Pilgrim: a traveler [wanderer] who journeys a long distance from his/her own country towards some holy place.

Hidden Valley

- by Anne Hanley

We walked through a valley with no name
and it was the most everything of all of them.

Could it be the Adam assigned to name it
gave up without trying or ran out of days?

Every step through that valley, we were awake.
Every instant, we were new. Every night, we had visions.

But we did not name any of it. We left it to itself.
And it rewarded us with deep secrets.

We heard water fall. Watched grasses bend.
Smelled death. Tasted berries. Felt rain.

As soon as we left that valley still hidden, still nameless,
we were lonesome for it and have been ever since.

- Written during the first Artists in Residence trip to Gates of the Arctic National Park