Loss, Remorse, and Hope

[glorph]

Earlier today, I finished one of H. P. Lovecraft’s lengthier works, I daresay long enough to be considered a novella, entitled “The Whisperer in Darkness.” The horrors about which Lovecraft wrote in the story were, to me, dwarfed by a kind of resentful sadness that his description of the setting evoked in me. The bulk of the story was set in Vermont, and I’ve been to several of the areas he mentions specifically by name. My heart sank as I read his portrayal of wild and untamed valleys and deep, uncharted woods, for these places are no more. The foreboding green sentinels that towered, ominous and inaccessible, over the lush green vales, the dense primeval forests that might harbor untold hosts of elemental spirits, the sinister-seeming streams whose waters trickled down from unknown and potentially unwholesome sources into which he imagined ancient alien races and other strangeness hidden in largely unexplored territory… gone. Parsed, paved, quantified and documented, the places that Lovecraft depicted have been destroyed, their mysteries eradicated, their purity annihilated. It saddens and angers me at once to know that the pristine power and primal beauty of these areas are lost, that humanity has destroyed them. I think that is a large part of what I hope to find in the West, some of what remains of the wild places, where civilization is scarcely more than a rumor, nature still reigns in all her glory, and the magick is thick and vital and pure. There are still places like this that remain, places that I must see, places that I must go… and soon, I will have a guide and companion to bring me to those places and share them with me, a kindred spirit to show me the way to where we can revel in that ancient, sacred potency together, and bring back something of it to pass between us, strengthening that energy, ourselves, and each other as we do.

It humbles me, to be so blessed.

Carpe Noctem.