The spiritual function of fierce terrain...is to bring us to the end of ourselves, to the abandonment of language and the relinquishment of ego. A vast expanse of jagged stone, desert sand, and towering thunderheads has a way of challenging all the mental constructs in which we are tempted to take comfort and pride, thinking we have captured the divine. The things that ignore us save us in the end.
Good human work honors God's work. Good work uses no thing without respect, both for what it is in itself and for its origin. It uses
neither tool nor material that it does not
respect and that it does not love. It honors nature as a great mystery and power, as an
indispensable teacher, and as the inescapable judge of all work of human hands.
