The McCain Ranch: As the Sun Sinks Slowly . . .

by David Safier

The meetings at Rancho McCain are over, the visiting cowpokes have returned to their own spreads, and it’s time for McCain to hit the trail once again — the campaign trail, that is.

I had an unpleasant thought a few minutes ago as I was preparing to wrap up this McCain Ranch series. What if I got it all wrong? What if my intrepid reporter was feeding me material he had cobbled together from photos he found on stray internet sites — say, photos from old Rifleman episodes — with McCain’s face inserted so artfully that no one would ever detect his handiwork?

So I looked up a history of Sedona and found it never really was in the ranching business. No one was gittin’ along their little dogies or shearin’ their sheep on the back forty. The land is too rugged to run livestock. The early settlers tended to set up small, self sufficient homesteads.

Then I discovered another Ranch in the area, Saddlerock Ranch, and I knew I was onto something. Its full name is The Redrock Retreat at Saddlerock Ranch, which, according to the website, is “located in one of Sedona, Arizona’s largest energy vortexes.”

Energy vortexes? Of course! Vortexes! Crystals! Sedona is the New Age Center of the Universe!

Saddlerock Ranch bills itself as a place “for the weary traveler on life’s journey that needs a place to rest, revitalize and rebalance themselves.” It’s a place where a soul, stressed out from life’s travails, can “practice yoga to the sound of cascading water or meditate on a serene portion of the property.”

It all fits! It’s not simply “The McCain Ranch.” It’s The New Age Retreat at the McCain Ranch, where the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, along with his political and journalistic friends, can take a much needed time-out from the world to increase their chi reservoirs, reconnect with their rich inner selves and maybe even explore a past life or two. It’s all so . . . so . . . so groovy!

I may revisit McCain at his New Age Retreat sometime in the future. But now it’s time for me to return to my regularly scheduled ed blogging.