ng a deep kinship with the ancient Cliff Dwellers, who she believes "had lengthened her past. She [now] had older and higher obligations [to art]" (The Song of the Lark 382). It is a kind of epiphany of artistic realization, made possible by the linkage with the ancient ones of the Southwest, and it allows her to reclaim her first, purest self. At the very moment she is on the brink of unleashing her powers as a woman and an artist, it is as if she is a child reborn: "Here everything was simple and definite, as things had been in childhood. . . . Here ideas were simplified, became sharper and clearer. She felt united and strong" (The Song of the Lark 380). Vivian Gornick accurately describes Thea's experience "in the great canyons of the American earth" as "mystical" (Gornick xi), and there is an element of the sacredness of Panther Canyon as a place that alone can contain the power to fuel the tremendous dedication that Thea feels for her art, whatever obstacles await her in life, after she reenters the world. Eliade speaks to this point in
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