<TITLE>20. Par 55-56</TITLE>L-55 Listen. This is a little 'fore closing. A few years ago... About three weeks from now I aim to be in the same place: British Columbia. I was coming out there. I'd been all day long; and I'd got chasing... We'd been back, just come from Africa. I was so tired. I went into the wilderness there for two weeks to rest myself. And we were hunting in there with about twenty-one--about twenty-one horses, and we was back about a thousand miles from a hardtop road and from a grade, about a hundred and fifty miles, way in the wilderness, four or five ministers and I alone.
And one day I got to chasing a grizzly bear on a horse. And I wanted to get up to the old fellow to see what he looked like. And I got turned around back in the mountains. So that evening, I had to wait till the moon come out so I could see. It got kindly cloudy, and saw a snow storm was coming, and I found my direction which way to go back, 'cause there's no roads or nothing for hundreds of miles. And so, not even paths to travel.

L-56 And I was on my road back, and I was riding down and it got way late in the night: getting about nine o'clock. And I was riding down through an old burn-over. How many knows what a burn-over is, where the fire has burnt all the--the wood down and everything like that? Just great big old trees standing, all split, and the sap all burnt off of them and everything, the bark, and you're standing there, a big old stately looking tree. And I looked through there, and the first thing you know, it was the spookiest looking place I ever come into. And I looked and I thought, "Look at that moon shining on them old white trees." It just looked like, "My, what--what is that? Looked like a graveyard and a lot of tombstones."
And it looked like something said to me, "Stop here a minute."
Well, I thought, "I'm hurrying to get back; I'm about starved, and I've probably got about five miles more to go and over another mountain." I thought, "What do You want me to stop here for?" So I stopped just a minute and looked.
Directly, the wind started blowing. There come a wind down from heaven, passed through it. And them trees went, "Whooo..."
And I thought, "My, talk about a lonesome, spooky place." I thought, "What do You want me to stop here for, Lord? Now, You want me to stand here, maybe I'd better pray."
So I got down, prayed a little bit, got back up, and the wind come again, "Ooo... "
And I thought then of what Joel said, "What the palmerworm left, the caterpillar eaten. What the caterpillar left, the cankerworm eaten," all those things there. I thought, "Yes, that's right. This was once a great forest here, great green trees. But there come a--a great fire one time, and burnt all the--the things off. Just like a great big bunch of churches: great big spires sticking up like that, just looked like a big bunch of tombstones: walk into the place and the spiritual thermometer a thousand below zero. Walk in there and somebody say, "Amen," they'd turn around, and the pastor get a deacon and take them outside the door."
"Why, you interrupt me when you're hollering, 'Amen.'" Well, you interrupt me when you don't holler, "Amen." Now, that's all right.


<A HREF="P21">Next Page</A>