In Sedona, each dawn presented the same austere choice: run or hike. The mornings were cool enough for running—cool by desert standards, before the sun remembered its job and turned the landscape into a furnace. Yet they were also the only hours when the trails felt almost sanctified: empty, hushed, the junipers whispering their secrets, red dust rising around my ankles, the percussion of my boots the only human sound. By nine or ten, the solitude would rupture, replaced by a new breed of pilgrim I’ve watched multiply over the last decade.

That morning, I tried to cheat the choice. A ten-mile run before sunrise, then—after a nap and a lazy lunch—a hike to the once-secret Subway Cave. I started at 1:30 p.m., the hour sensible people avoid, when heat becomes a kind of moral instruction. The air wavered; the rocks exhaled fire.

It took about an hour to reach the cave. Along the way, I passed the usual relics of modern worship—bits of plastic, crumpled water bottles, a protein bar wrapper twisting in the wind. By the time I arrived, the cave was already alive with people.

A group blasted music from a portable speaker, its echoes ricocheting off sandstone. A snaking line of Instagrammers—or TikTokers, or both—waited their turn at the altar of the Perfect Shot, faces tilted toward the light in the same rehearsed angle. Some practiced poses in advance, perfecting expressions meant to convey awe and solitude in a place packed with forty-seven strangers. Someone shouted, “WAIT, DO IT AGAIN!” Another complained, “THE LIGHT ISN’T RIGHT.”

In a quieter corner, a couple attempted to salvage intimacy, their whispers nearly drowned out by the drone of—literally—a drone. Its pilot, an older man delighted with his own aerial prowess, guided it in looping passes to capture cinematic footage of the cave. Someone’s dog barked at the mechanical intruder overhead.

Farther in, a 700-hundred-year-old dwelling stood half collapsed. Not eroded by time, but by footfall and fame. A few years ago, this place was a whisper among locals. Then someone dropped a pin on Instagram, and within three seasons, the structure that had survived centuries gave way to curiosity. What remains is now tattooed with contemporary glyphs: Dylan was here. Kristen loves Joe.

And then there was me—standing in the middle of it all, suspended between reverence, resignation, and confusion.

Subway Cave | Sedona

Wilhelmstraße 92 | Berlin