A Way in the Wilderness

Lake Louise, Alberta*

Ice encrusts your goggles

at twenty five below.

Paths are sealed

in darkness, Lord!

There’s no clear way to go.

And winter trails dim well

too fast as eventide

folds into night

with stars alone

providing light.

The world recedes as ways fall

dark and beauty

drains from mortal

sight, a silent prison

sealed in white.

While woods are lovely, dark and deep

when viewed from lodge

or well-groomed path,

sometime in life

will come a test

When woods turn into wilderness

when dark and deep

oppress the soul

when lovely turns

to creeping cold

Your mind harks back to life before

spent safe beside the hearthstone

fire, which burns and brightens

even now in warmth

the lodge at Lake Louise.

You pause in awe of open sky

where holy visions

crystallize, as early

evening stars appear

with undreamed wonders

Pressing near, beyond all words

but strangely clear

when set in stillness

white on white

so far from lodge at Lake Louise.

But ice encrusts your goggles,

it seeps inside

your soul, and time

compresses tightly

to frozen snowy hell

Its icy heart, indifferent

to choices

and their toll.

So brave the cold,

embrace the pain

Then take a step, and step again;

led by the arms of God to life

or to the arms of God to lie

matters not in wilderness –

resolve sustains

Beyond despair if inner stillness

shares the grace

of snow white peaks

seen in the face
and placid depths of Lake Louise.

*This poem is condensed from “A Way Out of Wilderness,” with Susan Richardson -  a poetic account of her cross-country trek while attending a professional workshop, December 2007.  Susan looks back on the ordeal remembering the combination of hope and joy expressed in the final lines of that poem, "[I'll] count myself the grateful lost / pursuing traces etched in white, / and reach that pathway’s end in time / forevermore the grateful found."