Interview with Bearcloud, Artist and 38-Year Resident
Oak Creek is a special place. Not just for its beauty, but for something harder to define—something people feel when they sit beside it long enough to listen.
In recent days, as I’ve reported on the pressures facing the creek, I’ve found myself thinking about what is being lost—and what, perhaps, cannot be lost.
I lived in the Thompson Road neighborhood for six years, where the creek was part of daily life. It shaped the rhythm of the day, the quiet moments, the sense of place. Bearcloud was one of my neighbors then. He is a well-known Sedona artist with an uptown gallery, known for painting spiritual visions—images that, in some ways, mirror how he describes the creek itself.
When I met with him, he didn’t begin with complaints or policy. He began with the feeling of the place.
“The creek has a special energy to it,” he said, describing hours spent sitting beside the water. “It will tell you things if you listen closely.
I used to go all the time and listen to the water. I would go down and spend hours working on a vision for a painting. Water is one of those things that flow and it helps your thoughts flow like water."
That idea—of listening—feels increasingly rare now, as more people arrive with different expectations of what the creek is for.
Bearcloud sees a distinction between what the creek is, and what people experience.
“A lot of people feel the spirit of Sedona is damaged,” he said. “You can’t really damage that.”
What can change, he suggests, is the overwheleming human energy and infuence.
“The spirit of the creek is still there, but people’s energy can overwhelm it, and you can feel that instead. People will change their own vision about how they see it because of those things.
It’s a perspective that doesn’t deny change—but reframes it. The loss, in his view, is not the creek itself, but our ability to hear it.
“The true nature of the creek will always remain. It’s as solid as rock—you just have to open your spirit and listen to it,” he said. “That’s what has kept me in Sedona, despite all the changes.”
I think about that tension often—the idea that something essential remains, even as the experience of it changes.
I think about the pink dolphins in Venice that returned when the canals went quiet during the COVID shutdowns, and I wonder: if humans left Oak Creek alone for a while, how long would it take to recover?
To me, the creek seems to say something simple: see me, listen to me, care for me. I have value for all, not just humans.
But as Bearcloud described, accessing that relationship is becoming harder—not just physically, but socially.
“It’s hard to experience it anymore because so much of it is closed off,” he said. “There aren’t many places you can go without them going down your throat.”
In some places, he says, that tension has turned openly hostile.
“If you go to the creek in front of one neighbor’s house, that guy will shoot you,” he said.
Whether taken literally or as an expression of frustration, the message is clear: the sense of openness that once defined the canyon is changing.
That shift is especially visible in the neighborhoods along the creek.
“There are 77 out of 80 homes that are Airbnbs,” he said. “I’m sad our whole area has become an Airbnb. Where we had block parties, now we have Airbnbs.”
It’s not just a change in housing—it’s a change in community.
When I asked what he would do if he could reshape the canyon, his answer reflected a desire to return to something quieter, more restrained.
“I think I would do away with Slide Rock the way it is now,” he said. “It would be okay with just a few people going in there to enjoy the creek.”
He also pointed to overdevelopment and commercialization as part of the problem.
“I’m concerned about them building too much… I kind of like the old days better,” he said. “I would get rid of a lot of the Airbnbs—maybe keep 10%… it’s gotten to be too much.”
And always, he returns to the water itself—not as an attraction, but as something more easily disturbed than restored.
“Slide Rock really damages things,” he said. “It’s turned into more of a fun park than a quiet place to go and think.”
Behind that shift, he sees a familiar force.
“Money is a driving force,” he said. “All of our special places are being charged for now… money wins in this country.”
That may be true. But standing next to Oak Creek, even now, it doesn’t feel like the whole truth.
The water still moves. The canyon still holds its shape. And somewhere beneath the noise, the creek is still saying what it has always said—waiting, perhaps, for someone to listen. Will it be you?