Wild Belief: Poets and Prophets in the Wilderness

"Midway upon the journey of our life / I found myself within a forest dark." Dante's Inferno begins with imagery of the wilderness marked by darkness, fear, and the unknown. In folktales, legends, and children's stories, the wilderness is a place of conflict and exile. Yet there is another spiritual tradition that embraces the complexities of the wilderness as a place of rejuvenation and wonder—a place where Thomas Merton said "man purges himself of 'sediments of society' and becomes a new ...