Unimproved by human engineers,

the wilderness is nature in the raw;

night sky, the stars, the cold, the bed of straw,

the hunt, the cry, the ever-watchful fears.

This dangerous, ill-fit place, is called “retreat”;

discovering God in nature’s origins

its otherness, a hint how it begins.

Wild it’s start; of a wilder God it speaks;

A God Who must be kind and tamed and taught

to live beneath a roof, be civilized,

to speak when spoken to without surprise.

In short, to help us as a true god ought.

In wilderness we learn that God must change

And we? God’s work Improve and rearrange.