Edward Abbey's Benediction

I've always enjoyed this particular passage by Edward Abbey, and so I thought this would be an appropriate medium with which to share it:

"Benedicto: May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds. May your rivers flow without end, meandering through pastoral valleys tinkling with bells, past temples and castles and poets' towers into a dark primeval forest where tigers belch and monkeys howl, through miasmal and mysterious swamps and down into a desert of red rock, blue mesas, domes and pinnacles and grottos of endless stone, and down again into a deep vast ancient unknown chasm where bars of sunlight blaze on profiled cliffs, where deer walk across the white sand beaches, where storms come and go as lightning clangs upon the high crags, where something strange and more beautiful and more full of wonder than your deepest dreams waits for you—beyond the next turning of the canyon walls."

Abbey, for those of you who don't know, was a strong champion for the preservation of the wilds of the Southwest and a true lover of its intimate secrets. For a quick, but great read, I'd suggest checking out "Desert Solitaire", although you're bound to enjoy any of his other works just as greatly.