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WHEN HARRY MET BOB

Harry met Bob on the Brin Mesa trail along red rock buttes and spires west of Sedona, Arizona. It was a winter day: clear blue sky, bright sunshine, a cool breeze, and the temperature near sixty. Harry had made the final climb up rock and slippery skree to a ridge which sloped down to a wooden bench and a panoramic view at the end of the trail. Just below the ridge, where he now sat on a flat rock, he had an even better view of the Verde valley, its monumental buttes and pinnacles of layered sandstone, limestone and basalt stained red by iron.

His breathing was heavy from the climb, a consequence of the high gravity, and he cooled himself in the shade of a shaggy Arizona Cyprus bordered by Manzanita and one hearty prickly pear cactus. Pristine country, he thought. It has beauty, clean air and a delicious solitude. No wonder this is touted as the new-age capital of the country, maybe even the planet.

A man was climbing up towards him, moving clumsily on the rock and bent over with effort. He wore jeans, a yellow chamois shirt and black, cowboy hat. His breathing was audible from twenty meters away, and his aura was deep blue from the effort. Suddenly he looked up and smiled. He had a pleasant old face, round and flushed.

“Almost to the ridge. You doing the loop?” asked Harry.

“Absolutely not,” said the man. “This is far enough for me. I’ll take another photo, and then I go down again.” The man stuck out a hand. “I’m Bob. Only got here yesterday, and I’m one of those foreign flatlanders you hear about.”

“Harry,” said Harry, and he shook Bob’s hand. “It’s over five thousand feet here. At my age I take it easy the first few days. You wintering, or just here for a weekend?”

“A month this time. I got lucky and found a small house uptown.”

“Been here before? You are lucky. The portal has filled up on me twice. I’ve been here a week, and two more to go. Some interesting geology here. I was a geologist at home. Don’t see these kinds of formations there.”

“You’re retired?” asked bob, brightening.

“Yep,” said Harry. “The white hair gives me away every time. You?”

“Two years ago. I was an organic chip engineer for Telarts, mostly for these things.” Bob took a palm-sized module from his shirt pocket and opened it. It was a Model 20 Jaziril Telecom, still state-of-the-art.

Harry felt like he’d found a kindred spirit. “I have an older model. It’s sort of backwoods where I live.”

Bob smiled. “Small universe,” he said. “You here alone?”

“Never got married,” said Harry. “Never had the time, or stayed around long enough.”

They both laughed. “I had a wife, but she went elsewhere,” said Bob. “Got tired of my little pranks, I guess. Look, if you don’t mind company I could show you around. I don’t know geology, but I’ve been studying the culture here; fascinating, and nothing like it at home.”

“That’s what I hear,” said Harry. “Sure, it’d be good to see the most important things instead of just wandering. Takes me a few minutes to get into town. The only place I could find on short notice is in Oak Creek.”

“No problem,” said Bob, then, “Get yourself a Sedona newspaper. It comes out Wednesday and Friday and lists everything going on. Let me know what interests you. We could start tomorrow by hitting a few art galleries and some of the tourist shops. There’s exceptional primitive art here, and interesting foods. It’s a great place for indigestion.”

“One of the delights of increasing age,” said Harry, and they both laughed again.

They exchanged addresses and telephone numbers, and made a date for the following day.

* * * *

Time went quickly for Harry and Bob. They were the perfect traveling companions, interests broad and complementary, both of them eager to explore new things.

They began with the more mundane shops: western clothing, Native American arts and crafts, fine jewelry in silver and gems. They admired pottery, carvings in sandstone and alabaster, flutes of cedar, but purchased nothing. Bob was temped by an F-sharp flute. Eventually he assembled a substantial collection of books about the area: geology, early history, sacred sites, vortices, and the new-age culture in the town.

Harry made no purchases until they hit the new-age shops, and he spent hundreds of dollars at a single mineral and crystal store near the edge of town. There were phantom and rutilated crystals of quartz, a plethora of thumbnail specimens of rare crystals from around the planet, all of which he carefully packed away in a small bag. Harry traveled light. For amusement he also purchased a book on the meditative and medicinal value of crystals, many of them supposedly tuned to a specific musical note and Chakra, whatever that was. Bob explained it all to him later.

Bob seemed more interested in odors, buying a large selection of incense sticks and cones, a brass burner, several vials of essential oils and an aromatherapy lamp. Even Harry had to admit that after several days of using these products, Bob’s odor was distinctly pleasant.

“To learn the geology, one has to hike and climb,” said Harry.

“To learn the culture, one has to experience it,” said Bob in return.

Bob had to experience as many alternative medical techniques as possible. There was ear coning, acupressure, emotional clearing, reflexology, reiki, myofascia, quantum touch, rolfing, shiatsu, celestial touch massage, cranial-sacral, aromatherapy, transformational navigation and, worst of all, lymph drainage therapy! He tried most of them while Harry waited outside closed curtains, inhaling delicious odors and studying geological survey maps.

They went on long hikes together and visited sites touted for their mysteries. Near the airport they made a short climb to a mesa and found a young couple in a standing embrace inside a small circle of stones. The woman’s eyes twinkled as she smiled and hugged her partner. “Absorbing some energies,” she said to them, and then the couple hurried away.

“Believers make the stone circles, and unbelievers kick them away. This is supposed to be an electric vortex site,” said Bob.

The panoramic view was grand, stretching east to Bell Rock and far west to high buttes. “I read about it,” said Harry. “The Schuman resonance is supposed to be at seven or eight cycles per second, the earth charging and discharging due to global atmospheric electrical activity. They haven’t figured out the earth grid stuff, or why the area here is so accessible to us, but then I don’t understand all of it either.”

Bob smiled. “Yeah, well, the way they present it is good for the tourists. Bell Rock out there is another electric vortex site, they say, but Cathedral Rock is a magnetic type, and there’s supposed to be an interdimensional window that aliens and angels come through.”

“Oooo, angels,” said Harry.

They hiked the trail into the sacred area of Boynton Canyon and took photographs of a knobby spire called Katchina Woman. The spire was said to occasionally sport a blue aura, but the color was wrong. “South of here are the Palatki Indian Ruins, and beyond them there’s supposed to be a secret, buried military base, and UFO’s flying around. People say they’ve seen Humvees and men in black out there where there are no roads. Black helicopters, too,” said Bob.

Harry shook his head. “This is what happens when people have an untrustworthy government and naughty tourists who don’t obey the rules.”

Bob slapped his shoulder. “Oh come on, Harry, lighten up. This is a place to have some fun.”

So Harry lightened up and even allowed his own sense of humor to surface. Bob’s infectious enthusiasm made it easier for him to stop thinking like a scientist all the time. Without being conscious of it, the two of them were becoming close friends for many years to come.

Late one day they made a nervous climb on steep, rough rock up a buttress sprouting delicate, multiple spires and shelves. In a slot framed by two massive columns towering high around them they scrambled their way up to a high saddle for photography. Others were coming behind them, for Cathedral Rock was a landmark of the area, and visited frequently. Harry got one of his best pictures of the trip there, and the view was breathtaking. Suddenly he held up his arms and twirled like a child. “Oh, oh, I’m magnetic,” he said, and Bob laughed.

“Do you actually have to leave so soon?” asked Bob. “You’re really having fun now.”

“Well no, I don’t. I’m retired, remember?”

“You traveling with Aurora, or Trans-Di?”

“Aurora.”

“Me too. Why don’t you extend your stay a week, and we can take the same slip back,” said Bob.

Harry thought for only a few seconds, then, “I’ll do it. What else do I have to do these days? I’m still learning how to be retired. When do you leave? I’ll call my reservation in tonight.”

“Never mind,” said Bob. “You can do it from here.” He took his Model 20 out of a camera bag, made contact. Harry punched in his reservation code and did the rest.

Bob took back his Jaziril 20 and nodded at the puffing climbers now nearing their position at the panoramic viewing site of Cathedral Rock. “You know,” he said, eyes twinkling, “I think we can have some real fun with this place.”

“Oh, oh,” said Harry.

* * * *

And so there was another week and a half of fun in the high country of northern Arizona. They ventured out a bit, drove to Flagstaff and artsy Jerome, and visited nearby Indian ruins. A long tour by jeep took them to more ruins and a huge sinkhole formed by the collapse of a limestone cavern ceiling. The driver on the tour refused to talk about black helicopters or UFOs in the area. Sworn to secrecy, he said.

A day before their departure they had an expensive dinner together in uptown Sedona and walked nearly two miles to the Spiritual Center to hear a special lecture on UFOs. A kindly, white-haired man talked about alien visitations and showed photographs of their saucer-shaped spacecraft. There was even a photo of such a craft sitting in the driveway of a man who claimed continual contact with the many alien societies living on planet earth.

Harry whispered to Bob, “Atmospheric entry had better be slow in that thing. And what are all the spherical balls around the hub?”

“That is where they store their alcohol,” said Bob. His expression was serious, but his eyes said otherwise.

A matronly woman seated in front of them turned around with an admonishing glare, silencing them.

They walked back down the hill to town in the light of thousands of stars. “One hundred eight alien civilizations indeed,” said Harry, staying in the mood. “The number can’t be more than forty, tops”

“I’ve counted twenty-three,” said Bob.

“That’s more like it. And that picture of the alien, the one with the long earlobes, I’ve been wondering about you. Why is it you don’t have long earlobes?”

“I have them trimmed every Thursday,” said Bob, and sniffed primly.

Bob smiled, and sighed audibly. “Seriously, Harry, I’m going to miss this place. I missed it after the last time I was here. It has been even more fun being here with someone I could share it with.”

“So why don’t we do it again next year?” said Harry.

“You serious?”

“Absolutely. Let’s exchange addresses and keep in touch. Plan ahead. I haven’t had a massage yet, and we’ll both be ready for a good rolfing by next year.”

They shook hands on it, went back to their cars in a happier mood, and then home to pack.

Departure the following morning was complicated by their choice of location for it. Bob came to the rescue, finding two young men who, for a fee, would return their cars to the uptown lodge lot for them. They picked the men up at the lodge at sunrise, drove 179 and Back o’ Beyond road to the Cathedral Rock trailhead.

Both of their backpacks were stuffed full. The young men looked at them curiously, and then drove the cars away, leaving them alone at the trailhead.

“Now I wish I hadn’t bought all these books,” said Bob, looking up at steep rock.

“Give me some of them. We’ll sort it out at the other end,” said Harry.

They repacked the bags quickly and went up the short but steep trail over rocky knobs and loose scree to a gentler slope around a buttress to the Cathedral Rock high saddle viewpoint. Passing the lower viewpoint they’d seen two vans pulling into the trailhead lot below; other hikers would soon be joining them. Bob looked at Harry. “We could get our travel permits revoked for doing this.”

“Not likely,” said Harry. “People see things here all the time, and more often than not their reporting isn’t accurate or taken seriously.”

Bob and Harry grinned at each other like two naughty children, and hurried on.

When they reached the high viewpoint no other hikers were in sight. They took two final pictures of each other, with twin walls of red rock in the background. Bob took out his Model 20 Jaziril and tapped a key. Behind them the air seemed to shimmer, as if suddenly heated.

“Here they come,” said Harry.

A group of four hikers had come around a buttress base and were ascending the faint trail over smooth rock twenty meters below them.

“Now,” said Harry, grinning.

Bob tapped the Jaziril three times. There was an explosion of color, an iris of air opening wide and shimmering brilliantly in emerald green.

“Aurora would be very unhappy if they knew we were doing this,” said Bob.

There was a shout from below.

“I know,” said Harry, “but they won’t hear about it from me.” He gestured Bob forward to the bright vortex of green. “After you, angelic one.”

“And you need to have your earlobes trimmed,” said Bob.

They hoisted their packs, and stepped inside the bright glow.

There was another shout, and then a scream from nearby as the five-dimensional Branegate closed behind them.