Once I enter wilderness, I am more honest with myself. The lure is less what I can tally or photograph than what I can sense: the quiet, intangible qualities of desert, mountain and forest. Wilderness has been characterized as barren and unproductive; little can be grown in its sand and rock. But the crops of the wilderness have always been its spiritual values -- silence and solitude, a sense of awe and gratitude -- able to be harvested by any traveler who visits. Prayers in the wilderness were like streams in the desert for me -- something unanticipated and unchronicled welling up, and because of that surprise, appreciated all the more. Not until I actually left the wilderness was I conscious what had been the extent of my thirst.
We are, each of us, passive participants in an explosion still in progress. The sparks continue to fly, and in its rhythm, the universe is still expanding from that ancient blast. We are, as they say, star dust, by-products of the Big Bang. In this light, everything is connected, all creation evolving from the same Source, in a process which continues. We are kin to the stars, part of a universal family.