Sedona Calling explores ways that visitors can connect with the red rock country's extravagant landscape, from sight-seeing, hiking, and photography to meditation. 
"This is heart-stopping, achingly beautiful, ineffably alluring land," writes aurthor Lawrence W. Cheek. "It should have been roped off as a national park back around the time of Teddy Roosevelt, saving it from the desultory development that even many resident Sedonans lament today. In a perfect world, no architecture would perturb the spectacle; no rumble of traffic would diminish the delicate tinkle of Oak Creek. But even with all the development, the power of the place seems little diminished. About four million people come to visit every year, and more than a few of them find a way to stay." 
The 96-page softcover book brims with descriptions, directions, travel tips, and color photographs. Besides guiding visitors through Sedona, the book lays out day and overnight trips to Oak Creek Canyon, ruins of ancient dwelling sites, Jerome, Cottonwood and other parts of the Verde Valley, the Grand Canyon, Mogollon Rim, and Navajoland.

Sedona Calling: A Guide to Red Rock Country

Travel

Lawrence W. Cheek

Reference

Arizona Highways

Mesa Verde the Living Park

Mesa Verde Museum Association

Lawrence Cheek decided that he had to build a boat. Not just any boat, but a beautiful wooden sailboat. This despite the fact that he barely knew how to sail and that he was the master of so few woodworking skills that it was frightening. The Year of the Boat is a memoir about what when on in that suburban garage—a roiling process of measuring, cutting, gluing and sanding that was punctuated with supreme satisfaction, utter frustration, and plain bewilderment. From figuring out how to actually read a set of marine blueprints to learning the fine art of applying epoxy to getting the mast to stand up straight, this is a captivating adventure into the wilderness of doing it yourself. The author tacks an intelligently digressive route as he touches on such topics as the invention of the retractable keel, the esteemed tradition of garage enterprises (think Hewlett Packard), the Platonic ideal sailboat, the hegemonic rise of fiberglass, and the pleasing shape of a rudder. Building a boat turns out to be the antidote for chronic perfectionism (hence the boat’s name, Far From Perfect).

The Year of the Boat: Beauty, Imperfection, and the Art of Doing It Yourself

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

Sasquatch Books

From the Look West Series -- According to legend, Kokopelli, a magical figure with a hump on his back, used to wander from pueblo to pueblo across the American West, playing sweet music to everyone---and also playing Don Juan among the women. Possibly this legend began with a real man, perhaps a trader carrying a pack. Sometimes, when his image appears in pre-Columbian rock art and pottery, Kokopelli is clearly a fertility symbol. He also represents the coming of spring, the spirit of celebration, and the joy of music. On another level, he is a traveling salesman with a roving eye, the hero, or villain of many stories, some not suitable for prime time. His musical instrument may actually have been a nose flute, and the purported contents of his bulging pack include seeds, rain, clouds, rainbows, songs. . .and babies.

Kokopelli (Look West Series)

History

Americas

Rio Nuevo Publishers

From the Look West Series -- ""The Navajo Holocaust"" is what Laurence W. Cheek calls it in this volume of the Look West series. In Navajo history it is commonly known as the Long Walk. The disaster began in 1863 when Gen. James Henry Carleton decided to move the Navajo people forcibly from their traditional Arizona homeland to a reservation on the high plains of northern New Mexico. Winter was coming on. ""By the best estimate now possible 1,500 to 3,000 people--up to a fifth of the Navajo population at the time--died either en route or in what amounted to a concentration camp,"" writes Cheek. ""It became known as the Long Walk--the Southwestern counterpart to the Cherokees Trail of Tears.

The Navajo Long Walk (Look West Series)

Rio Nuevo Pub

"Wright fell in love with the desert quickly and profoundly," writes Lawrence W. Cheek. "It was a vast, blank canvas ... it was an open-air warehouse of natural forms, colors, and textures that both delighted and inspired him." Frank Lloyd Wright first came to Arizona in 1928. In this spectacular desert landscape he built his winter headquarters, Taliesin West, and found a passion that drove him for the next 31 years of his life. In the first book to focus solely on Wright's work in Arizona, Lawrence W. Cheek explores the twelve breathtaking buildings that Wright contributed to the state. Cheek also delves into the audacious, mischievous, egocentric, and often outrageous life of Frank Lloyd Wright and examines today's Taliesin West, still a center of vigilant devotion to the man often called the greatest architect of the twentieth century. 50 color photos.

Frank Lloyd Wright in Arizona

Rio Nuevo

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Books by Lawrence W. Cheek