Archangel of Sedona by Tony Peluso

This was a first for me.
    Wise environmental managers have placed a barbed wire fence around the sinkhole on the Broken Arrow Trail. You have to be stupid, inconsiderate, and a scofflaw to go inside the wire. The ground around the edge of the sinkhole is unstable. In time, it will fracture and fall into the hole. Standing on the edge is a slow-motion death wish.
    Bats hibernate in this dining room. Bats perform a critical service for the ecosystem because they eat tons of insects every night. They hang upside down from the ceiling of the sinkhole during the day while they sleep.
    Signs inform the hikers that stupid and inconsiderate humans can disturb the baby bats, causing them to lose their grip and fall to floor of the sinkhole. The sign warns that the baby bats, known as pups, can be injured or killed as a result.
    Falling head first to the bottom of the sinkhole causes the babies to flounder around in the accumulated guano deposited over decades. Plummeting headfirst into 30 years of shit makes the pups question the whole bat lifestyle. Entire species of bats are thus endangered by the mental trauma that bats endure, not as a result of insensitive humans, but because of their own gastrointestinal extravagance.
    Believe me, I respect the environment. I didn’t want to contribute to mass bat extinction. But something other than disdain for the law and the ecosystem compelled me to squeeze under that fence. I stood at the edge of the sinkhole for five minutes. The whole time, I shivered as sweat poured from my head and chest.
    The sinkhole is 90 feet deep. Broken limestone rocks covered the bottom. I noticed trash, but not in a large volume. I had a flashback to the Chapel Incident in 1966, when our beer cans and chicken bones ended up on the rocks below the retaining wall.
    I didn’t see anything extraordinary. I didn’t observe a single bat or other flying mammal. No bats were injured or traumatized during the research, writing, editing, or publishing of this story.
    Gretchen and I spent 20 minutes at the Devil’s Dining Room. During my déjà vu experience, Gretchen had become bored. She tried to use her cell phone, but the reception sucks south of Marg’s Draw, east of the Twin Buttes. My bride’s patience, short during the best of times, evaporated.
    Gretchen settled down as we headed south along the Broken Arrow Trail. This hike is different from the West Fork Trail. West Fork tracks a small tributary of Oak Creek through narrow canyons south and east of the Mogollon Rim. Broken Arrow is a path to the east of Twin Buttes. It’s open, airy, dry, sunny, and breathtaking. Be careful. Carry lots of water on Broken Arrow.
    When we got to the cutoff for Submarine Rock, Gretchen loosened up. I suggested that we head east to explore the rock, but my wife declined. She wanted to press on to Chicken Point. Since I’d exhausted my exemptions at the Devil’s Dining Room, I didn’t disagree. Her behavior surprised me because she’s always pushing me to do more.
    We stayed on the trail and trekked up to Chicken Point. When we arrived, a platoon of mountain bikers, hikers, and pink Jeep tourists had beaten us to the goal.
    Gretchen and I spent ten minutes resting, hydrating, and watching deranged mountain bikers do wheelies along the rocky cliff around Chicken Point. Their suicidal behavior made my episode on the lip of the Devil’s Dining Room seem tame.
    When my wife was ready to resume our hike, I convinced her that we should head west on the Little Horse Trail. I wanted to see the Chapel of the Holy Cross again.
    Little Horse Trail intersects with the Chapel Trail on the west side of the Twin Buttes. Once on the Chapel Trail, you pass megaliths named the Two Sisters, as in Nuns. They are large, ponderous, menacing, and unmoving, like the BVMs who taught at St. Francis.
    Once beyond the sisters, it’s an easy trek north along a narrow ridgeline to the Chapel of the Holy Cross in the shadow of Elephant Rock.
    Gretchen