Photograph: Anastasia Miseyko. Retrieved from imagine5.com
Last spring, I guided seven teenage mountaineers toward the summit of one of the tallest volcanoes in North America. We made our high camp at 3,200 metres and woke at 1:30am to begin a nine-hour push for the summit. Hands clumsy with altitude sickness, we laced our heavy mountaineering boots, tried to eat some- thing, leashed our ice axes, and started uphill. Shortly after leaving camp, the gibbous moon set behind the mountain’s western flank, and the sky above us took on the depth and luminosity unique to the thin alpine air. Just before the grey dusk began filtering into the sky, we paused, turned off our headlamps, and marvelled at the broad ribbon of the Milky Way in the frozen night. The starlight was just bright enough to illuminate the mountain, whose white summit rose more than 1,000 metres above us. We were transfixed in the stillness, cradled in the fold of these two eternities. Right where we belonged.
What we experienced in that moment was awe, which is not the same thing as amazement. Amazement has a timbre of incredulity, of struggling to place an experience into our understanding of the world. Watching a magician pull a rabbit out of a hat is amazing. In a way, this is a cheaper experience. Hearing a pianist’s hands dance across a keyboard is no guarantee that the music she plays will stir us to a deeper emotion.