“obeying” means to be in the manner of hearing, of listening, and that’s what the wanderings seem to me to have been: listenings, probably the conjurer of all human faith and all our senses of home. Those ancestors obeyed the ways the world has of being itself—weather, water, elevation, the grasses, and the animals—and so they moved. These were not flights away from something savage and inhuman or toward some kind of heaven that would finally be friendly. Their home was their way of living, and obedience was their life, and moving was their obedience.
