I say...
The water rises steady below them
but never overtakes them-
When they reach the mountaintop
they collapse breathless,
laying on the rain-soaked rock.
A child tugs at his parent's shirt.
Through the exhaustion
she barely opens her eyes enough
to see a miraculous prism of light
arcing from the mountaintop
to the floodlands underneath.
That's when they see the ark
drifting below
its occupant so convinced
of his uprightness
that he lays claim
to all the promises of goodness.
The children begin to run and dance
as the mountaintop dries.
The women begin to look around,
assessing what can be used for
a celebratory feast-
a blessing that their worst isn't an end.
The daughter picks an olive branch,
gives it to the dove on her shoulder
and instructs it to fly,
offering it to the lonely man below,
inviting him to the feast.
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.