Driving around Arizona, the sixth largest state in the US, it’s easy to feel like you’ve been transported into the middle of nowhere, or even onto another planet—in one moment you’re surrounded by rocky red buttes, the next saguaro-speckled desertscapes and then, verdant valleys. While one could spend weeks upon weeks exploring the majestic region, we spent a weekend there and paved out a road …
I heard the rip before I knew what it meant exactly. I felt a sensation as well. We all know that strange, infrequent out-of-body experience: a tear taking place in our clothes, with seam tearing from seam. The incident occurred mid-hike, while I was wearing houndstooth shorts I had custom-made in Shanghai almost a decade earlier. The rip extended one inch just below the fly …
One of the few places on earth where a pinecone can be seen beside a cactus, Sedona’s confluence of flora sprouts from red, iron-rich rocks and sand. Mimicking mountains, large sandstone formations actually came to be through millennia of erosion. They tower with might above the city. Here, visitors gather to hike the trails extending outward, indulge in the spa culture and work their way through …
