(my trademark work, inspired by the Hellroaring Plateau, which rises opposite the Beartooth Pass in Southern Montana) I. Come, tread the heights of Hellroaring, my friend, look upon the vast expanse of mountain crags marching crest on crest, an ocean's waves carved in stone by ice and snow, and mend your finite self as they lend their strength. Unmitigated power, condescending, begs you stride the alpen tundra with little legs ever too short no matter their length; test your mettle, seek and find a sanity absconded from the world of fragile minds that hide in light and do not know their vanity. Tread Hellroaring, know but wind and silence; trade pride of soul for spirit-driven wind and know the small expanse: your humanity. II. To embrace and know the small is your quickening; grasp as a babe for wanted, needed food, find yourself a child where a man once stood. Summit on summit, the mind reaches for infinity and shadow dreams of future hope that we can't hope alone, no matter that we should, while faltering creations we hold as highest good and deny we are the great obscenity. Can we hope, against hope, that rarefaction inspire, That breath taken may yet give life to soul? Can any hope abide when suffering's cries reverberate within that soul like thunder on Hellroaring and return the echo of evil's howl? Will not a sane man demand the how and why? For III. Death is howling, allied Hell in outrage roars, reaping, seething, flying high its ensigns, primed for battle with its angels, men and engines; its banners furl and snap, in crimson soar high above its ramparts slick with gore where pitchmen ply all their trenchant wit and wiles, trade in grand pretensions, hawking like wares the brutalities of war. But our metaphor is not of futility, of anguish: the Lion of Judah, red in claw and tooth, by freedom, hope, and truth alluring each combatant: He loves, to thereby vanquish, and with claws yet buried deep in the corpse of Death, He stands in the gaping maw of Hell, roaring.

It is not possible to escape the Law of our own accord. Nessus the centaur, at the River of Boiling Blood in the 7th circle of Hell, "of himself wrought vengeance for himself" 😬 Dante, 'Inferno', Canto XII

Let mans Soule be a Spheare, and then, in this, The intelligence that moves, devotion is, And as the other Spheares, by being growne Subject to forraigne motion, lose their owne, And being by others hurried every day, Scarce in a yeare their naturall forme obey: Pleasure or businesse, so, our Soules admit For their first mover, and are whirld by it. Hence is't, that I am carryed towards the West This day, when my Soules forme bends toward the East. There I should see a Sunne, by rising set, And by that setting endlesse day beget; But that Christ on this Crosse, did rise and fall, Sinne had eternally benighted all. Yet dare I'almost be glad, I do not see That spectacle of too much weight for mee. Who sees Gods face, that is selfe life, must dye; What a death were it then to see God dye? It made his owne Lieutenant Nature shrinke, It made his footstoole crack, and the Sunne winke. Could I behold those hands which span the Poles, And tune all spheares at once peirc'd with those holes? Could I behold that endlesse height which is Zenith to us, and our Antipodes, Humbled below us? or that blood which is The seat of all our Soules, if not of his, Made durt of dust, or that flesh which was worne By God, for his apparell, rag'd, and torne? If on these things I durst not looke, durst I Upon his miserable mother cast mine eye, Who was Gods partner here, and furnish'd thus Halfe of that Sacrifice, which ransom'd us? Though these things, as I ride, be from mine eye, They'are present yet unto my memory, For that looks towards them; and thou look'st towards mee, O Saviour, as thou hang'st upon the tree; I turne my backe to thee, but to receive Corrections, till thy mercies bid thee leave. O thinke mee worth thine anger, punish mee, Burne off my rusts, and my deformity, Restore thine Image, so much, by thy grace, That thou may'st know mee, and I'll turne my face