dimgray

Untamed

“I want mommy.”, she cried for the only person she knew who loved her dearly. Mommy was now gone with the wind, succumbed to cancer. Beyond the shut door, a drunken rage called out her name. He was not her real dad. Her real dad, the chief ranger of Yosemite National Park, was happily married, and had been maintaining that outward veneer for the many years the poor little girl had to grow up scared and alone, first with a drunkard fake father, then in a house orphanage run by a shady clergyman from whence she would escape when she was of age, only to return to the place where she could relive the memories spent with her beloved mommy. Then BANG! We see her tumbled over a precipice over unsuspecting climbers and caught in their rope. And we identified her with a gold X tattoo. A federal agent, a man perpetually shadowed by the ghost of his son, tracked a trail of blood and bottles of pills marked with an X, that would somehow meander into a cop running away from her corrupt cop husband, a mad black bear, Indian hieroglyphs, a suicidal ex-wife, hippy squatters, dead informant, sneaky sniper, an underground forsaken mine nurturing a drug lab, and a herd of deer resting on grassy plain engulfed within acres of pines. Then more BANG BANG BANG! Dead agents, dead drug dealers and interrogations. Fixation on drugs a good ending did not make. Hence, all soil path and rocky steep must lead back to the chief ranger who, unable to face a collapsed lifelong marriage, must now pull the trigger on himself and be swept away into a river coursing through Yosemite. In Untamed, we beheld a lush natural wonder in the midst of which everyone was desperately surviving past failings. Failings only JESUS can forgive, heal and rewrite.