Out of the Wilderness

Alone.

Out of the Wilderness

A solitary figure stood atop a towering crag, gazing toward points beyond the vast expanse of white wilderness. Roughened gray projections of ice-encrusted rock spiked from the mountainside, around his perch. From far off to the southeast a mystery came, an odd, continuous, thundering rumble of unknown origin, a sharpened wedge of sound that split the usual quiet in this place.

The rumble did not change, it did not diminish. The man squinted; what could it be? He knew nothing of it, nonetheless, there it was, a deep and ominous thrumming, as though a hundred freight trains advanced across the remote snow-scape. But there were no tracks for a thousand kilometers, neither highways nor cities were any closer. When would it diminish, as surely, it must?

Suddenly, the terrible feeling that gripped his soul was greater than any fear he'd ever known. It was not the bone-cracking cold that sent an uncontrollable shiver along his spine and then through every part of his body. Whatever the reason for the sound, of one thing he was certain. It could not be good.

His motives for coming to this place had been simple, and personal. He had decided there was only one path to the peace he sought, and that path was solitude. That was why he was here. No radio, no television. No telephones, no automobiles. No laws, expectations or deadlines, not a single task of any kind, save for the daily job of survival. No gods, no churches, no back-biting holier-than-thous. No news. No disappointments. It had come down to one thing, and to avoid the only path to that one thing would have been to die.

Peace.

Of course, there had been things to live for, in that other life. He had owned a good dog, and a fine horse. There had been a job, and money, and a nice car. An excellent home. And there had been women, one of which he had believed was the love of his life. He did miss the curve of her warm body against his, the feeling of oneness with another.

But there were also politics, and graft, and disease, and violence, and lawlessness. The man had tasted those things as well. He had known the sting of losing his livelihood and his material possessions to the crimes of others, to self-righteous bastards who cared for no one. It was irrelevant to them if others in their paths were destroyed. It was nothing but the almighty dollar, the regal pound, the omnipotent Euro. And finally it had become too much. At long last he had resolved to put it all behind, shedding his remaining possessions as he traveled, avoiding daylight so that no one would know his direction of escape from that world. And after a time, the things he could call his own were but three; a rifle, a knife, and an ax. It had been hard, but he hadn't really been concerned about whether his attempt at solitary life and survival would be successful. Nevertheless, for three grueling years, it had worked.

As he slowly and carefully descended from the peak, he thought about the strange roar, searching the dusty libraries of his memory for possible causes. He knew of the threat of nuclear war, but couldn't imagine how it could generate continuous rumbling thunder of that magnitude, for some days. He knew of the possibility of an asteroid or a comet strike, but again, how could the rumble remain constant for so long? The one thing he could imagine that might generate a sound like this was the eruption of a super-volcano. There was a subterranean anomaly known as a caldera to the south that, some had said, was overdue for a world-changing eruption. Perhaps that was it. But should not such an event, sooner or later, show itself in other ways? Atmospheric changes? A glow on the horizon, despite the distance?

But so far, there had been nothing. Only the deep, impressive, continuous blast of sound, from places utterly unknown.

He had long been sure that if there was a god, that god had forsaken him. But, he considered, after all, who had done the things to him for which he'd held such resentment? It had been other men, there had been no god involved. And yet, was he not also human? It pained him to realize that he had always taken all of the others of his kind for granted. And that the peace he had sought he had intended to find, only for himself.

One more of the human species had just crossed the threshold, moving through the doorway of truth and realization. Many more who had sought solitude had come the same way, before moving on to greater things. It had long been foretold that one day, one like him would return to become the greatest of all mortals.

After some hours he reached his hand-constructed domicile, a weather-roughened cabin with a single fireplace built from native rock. Perhaps he was the one man on earth who lived in a safe place. What if there was just one? Whatever the source of the terrible rumble and the deepening fear he was experiencing, of course it would be necessary to learn of its origin. And of course he would be powerless to stop or to change anything, as he had always been.

Nevertheless, it was finally the time to come out of the wilderness.

But, before picking up to leave, he turned to the one thing to which everyone turns when there is nowhere else at all.

He went inside, knelt beside his bed of pine boughs and offered up one fervent and heartfelt prayer, for all of humanity.

Just one.

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