" This is the desert entire and austere..."

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from Desert Trails

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photo by J.S. Chase 

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" This is the desert entire and austere, the realm of geology alone

among the sciences. Here Time and all things of Time seem to

have ended or not to have begun. The sun rises, flames through

the sky and sets; the moon and stars look coldly down; the traveler

seems to himself the last life on the planet. Awe that is close on

terror grasps him: he feels alone in the universe, he, and God. His

footsteps cease: why should he go on? and whither? for there is no

whither. Nothing moves, nor can move, but the elemental wind,

vacantly roaming the empty earth ( and those great airs, what a 

sense they bring of age, of eternal solitude, of cold, sidereal 

space! ). The life of towns, of farms, all that signifies humanity,

seems totally unreal: the Great Question confronts, closes one in,

and must, but cannot be answered. At such moments, reader, you

may find foothold in thoughts, perhaps long unthought or cast

aside...." I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven  

and earth " and so on to the end. 

" They will not now seem contemptible, I assure you. "

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