The breath is the smallest cycle of hope and expulsion—the entire myth of Paradise lost and regain'd again and again. Yet, breath is what carries the Pilgrim on his Progress, what brings him o'er oceans and o'er mountains; breath is what brings his body forth from the past that so desolates, toward the future that might triumph beyond!

The air of the West pierces a man so, in thinness, in speed, in temperature and quality and dust! The air of the West tests a man to turn it into breath and, in that, White had most certainly just had his taken away. The air of the West has so many qualities and weights but it remains inescapable and intangible all the same—as incapable of being grasped as Divine Purpose itself.

I could not count every death I was spared on every mountain and every ledge. The South Pass across the Continental Divide is as wide as a missing mountain in the chain, but I knew it as the needle's eye.

I met salt in the desert and I met light in the desert, but I saw no prophet and my only revelation was a glimpse of the ruthlessness of geological time. The prismatic, brutal light of noon baked us all like a million magnifying glasses, but the salt's smooth surface forgot all light and let the heat slip off so callously—plunging us into the frigid depths without the slightest hesitation that I would have taken it personally had I not been consumed by my own smallness.

In the Great Salt Desert, the sky is blue, the ground is white, and you lose yourself between them; there is nothing else between them but obscene temperature and unthinkable time.

I did not find God in the desert: I found my own will to survive and the smallness one discovers in being robbed of everything else. There is nothing but smallness to be found in the vastest struggles—otherwise, we wouldn't need God on our sides. Why else do we latch onto causes? Show me a man in search of cause and I'll show you a drowning man or a man too young to know how to swim. I'll show you...

[He falls silent. After a few moments of silence, the fiddler plays "Loop #7, Tracks."]

[Hastings resumes speaking with a wracking sigh, though one that does manage to expel the bad thought. He smiles weakly and maybe even kindly.]

Actually, I did not see the Great Salt Desert on that first trip West...but that vision overwhelms my mind all the same when I think of my election as leader at the age of 23. I think of my own smallness against the unknowably long and upwardly winding mountain path life has allotted me.

God help anyone—let alone a group of 160 men, women, and children—turning to a 23-year-old boy for wisdom and guidance. However, I suppose armies of boys about that age have been determining the fate of nations since time immemorial.