He poked through the caked mud around the grounds and found almost nothing he could recognize.  He scuffed along through the ashes and kicked up one of hte spikes he'd used in building the cabins's walls, but couldn't find any others.

He saw no sign of their Bible, either.  If the Lord had failed to protect even the book of his own Word, this proved to Grainier that here had come a fire stronger than God.

Denis Johnson, Train Dreams pg. 45

"One night in 1945, on a Navy vessel in Pacific storm, my relief on bow watch, seasick, failed to appear, and I was alone for eight hours in a maelstrom of wind and water, noise and iron; again and again, waves crashed across the deck, until water, air, and iron became one. Overwhelmed, exhausted, all thought and emotion beaten out of me, I lost my sense of self, the heartbeat I heard was the heart of the world, I breathed with the mighty risings and declines of earth, and this evanescence seemed less frightening than exalting. Afterward, there was pain of loss--loss of what, I wondered, understanding nothing."

-Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard (pg.43)