JPG

The Challenge: “If you had 24 hours to live …”

For me, the answer was easy!

I would follow my heart to Telegraph Mountain, to explore again the familiar crags and peaks, and rugged canyons running down to the high desert.

I would climb to the top and look out once more across the vast expanse of the mountain itself—then further – across Butte Valley, the Butte Mountains, all the way to the Rubies to the west, and the Egan and Cherry Creek Ranges to the northeast. I would climb higher still – to see Steptoe Valley and the Schell Creek Mountains that disappear into the southeastern horizon.

I would follow the paths of deer and the elk, and seek out the company of wild horses that roam the foothills. (May I not live to see the day of no mustangs on this land!)

I would drink from pristene springs, and dance to the perpetual song of the creeks rushing to find the desert.

If my last hours should happen to be in Fall, I would pick wild berries and pinon nuts. I would eat my fill beneath the quakies, without care for tomorrow’s consequences.

I would build a fire and watch the sun set. Soon, a blanket of stars would fill the night sky; the black earth below sparsely dotted by little the tiny lights of ranches along the sleeping valley.

Up there, I can see the whole wild world, much as it looked a century ago. Up there in the Wilderness, the cares of Humanity are far away and small.

Let my last act be a shutter-click lightning-strike: a crack through which my spirit may slip from this world into the next. Let my last word be !)“Freedom!“!)

Telegraph Mountain Wilderness - Eastern Nevada

(2009.JUL.15)
COMPOSITE

Canon 350D EOS
Canon 18/55mm
Sigma 75/300mm