Phenomenal: A Hesitant Adventurer's Search for Wonder in the Natural World (35 page)

Finally, the girl spoke up: “It is
not
a star. It’s huge! You have no idea what you’re talking about!”

Patiently, he told her, “If the sun was a long way away, it would look like any other star. But it’s really close so it looks much bigger.”

For the rest of the lecture, she was on the edge of her seat, actually gripping her chair. She had grown up with mythology. Her community was functioning as a hunter-gatherer society. Its nature-based stories were remembered because they were still used as paths of survival. She knew the stars as her ancestors, and she was connected to the sky as my Hawaiian friends are connected to the earth by Pele-reinforced
pikos
.

Now, standing before her, was a Moon-man who—despite his own skepticism—valued the mythology of her culture. And he was asking her to value his abstract, scientific ideas. He was encouraging her to trust his word until she could go far enough to discover, for herself, value in what he was saying.

In that moment, in her young mind, she began to reconcile the rational with the visceral. The practical with the spiritual. She began to embody the sort of harmony we’ve just witnessed via a three-dimensional universe. She understood that his slide images were just symbols, stand-ins for the mysterious, immeasurable cosmos. Through them, she’d learned that the sun was important because of earth’s perspective. That the cosmos were grander than she could even dream. And, by extension, so was she.

Because if the sun was a star, it didn’t have to be
just
a star. It could also be—as traditional stories relay—a woman shaking ornamental ochre from her skin to color the clouds. This new perspective didn’t make the sun smaller, it only served to make the universe bigger. It was suddenly full of sun sisters—brighter, wiser ancestors of unknowable numbers.

Ray revels in the memory. “I love teaching. There’s nothing like it. You get the conversion experience.”

The conversion he’s talking about has nothing to do with science or religion. It exists outside of dogma and rules and culture, and—depending on how it’s delivered—even language itself. It is the transformation from cynicism to wonder. Ray—as someone tenuously straddling the line between mythology and science—had offered that little girl an abstract idea as a way of expanding, not belittling, her direct experience.

She was—in that very moment—starting a new, personal relationship to mystery. The not knowing. The joy of seeking. Because wonder isn’t about finding answers; it’s about becoming more comfortable with questions.

Though we live in the information age, I’ve come to believe that it’s how we deal with mystery—as cultures, institutions, and individuals—that ultimately dictates how we live out our lives. We are animals with the capacity for abstract thought, but we are still animals. So, we continually grope for ways to make the mystery real. Phenomenal. Directly observable through our senses.

In the face of natural phenomena, we sometimes let them speak. But when it comes time to share knowledge, we cannot explore complex abstractions without using metaphors from the phenomenal world. So, with limited language and rituals, we mix them to get at what we mean. We mash them. We fight over and about them. And the symbolic stories we trust and the way we tell them guide our hands as they shape the earth; as we are shaped by it.

Kate has found that witnessing an eclipse tends to inspire a sense of connectivity to “the universe, God, or nature.” To me, Universe, God, and Nature are all words that can stand in as symbols for the same thing:
Mystery.
And to experience an eclipse—or any of the phenomena I have explored—is to be granted an audience with it.

“Awe,” Schneider writes, “is our relationship to mystery.”

And it is something we each have to recognize and reclaim for ourselves.

Emotions of awe and wonder have been found to make people less impatient, less materialistic, more willing to help others, and more satisfied with life. They are feelings most often and most strongly born of direct, phenomenal experience. But they can also be inspired by story, ritual, image, metaphor, or meaningful coincidence. Sometimes, they’re found in all, simultaneously.

Take, for instance, my morning.

I’ve been viscerally dazzled by the greatest phenomenon known to man. And the overwhelming awe of that experience has been compounded by the synchronicity of this:
I just stared directly into The Eye of God with a bunch of atheists.

So what, pray tell, do I make of all this?

It’s a question recently posed to me by a friend who was present at Archer’s birth. She asked if I’d come to any conclusions about life’s larger questions as I wound down my travels. I didn’t know how to answer. I couldn’t gather my thoughts well enough to say that I have had a personal metamorphosis since I saw those swirling monarchs in Mexico. That I have died and been resurrected in the light of lightning and lava since she saw me through labor. That I, someone nervous even to hear someone utter the word God, have been transformed by wind and wildebeest into the sort of person who brings up faith in conversation with atheists.

But if I were to run into her today, I would offer this: There is no conclusion. There never will be. Because I have faith in ever-living mystery. Because I believe in the power of stories. Because I have felt, with my eyes and ears and hands, the inspired words of storyteller Brian Andreas:
The sound of what cannot be seen sings within everything that can.

I have begun to better trust my senses and intuition, my many ways of knowing. Nature’s ongoing creation song affects me in ways my intellect cannot fully conceive, and it connects us all on a scale too large to imagine. But, even so, clues to its grandeur are everywhere—in the formation of fast-moving clouds, the weaving of a migratory bird’s nest. Awe-inspiring phenomena have been swirling around me all my life—antidotes to anxiety and other ills—but I’ve only just discovered how to fully drink them in.

Ray pushes a yellow, yolk-smeared plate to the center of the table. Then, the Moon-man tells me that he still thinks about that little Sun-star girl sometimes. He says, when he looked at her that day, he thought to himself:
Now, there’s a kid who’s seen the light.

 • • • 

As soon as I get home from Australia, I take Archer on my knee to tell him that he is made of stardust. He immediately lifts his shirt to stare at his stomach. He instinctively puts a finger to his navel. Overwhelmed with the good—if somewhat abstract—news that the glory of the night sky is also within him, he proceeds to spread the word.

It isn’t long before Archer and his best friend are regularly taunting:

“You’re stardust!”

“No, you are!”

Given this, I shouldn’t be surprised when he strips to his underwear—in preparation for a bath—and slaps his stomach, shouting with open lungs: “I’m stardust!”

He pauses and points toward me.

“Yep,” I say, “I’m stardust, too. So is Daddy. Everything on earth . . .”

He shakes his head. He’s heard all this before. “No, look!” he says, waving his index finger at something behind me. I turn to see the small window above the bathtub. “It’s dark!” he exclaims. “Let’s go see the stars!”

It’s taken twenty minutes of wrangling to get him to this stage of our nightly ritual. And that’s not counting the extended family hug that commenced when bath time was announced—six arms intertwined, tight as vines, until Matt set Archer down and guided him into the bathroom, hand on back.

Now, bedtime is closing in.

Had I never seen a volcano dance, if I’d not just stared into The Eye of God, I would protest Archer’s inconvenient request. But even here in the trenches of day-to-day life, especially here, I have to be willing to act as a vigilant witness. Because—though I’m confident my traveling days are not done—I’ve honed a sense of wonder that will thrive wherever I am, as long as I exercise it.

And Archer is showing me how.

I’m moved that all this stardust talk has reminded him that he is connected to a world beyond these walls, over this roof. Is this not what personal stories of monarchs and lightning and solar winds have done—and will continue to do—for me? Is Archer’s inspiration not part of their legacy?

“Where are my clothes?” he says, searching the tiled bathroom floor.

I want to encourage this outdoor expedition, but I also want him to get to sleep at a decent hour. So, I run into the living room and grab a velveteen blanket. I wrap it around his shoulders.

“Where are my shoes?” he says, worried.

Dramatically, I scoop him off his bare feet and into my arms. He is getting big. His skinny legs dangle all the way down to my knees. I will not be able to carry him for much longer. But tonight I heave him upward with all of my strength, so that I’m cradling him like a baby. I cocoon him until only his face is exposed. He is giggling.

Outside, the air is dry, freezing. The moon is only a memory, hidden in our shadow. But the sky is full of stars, silver glitter spilled on a charcoal slate.

I point out the Big Dipper. Then I go quiet, instructing Archer to pay attention, but not to me. Phenomena are, in this very moment, all around us, speaking. Above, the stars flicker. Below, the river rises and falls like the soft vulnerable flesh of our chests.

The back door of the house is slightly ajar. I turn my gaze from the heavens to study my son in the honeyed light that’s leaking from the doorway. His eyes are focused upward, growing wider. He wiggles his arms out of the blanket and throws them around my neck. Then—in the presence of this shimmering, living night—he leans in to whisper, with reverence, “We’re stardust.” And the radiance of his awestruck face is something truly magnificent to behold.

My parents, Randall and Carolyn Henion, empower me by being involved, yarn-spinning grandparents—a practice influenced by the memory of mine: Daynese, Herman, Lois, and Richard. This book belongs to them, as it belongs to Matt and Archer, my partners in everyday adventure.

To me, taking three children under the age of four grocery shopping is more intimidating than swimming with sharks, but Cassie Koerber-Pennington has done it with ease. Archer’s seat in her cart has given me writing time, and Landon, Maya, and Everett Pennington have made my entire family feel part of their own. I’m also thankful for the Hrenaks.

Sunny Townes Stewart read this manuscript before anyone else, as she has much of my writing over the years. She claims to have a poor sense of direction, but she’s never led me astray. The same goes for Aaron Beck-Schachter, who challenges my worldview and unfailingly walks beside me. David Rowell, my editor at
The
Washington Post Magazine
, has become a trusted friend and mentor over the years. The first two chapters of this book began as articles under his guidance at the
Post
, and they were all improved by his generous suggestions, off the clock.

When my agent, Molly Friedrich—a flesh-and-bone woman with the creative power of Pele—first heard my far-reaching book idea, she didn’t make any promises. But I knew my life was about to change. And, well, this is the story of what happened next! Thanks to Lucy Carson, Molly Schulman, Nichole LeFebvre, and Maggie Riggs for making me feel so well taken care of by the Friedrich Agency, personally and professionally.

When Ann Godoff acquired this project, she gave me a piece of field advice:
Pay attention
. She seemed to know, even before I did, what this book was really about. I will always be thankful she had the instinct to invest in me. At The Penguin Press, I appreciate the work of Lindsay Whalen, Ginny Smith Younce, Ben Platt, Sofia Ergas Groopman, and everyone else who touched this project.

For years, I’ve enthusiastically cornered friends at grocery stores and toddler parties to talk phenomena. Some people—I’m looking at you, Andy Miller, John and Erin Peters, Kathy Henson, Jamie Goodman, Rebecca Gummere, Betsy Carr, Natalie Cooper—were targeted more hardily than others. But many patient friends have helped this project along—too many to mention—and that’s not counting the poor souls trapped with me on airplanes as I tried to make sense of it all. I remain appreciative of their saintly willingness to listen and offer wisdom.

My sage confidante Bethany Jewell advised against packing jeans for the jungle. Many professionals supported her suggestion: Jo Salamon at Arc’teryx; Lee Weinstein and Deborah Pleva at ICEBREAKER; Dave Simpson at Outdoor Research; Dave Campbell and Jess Clayton at Patagonia; Deanna Rakowsky at The North Face. Without them, I would have been soaked, melted, and frozen in turn.

Paula Franklin at &Beyond gave me indispensable help with the Tanzanian leg of my journey, and the staff of Hotel Arctic Eden went out of their way to be helpful when I was in Sweden, as did Johanna Sandström of Abisko Turiststation. I’m indebted to Judy Marshall and Michael Healy at Quicksilver, Maryanne Jacques at Adventure North, and Willie Gordon and Judy Bennett at Guurrbi for their assistance in Australia. The Big Island Visitors Bureau, Jessica Ferracane, Catherine Tarleton, Noreen Kam, and Roger Dubin, helped me find my way in Hawai‘i.

This project was supported by the North Carolina Arts Council, a division of the Department of Cultural Resources, with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, in the form of an Artist Fellowship. The Watauga, Avery, and Ashe County Arts Councils also assisted. I’m grateful to magazine editors Elizabeth Hudson and Mike Graff for offering freelance flexibility during the writing of this book, and to my old friend Wiley Cash for encouragement and advice.

My colleagues at Appalachian State University have been exceptionally supportive. A special nod to the incomparable Betty Conway—who has the ability to stave off wolves, four-legged and metaphorical—as well as Joseph Bathanti, Sandra Ballard, Tony Calamai, Mike Mayfield, David Huntley, and Dave Haney. Also, my students, who inspire and accept me, year after year, for the wildly animated speaker I am. My teaching style is, as a pupil once pointed out, a form of interpretive dance. I will no longer play this down.

I’m grateful to my own teachers—formal and otherwise—who have emboldened me over the years, especially Dean Hedley, Larry White, Heidi Kelly, John Wood, Neal Menschel, Kate Philbrick, Donna Galluzzo, Judith Bevan, and Crystal Kelly. I also appreciate the influence of everyone I studied under and with at the University of North Carolina at Asheville, Queens University of Charlotte, and the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies.

Serengeti scholar Tom Morrison gave me an understanding of what it’s like to research elusive wildebeest, and Anton Seimon, Kenneth Pickering, and Rachel Albrecht were particularly helpful when it came to probing the Catatumbo lightning. I’ve taken great pains to relay research that was current during my time on the ground with each phenomenon. But the story of science is ever evolving.

I’ll refrain from repeating the names of everyone in these pages, but I would like to acknowledge their generosity of story and spirit. Over the past few years, I have witnessed some of the most awe-inspiring natural phenomena on earth. But it was the individuals encountered who ultimately made the journey meaningful.

And then, there is you, dear reader. Countless people took a chance on me based on the promise that, someday, you would hold this book. I lift a hand to my heart and offer you all, loud as a lion’s roar:
Gracias. Mahalo. Tack. Giitu. Asante. Thank you.