I camp mostly for the stargazing. Everything else is important, of course. The campfire, the smoky bacon, the muddy coffee. Trees, fresh air, endless trails. All great. But what I look forward to most of all is slipping out of my tent on a dark, moonless night, finding a clearing in the trees, looking up at the sky, and realizing that light from a star that shot out a hundred thousand years ago is only just now hitting my retina. That’s awe. Awe is what John Muir felt when he came up over that ridge to see the Merced Valley laid out below on his first High Sierra excursion, or inched out along a narrow granite ledge behind Yosemite Falls to watch thousands of gallons tumble past his face every second. Awe is what Oppenheimer conveyed in his response to seeing the first atom bomb—his creation—tested: “I remembered the line from the Hindu Scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita. ‘Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.'” Awe is what the first humans to reach Australia likely felt