Article April 12, 2010 Issue

HIGH ON THE MESA WITH OUR ANGEL

God, Mind, is a present protection in even the direst situations.

BY SHARON MCNOTT

THERE WE WERE, my daughter, Tamara, and I standing with her two young children, Natasha and Nico, on a towering mesa in the beautiful red rock area of Sedona, Arizona. There was no clear path down. It was late afternoon, and we couldn't go back the way we'd come up. As we hunted for a trail, black clouds and lightning flashes began to appear on the western horizon. Desert storms move quickly, and we weren't prepared for one. My thought was fearful and anxious: What if we got stranded? What if we weren't able to get down before nightfall? What if we were caught overnight in the coming storm?

The story of how we came out of this dire situation is one of my favorite "angel stories." That afternoon we'd hiked a new trail—a slowly ascending route to the lowest level of an enormous three-tiered mesa. Natasha, then eight months, rode in a carrier on Tamara's back; and Nico, who was four years old, walked with me. Afternoon is the ideal time to view the entire spectacular valley, as the lowering sun illuminates the massive red rock formations with incredible color rising above the green pinyons and junipers.

Never having climbed this trail, I found it amazing to see how high we'd come. But soon the trail ended below a high rock wall. It looked like we were "stuck between a rock and a hard place," since it was too slippery to go back. We needed a new plan.

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