Praying in Death Valley: A Letter to my Father (Excerpt)

Elias Amidon

Elias Amidon is a writer, wilderness guide, and teacher in the Sufi tradition. With Elizabeth Roberts, he runs the Qalandar School in Boulder, Colorado, which offers solo wilderness quests and spiritual retreats in Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and abroad. Elias is president of the Institute for Deep Ecology and coeditor of the books Earth Prayers, Life Prayers, Prayers for a Thousand Years, and Honoring the Earth.

March 5, 1994

Dear Pop,

I write this from Death Valley in one of the most remote places I’ve ever been, on the fourth day of a solo fast. I feel quite weak, but peaceful. It is so quiet here. Time is nearly still—as still as my breathing. I have very few things with me —a sleeping bag, a tarp, some clothes. There are no distractions.

I think of the luxuriant green of your surroundings, the wind through a million leaves. I hope the hibiscus we planted survive after the cows got at them. I love the image of you chasing them off with a slingshot!

Here the valley and mountains are bare — just scattered creosote bushes on an undulating expanse of rock and sand. As my friend Meredith says, you sit on Grandmother’s bones out here.

My little camp rests between two smooth hills that rise up on either side of me like breasts — I’m in the bosom of the earth. As I look up from this page, I see for miles across Death Valley to the Last Chance Mountains. This area is full of portentous names ...

Why do I do this? Certainly not because it's fun (it isn’t), though tomorrow, when I hike out of here, will be wonderful and joyous. The thought of a piece of good bread, or a strawberry! No, I do this for some reason that remains half-hidden from me, that keeps surprising me. I do it to burn up the dross that collects in my soul. I do it to burn up my forgetfulness and sloppy ways of living. I do it to remember simple gratitude. The ordeal of going without food or companionship or things to do is a surprisingly hard teacher — and an honest one.

I’ve been praying a lot out here. 

These names of the Nameless open up the ground I stand on and the air I breathe and the light we all share, and suddenly Everything is Listening! Rock, lizard, crow, cloud—everything listens! I feel as if I partake in the Great Kindness of the universe — my prayers me. lt me into that.

Do you remember what Einstein asked, what he Called the most fundamental question: “Is the universe benign?” I agree that the question is fundamental, but the answer is easy. To me the universe is so obviously "good”—though ruthless and indifferent at the same time. I believe that what we have emerged from, and what we will return to, is the indescribable essence of Blessing. This is not to say that I can turn away from or trivialize the world’s suffering—whoever does that trivializes themselves —but even in the face of suffering, even in the midst of my own, a kind of Unfathomable Tenderness holds us, an Unbounded Grace —although these words — Tenderness and Grace — are only distant approximations of what is.

Just before I started this letter I was sitting here gazing out at the Quiet and you came to my mind. I thought of your eighty-two years and that very likely, though not for sure, you will die before me, and suddenly 1 was filled with a great pang of missing you. I haven’t written anything since I’ve been out here—it’s too distracting—but that pang made me get out my pen and paper. The idea of a world without you in it makes me lonely, though who knows, you might be dead even as I write this, or I might be as you read this. We live mostly in an illusion of our own projection. And maybe that is the magic of prayer and its power: It calls us to dive deep into what matters most to us, to find it, acknowledge it, and bring it up into the air. That’s why singing my prayers aloud in my singsong chanting way up on this hill with no one listening fills me with such love and gratefulness. An illusion of my own projection, which becomes truth. Like existence itself bursting out of emptiness, we mimic that incomprehensible act in our own little ways.

It is a chance to unfold ourselves through what matters most to us—like great music and art and dance and poetry. But then, all of our gestures carry the potential of prayer within them—a handshake, a kiss, making a meed, making love, wishing each other good morning, good night, have a nice day, be well! Prayers to the heart we share, and the Silence that holds us so tenderly. And yet, for all this high-minded talk of prayer, it’s really not so special—in fact, it’s quite ordinary. It’s simply what we give. Prayer is what we give. We give thanks, we give love, we give support, we give respect, we give solace, we give compassion. Prayer is our gift back.

That’s why I come out here, and why I guide others to come, because in some mysterious way it completes the circle, allowing me to touch without distraction all that I care for and value, and to offer my life to that.