The Sacred of the Wild (Essay)

Sunlight.  It warms the flesh.  It had rained the night before.  The scent of rain filled the air.  Sunlight had crested the nearby mountainside.

Morning.

The mountains are still there.  No roads.  No cities.  Things never paved over by the growth of civilization.  Wildness.

The dark rainy night passes.  Here, one isn't defined by the words of others.  The things that divide us fall away.  In the wilderness, a person is a person, with no false pretenses against them.  The rainy night passes, the storm is forgotten.

It's easy to be frightened in the storm.  To miss the beauty of nature to fear.  To kneel to it.  To give up.

But the wilderness doesn't care about the storm.  It comes and it goes.  Nature doesn't care for civilization.  It doesn't care about the night.  It doesn't even care about the sublime warmth of the morning.  The Wilderness has no memory.

One can be part of that wild again.  It is still there.  Out past the edges of what or who we are, it's still there.  Wilderness.  It is the sacred temple that humanity can always return to.

There is no hate there.  No murder.  Death is part of the root and branch, something that helps move the wheel forward.  Nature isn't a bigot.  It is tainted by politics.

The lie is civilization.  The truth is in nature.

Civilization's failures are when it fails to help strengthen the truth in nature.  When it keeps some from being free.  When it enables hate.  When it helps the mad murder the innocent.

Nature is still there.  The sun always rises.  The Wild doesn't murder in the name of evil or mad beliefs.  It doesn't care about your failed relationships.  It doesn't care if you work a dead-end job.  The wild cares only about living.

The mountains don't care about politics, sexual orientation or skin color.  I always remember them.  My spirituality is in the pine, rock and wild.  It's comforting to know that the world will always go on, no matter how evil others actions are.