows honor the land, the breath, and the stories still burning.
Tubwayhun,
Tony Rathstone
Addicted2Wonder.com
“Have a seat at the campfire, wonder junkie.”
END OF MANUSCRIPT
Back of book cover
Your sunset is someone else’s sunrise.
Same moment. Same breath.
Have a seat at the campfire, Wonder Junkie.
The sunset you watched last night? At that very moment—within the same turning breath of the Earth—someone across the world was watching the sunrise. You were moving together. Always have been.
In TALKING TO MYSELF, Sedona becomes your teacher.
The red rocks. The stars. The hush between day and night.
After this book, you won’t just watch a sunset—you’ll feel the Earth rolling you away from the Sun, slowly and silently, carrying you into starlight wherever you find your center.
Seven trails. Seven meditations. Seven directions.
Each sunrise and sunset becomes a teaching station where you’ll discover:
Guided through seven Sedona trails at dawn and dusk, you’ll learn the Seven Directions protocol—a grounding practice that establishes your heart as the center of relationship, awareness, and belonging. You Are Here
You’ll walk with Sam and Sophia, wisdom guides who appear in liminal hours, through campfire stories and meditations that weave Indigenous teachings—Iwígara, Mitakuye Oyasin, Dadirri—with physics, breath, and measurable truth. This is what Mi’kmaq Elders call Etuaptmumk: Two-Eyed Seeing.
Drawn from more than 500 nights under desert stars, stargazing guide Tony Rathstone of Addicted2Wonder.com shares real tour stories and practices you can carry anywhere.
7 trails · 7 meditations · 7 directions · 1 revelation
Nothing required of you
Just a quiet hill—and the willingness to wonder.
You are not lost.
You are here.
Acknowledgement of Country
Addicted2Wonder honours the traditional custodians of country/place throughout Planet Earth and recognizes the continuing connection of First Peoples to lands, waters, cultures and communities. We pay deep respect to ALL PEOPLES that came before us which includes their knowledge systems, histories and cultures, and to Elders past and present.