“The wild is my church . . .”

My 15-year old son Rex was a serious backpacker and outdoorsman. He had hiked in Colorado and portions of the Appalachian Trail in Vermont, New Hampshire and Main. Less than a week before he died in a car accident Rex took his first solo in the countryside of Oklahoma. Here is a poem I found in a journal belonging to my son.
Linda Kennedy Rosser
Edmond, OK

Funeral In The Pines
When I die I would like not to have an elaborate funeral at some church on Fifth Street. I would much rather have my funeral in the wild beneath rocky cathedrals reaching to the heavens. That is where God is closest, in the world as He made it, not the way man made it. The preacher will be the wind howling through the birches and pines. There will be no organ, the hymns will be sung by the birds. I will be buried by the leaves of Autumn. The wild is my church, and I think it is God’s church too. How can someone build a building and call it a House of God? The House of God is the untouched woods, mountains, plains, oceans – – the land that God has made, not that man has made. At my funeral there will be no sadness or grief, only the singing of the birds and the howling of the wind. And finally to send me into heaven, the thunder!
Rex Rosser

Published Outside Magazine sometime in the late 1970’s or early 1980’s

I had cut this out and for a long time carried it around in my wallet.  At some point I copied it down in a notebook. I eventually lost the original article so I don’t have the exact date it was published.

A google search turned this information up:

Rex Kennedy Rosser
BIRTH 15 Nov 1963; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma County, Oklahoma, USA
DEATH 1 Mar 1979 (aged 15); Borger, Hutchinson County, Texas, USA
BURIAL Rose Hill Burial Park; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma County, Oklahoma, USA
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/45062363/rex-kennedy-rosser

Son of Ronald Edward Rosser and Linda Kennedy Rosser.
Rex Kennedy Rosser,
Killed in Auto Accident
Edmond – A trip to a Colorado ski slope turned into tragedy Thursday when a 15 year-old Edmond youth. Rex Kennedy Rosser, was thrown from a vehicle driven by his father and killed near Stinnett, Texas
Ron Rosser, 43 and other son, Richard 17, and a family friend, Wolfram Koller, 16, all received minor injuries in the single car accident. They were treated at the Borger, Texas, hospital and released.
The Rooser car apparently ran off the roadway and struck an embankment, causing the vehicle to turn over once or twice.
The youth, a freshman at Deer Creek High School and valedictorian of his 8th-grade class, was thrown from the vehicle which apparently rolled on top of him.
Koller of Hamburge Germany is an exchange student living the Rossers.
The youth’s father is a member of the Oklahoma City Zoological trust, and his mother is president of Omnipeople, the volunteer organization for Omniplex.
Rosser was a member of the high school speech team and active in the Challenge Wilderness program.
An avid collector of baseball memorabilia, Rosser, with the help of his father, published the first set of 89er baseball cards.
Services will be at 3 pm Monday at First United Methodist Church with burial in Memorial Park Cemetery, directed by Hahn-Cook, Street & Draper Funeral Home.
Other survivors include his grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. E. Lee Kennedy, Oklahoma City.
Published in the Oklahoman & Times, Saturday March 3, 1979 page 30.
** Rex was originally interred at Memorial Park.