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Show Page 22 school where he studied "geography, grammar, and surveying." The wanderings of 1828 turned into mental and spiritual explorations, although his four months at the academy ended the meager formal education which he had sought, above all else, in poverty and among strangers as well as at home. His pursuits at school, sporadic as they had to be, nurtured a technical address that would later navigate the Great Plains and grid out cities, that would search the philosophy 35 and • ' physics of his age for the terrain of truth. Such explorations began in earnest in Orson's eighteenth year. After long hours on the Lord farms, while others slept, Orson "often retired to some secret place in the lonely fields or solitary wilderness," bowing and praying for hours "with broken heart and contrite spirit; this 36 was my comfort and delight." While brother Parley was finding a measure of consolation in the Campbellite ministry, Orson remained aloof from the sectarianism his father had skirted, exercising his devotions in solitude. Like many neighbors, Orson was actually seeking a revelatory "conversion" experience. "The greatest desire of my heart," he wrote, "was for the Lord to manifest His will concerning me." By his own account, his fervent seeking occupied a year's energies, and often left him in a state of uncertain health, for an earnest inner quest was replacing the aimlessness of his boyhood. In addition, Orson grew up in a country afflicted with the fever of revivalism; "camp meeting" conversions were common in Orson's neighborhood, instaneous "regeneration" an everyday occurrence, often dramatic, hysterical, and prodigious. Such marvels may have put off the straightforward young man with scientific leanings, but undoubtedly influenced him to begin his own search for certainty. Though he was not transported by the incantatory exhortations of the revivalist, |
