Joseph Smith went to the woods because he wished to know the truth of his existence. He did not take his longing to a bedroom or closet in his house or to a barn or shed on his family\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s property (all good places for soul searching). In a forest grove, he dropped to his knees, laid out the seeds of his desire to know, and watered them with fervent prayer.<\/p>\n
The season was right, the desire fertile, and the light<\/em> \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 That is, after Joseph wrestled his bout with darkness, supernal light broke through, warmed the seeds bearing Joseph\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s desire to know and split them wide. Eternal purpose, truth, and life took root on Earth in a way it had not done for centuries.<\/p>\n Joseph\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s choice of forest as staging ground for putting his Big Questions to God suggests he trusted solitude and the stimulating qualities natural environments offer. Somehow \u00e2\u20ac\u201c perhaps in ways difficult for us to imagine because potential Sacred Groves are harder to come by than they were in Joseph\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time \u00e2\u20ac\u201c nature might have facilitated the emergence of the modern church. Whatever else, the Sacred Grove provided everyone involved, including its Creators, geopositioning for the gospel\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s restoration. Joseph Smith\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s account of what happened to him when he went to the woods to pray bears many labels. Among them should be that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s one of the world\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s most striking moments in nature literature.<\/p>\n Through Joseph Smith\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s First Vision, Mormonism stakes its claim in the grand tradition of finding God in the wilderness. Couple this claim with our belief in eternal progression, add the central role repentance plays in our lives, and we really have quite the lenses for gazing upon the grandeur of the Mystery. With our growing LDS scientific and cultural communities, LDS literary nature writers ought to abound. In fact, given the LDS belief that there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a mustard seed god in each of us, one would expect more Mormon writers to be chronicling its growth in the creation. So \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 where are our records of discovery?<\/p>\n