being in Nature evoked a feeling of belonging to something bigger, opening a pathway to a spiritual connection with the Cosmos that transcended the passage of time.

two key features define it: The first is a sense of vastness – whether vastness of space, time, beauty, understanding or connection – that makes us feel smaller and experience a dissolution of the self. The other is the need to adjust our understanding of the world, in order to accommodate the experience, or at least try to.

In Awe: The Delights and Dangers of Our Eleventh Emotion, neuropsychologist Paul Pearsall defines awe as an “overwhelming and bewildering sense of connection with a startling universe that is usually far beyond the narrow band of our consciousness.” And not surprisingly, this nature-inspired awe is also good for our health. A landmark study by Jenn