As Sedona Monthly is celebrating its 20th anniversary, I am celebrating my 31st year living in Sedona. Much has changed, but (mostly) everything looks about the same: more buildings, wider roads, roundabouts and more traffic. The essential things have not changed though. The natural beauty remains. The critters are still here, and the joyful exuberance of children remains. Soon they will have the memories of what they created today. In 2003 as the magazine was beginning, I was still flying my high performance sailplane out of the Sedona Airport. Four years later, I would sell it and buy the two-seater motor glider so that my wife could fly with me, and it became my aerial tripod through which I was able to amass a large portfolio of aerial photographs of Northern Arizona, focusing on the Sedona area and the Colorado Plateau.
On the top of this page, is an aerial shot I took from the northern side of the Village of Oak Creek, following AZ-179 as it makes its way north through the wilderness, the Chapel area and into Sedona. It was a single ribbon of two-way traffic when we arrived. The new separated corridors were approved in 2006, and most of the construction occurred during 2008. I suspect little change in the future.
I took the photograph above on Christmas Day 2004 on my evening walk on the Sedona Golf Resort course. The beauty was surreal. It still is. I won the Olympus Pro Photography contest with this shot. It is still hanging in my home, which tends to be a revolving door for photos.
This shot was taken from the north end of the airport in December 2010. It looked the same in 2003 and likely in 1903. It will probably look about the same 100 hundred years from now. The Sedona Mittens are photo center and the Colorado Plateau behind it.
This photo is of a Red-tailed hawk leaving a branch on the golf course. They precede our arrival here and will be here for a long time.
Finally, in this photograph, we have a six-year-old boy dancing to music only he can hear and imagining something beautiful. We have all done it, and he will pass that joy on to his children too. There is meaning to life and much joy to experience.
