Herewith another gem that few will appreciate or believe. I take it at face value, however, and urge you to do likewise.
I have a friend who spends a lot of time in the wilderness. Recently in the middle of an impromptu visit with a couple of other people I know, he told a story about something that happened to him high up in the mountains. He was hiking in the forest, scouting for firewood, when he chanced upon a large fallen Ponderosa pine that had partially rotted and become hollow. Standing there, he suddenly became aware of a singularly loud THUMP-THUMP-THUMP like the beating of a heart coming from the log. He didn’t understand how that could be, but that’s what it sounded like.
He began to carefully cut the log apart with his chainsaw. No telling what was inside, though the trunk was too small to conceal a hibernating bear. Whenever the chainsaw slowed, he heard the sound again: THUMP-THUMP-THUMP, and growing louder… Finally he had the log where a final cut would lay it open. One last slash, and there it was: sitting there trembling as it peered out with shiny black eyes sat a little gray mouse!
THUMP-THUMP-THUMP.
Yup. He’d been hearing the heartbeat of a frightened mouse.
Say what you will, but when you leave the world of man, the universe opens up — the part we filter out, I mean. There’s no way to explain this if you haven’t experienced it for yourselves, but THAT, brothers and sisters, is why we absolutely need the wilderness.
The key to everything we really are is out there, and if we kill it all, we’ll never know.
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