The following Mark's Daily Apple article was written by Mark Sisson, and is narrated by Tina Lehman.

What is the experience of awe, and why does it matter?

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 100,000 years ago is only just now hitting my retina.

That's awe.

Aw is what John Muir felt when he came up over that ridge to see the Merced Valley laid out below

on his first high-Cierra excursion, or inched out along a narrow granite ledge behind Yosemite

Falls to watch thousands of gallons tumble past his face every second.

Aw is what Oppenheimer conveyed in his response to seeing the

first Adam bomb, his creation, tested. Quote, I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture,

the Bhagavad Gita. Now I become death, the destroyer of worlds. Aw is what the first humans to reach Australia likely felt when

they stumbled upon a fantastical world of 1,000-pound flightless birds, 20-foot lizards, and 10-foot kangaroos.

Aw is what astronauts invariably report feeling upon seeing Earth from orbit.

We've all felt something similar.

Describing the types of experiences that induce awe isn't hard.

What's hard is describing the feeling itself.

It's almost beyond words.

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