Wilderness is a place into which the narrator’s father took his family after the Lord commanded him to “take his family and depart into the wilderness.” He left “his house, and the land of his inheritance,” with his family, provisions, and tents, traveling by borders nearer the Red Sea (1 Nephi 2:2-6).
The travelers “did travel nearly eastward from that time forth” and “did travel and wade through much affliction in the wilderness.” Their women bore children in the wilderness, and the travelers lived upon raw meat while they sojourned there (1 Nephi 17:1-3). The first-person speaker says, “I make their rivers a wilderness,” and their fish die when the waters are dried up (2 Nephi 7:2).