Epiphany's Gift - Roberta Elkins

Acrylic on Canvas
18 x 24
 
Epiphany’s Gift
By Mallory M. O’Connor
 
Prologue
She couldn’t remember a time when they weren’t there—the voices, the visions, the patterns of colored light that flickered around the bodies of her family and friends. The ghostly figures that came and went, appearing and disappearing, there and then gone. As a child, she encountered them everywhere, but especially in the gorge that cut a jagged swath into the earth at the north end of her family’s farm in Southern Ohio. 
A vertical wilderness of cliffs and waterfalls, of giant ferns and towering hemlocks, the gorge was also the home of the hermit, Richard Rowe. Following the War of 1812, Rowe became a loner and chose to live a solitary life in the forest. He discovered the Hocking Valley and decided to stay in the region. With only his two dogs as companions, he lived out his life in the wilderness until his death from an accidental self- inflicted gunshot wound. His remains were later discovered and were buried near the entrance to the cave that had been his home. 
On a late spring day in 1965, Richard Rowe became Epiphany Mayall’s first Spirit Guide.