Strange Encounters with Sedona Petroglyphs

I’ve been deep in research these last months while I enjoyed the indoors, seeping in the sun through the wood fires and unwinding the last few years of nomadic life. My research has brought me many epiphanies as I reflect living in Sedona and all the mystical experiences I had there. Little did I know then what I was exploring, as it seems more profound now. Perhaps I would have stayed there if I knew what I know now. Though, I’m so happy with where the Universe has taken me, and all’s happening best case scenario. I don’t regret moving back to Wisconsin one bit!

The mystical experiences started right away, though subtly. In October-November 2018, we moved to Sedona with just our car and camping supplies, living in a tent on public land. For awhile, we stayed off a forest road in the desert and met a drifter man with dreads to the ground named Bob. He was a pretty chill guy and left us alone for the most part. He was kinda like a neighbor to us, and made sleeping in the desert alright. I had a few dreams while living in this spot in the desert that were peculiar but I didn’t think about it much.

Then, an elderly couple took us in and we did work exchange for them. We could have a place to sleep and live in exchange for a permaculture garden, started from scratch. I didn’t have a car, and Austin worked full time, so Sparky and I did a lot of adventuring on the hiking trail nearest their house. For privacy and conservation purposes, I won’t disclose the location, but I will share pictures of what I found.

For the rest of the fall and some of the winter, I’d hike this trail. It started by the road we lived on and trailed into the foresty desert into something called a saddle. In the desert, there are these land features called mesas, which are pretty big hills that are relatively flat on top. These mesas were covered in meadow grasses, prickly pear cactus, and juniper trees, with some lavender desert verbenas poking out here and there. A saddle is the valley-like space between two mesas, and the one I would travel to was meadow like with a red trail going through it. Sedona is kind of an anomalous place being bright red sandstone, meaning more iron in the rocks, than the rest of the Verde Valley area surrounding it. This saddle I frequented was the threshold between the red desert and the more gray/brown desert. This is important for the story here.

I’d hike here often, and the first time I walked the trail I noticed a giant boulder in the center of the saddle. I thought it was peculiar… the rock didn’t really match the surrounding landscape and I didn’t know how it got there, though there were similar rocks like this scattered about, just not as big. I’d sit on the rock and meditate, journal, and it felt like a sacred place, a place with heightened energy. It wasn’t until Sedona had a rare snowstorm that I noticed some significance of the boulder.

In February, 2019, Sedona had a three day snowstorm that resulted in about two feet of snow. The town completely shut down and a lot of people lost power. When the storm was over, I trekked out to the boulder and just about shit my pants. The melting snow atop the rock melted down and darkened the color on the rock to reveal an entire side coated in petroglyphs. These were the first petroglyphs I’d ever seen and I was awe struck. Immediately I felt like this place was an important place for the ancient people who lived here, and started viewing it in a different way. I snapped a ton of pictures before heading back home, and on my way down the trail, I spotted something even more bizarre in the trees. There was another six foot tall boulder, standing upright with snow melting down the side, darkening the rock face. The darker part of the rock revealed three silhouettes of aliens, hand in hand, letting me know there was even more significance to the area. If you’re new here, then it would be important to tell you that I often have experiences with the supernatural, being extraterrestrials and the Fae. I didn’t feel fear at all about seeing these aliens, though they really made me curious!

Back to Petroglyph Rock. The petroglyphs on the side of the rock were intriguing and I found them to be symbolic for energy, portals, and perhaps a scorpion or a bull? There were a few others that I couldn’t make out. Here they are, pictured below.

It wasn’t until my recent research while reading a book by Jaap van Etten called Gifts of Mother Earth that I realized whose petroglyphs these were. The Paleolithic people of the region were the Sinagua people, and their petroglyph drawings were so similar to the ones I found. Now, I must say now that I didn’t discover them. I found articles about the trail and the fact that there are petroglyphs there, but my research sort of ended there. It is also a sort of game to try to figure out what the symbols mean, as they are symbols and there’s no definite answer as to what the Sinaguans were carving into the rocks.

My interpretations of the petroglyphs are as follows. There is a large one with chevrons moving, which to me means there was energy present here, something moving. Perhaps the rock gave off waves of energy like I’ve read about in other books about Earth Energies. There was an animal looking carving that seemed to be a cow with horns, but it could be interpreted in other ways too. The last one I could make out that really stood out to me was the spiral. There are two spirals coming together in the center, sort of like the Irish triskel, but most definitely different. To me, this symbolizes a portal present in the saddle, one that I could feel. All of this was so mysterious to me, and still is, and then it got weirder.

One day, I was hiking the trail and I was going to hike further than the saddle into the desert. As I said, this saddle was the threshold between Sedona and the rest of the Verde Valley, which was mostly open desert with nothing in it. The area between Sedona and Cottonwood, the next town over, was public land with smaller towns dotted along the way. From where I lived to Cottonwood was 30 minutes and must have been about twenty miles, so there’s a lot of open space. Anyway, as I was meditating on Petroglyph Rock, I opened my eyes to see a peculiar energy staring at me. It was a paddle of a prickly pear cactus in the distance, its energy just beaming to me. I’d often meditate and invite benevolent beings in to chat with, to find answers to the questions whirling in my mind. I knew I found a place of significance, and I wanted to get to the bottom of this. I went up to the cactus to inspect it, to see what it was telling me. All I got from the experience is that everything around us has a consciousness and is alive, perhaps more than we know of.

Another instance in the saddle… I was hiking here another day and I heard some people coming behind me on the trail. I’m a recluse traveler, so I generally don’t like running into people while I am meditating/investigating. A bit past Petroglyph Rock is a field of prickly pear cactus so thick, you can hardly walk through them, littering the field going up one of the mesas. I quickly hid behind one of the bushes and immediately noticed a face on the top paddle. This was the moment that I realized there were beings wishing to connect with me that were perhaps in another dimension.

Not long after this occurrence, I had a dream that just blew my mind. I believe that ET’s, fairies, and other beings can connect and work with us in dreams, and perhaps dreams are much more than they seem. Like… astral travel! This dream was too real feeling to be a dream, as I was lucid and aware of everything that was going on. In the dream, I was with a group of UFO people, or investigators, in the part of the desert I described above, the area between Sedona and Cottonwood. We were walking in the desert near a cliffside, juniper trees about 15 feet tall. In the trees looking toward the cliff, I saw three beings in cloaks with their hoods down, revealing their identities, walking between the trees. I saw them walking towards the cliff in a zig-zag fashion. The being in the front was a Feline being, the center was a mantis looking being, and the last one was what I call the prickly pear cactus beings, having the head shape and face that resembled the cactus I ran into by petroglyph rock. I woke up amazed, and on a search for this cliff to see if there was anything there. Who were these prickly pear cactus beings that kept showing up, and what did they want to tell me?

I found the spot a few weeks later about ten miles from where I lived. It was near the dry river bed, and it was autumn, the jewels of the cottonwood and sycamore fell to the ground. I felt nervous exploring this part of the desert as I was all alone and the cliff was pretty far from where I parked. This last experience left me at a dead end to this strange journey, for in that moment in time. Now I know where I need to pick up.