Wendell Berry, The Unforeseen Wilderness: An Essay on Kentucky's Red River Gorge (1971)

When I heard of Berry's passing on September 1st, my heart broke, and I was reminded of the following passage. When I first read it, I transcribed it into my notebook, irrationally scared I would somehow not be able to find it again, and I come back to it often. It speaks to me like a prayer. Maybe it will speak to you, too.

"Always in big woods when you leave familiar ground and step off alone into a new place there will be, along with the feelings of curiosity and excitement, a little nagging of dread. It is the ancient fear of the unknown, and it is your first bond with the wilderness you are going into. You are undertaking the first experience, not of the place, but of yourself in that place. It is an experience of our essential loneliness, for nobody can discover the world for anybody else. It is only after we have discovered it for ourselves that it becomes a common ground and a common bond, and we cease to be alone. And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles, no matter how long, but only by a spiritual journey, a journey of one inch, very arduous and humbling and joyful, by which we arrive at the ground of our feet, and learn to be home. It is a journey we can make only by the acceptance of mystery and of mystification — by yielding to the condition that what we have expected is not there."

Wendell Berry, The Unforeseen Wilderness: An Essay on Kentucky's Red River Gorge (1971)