The Wasatch

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They're in the Wasatch Range, home of ancient and powerful natures. In spirit, they appear as ghosts or beaver and bears, entering rocks and leaves and earth during the light. No, you needn't be alarmed, because we're up in the Wasatch, above the Great Salt Lake, at night the highest and remotest place on earth.

If you go alone across the tops where logs bury coal between the boulders, and in the going pause mid-step until there's only sky and stars and silence - you'll see what's hidden by movement and madness and motion. Pause until your soul beats its single drum, until Indians and elk and dam builders immerge from the dark and trees and shadows. Stay perfectly still and see the child barefoot in the stream, and all the rivers meet into one.

It's magic, when your heart turns quiet and the fear rushes away. Suddenly, you feel the voices of the mountain, first one, then another, every epoch on every mountain in every word ever spoken. By will or by chance, you've entered the spirit's most secret realm, the moment in time few dare touch. Stay still as long as you can. Forget your feet in the snow, your hands burning of cold, the siren of evil tricksters screaming you must go.

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Then, when the voices and images retreat back to the sun, when the clouds ride west and the day returns, put on your boots and medals and gloves and go alone in peace and glory down from the great Wasatch Mountains.

© D.M.Molloy

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