Desert Detours and the Echoes of ‘Liberation Day’
In Search of the Vortex in Sedona
In the past few days, post-tariffs, post-Liberation Day, I have relished roaming the Southwest—something I’ve termed “exile” on social media. As an escape from the news cycle conveniently timed to visit my daughter at a conference in Phoenix, crossing Arizona and New Mexico has been personally liberating as well.
After all, when things seem chaotic, apoplectic, dystopian, and out of control, we retain the essential power inspired by Viktor Frankl—no matter what—to react to essential disruptions entirely as we wish.
Poolside in Scottsdale is my choice for this morning. Thursday was pure desert, while I spent Friday and Saturday in search of those supposedly healing vortex experiences in Sedona. Red rock meditative inspiration eluded me. Instead, fate at altitude willed me hiking in a sleet storm with ethereal views.
I also saw Sedona at eye-level, including the other vortex—the infamous snarl of traffic which dominates Route 89A.
And eye level highlighted others’ responses to the current events I am avoiding. A couple sat next to the Uptown Sedona traffic vortex at the well-perched diminutive Starbucks, talking loudly about Liberation Day. They agreed that they had nothing to worry about because they seemed to be doing fine on their fixed income of $3500 per month.
Modest, I thought, but apparently sufficient.
Finally, a long term, inanimate resident lamented the long-term impact on her favorite vice. Unlike my stealth behavior with the income-sufficient couple, she let me take her photo and became my symbol of inadvertent isolationism.
Why, suddenly, would her imported gelato cost so much more, she asked? I told her that she has the power to respond by abandoning the habit. With the grace of a statue, she refused.
And her image will live on—with an indelible, and perhaps illusory image of more ice cream, cones, and toppings wholly made in America.