I keep coming back to this moment. It wasn’t like one of those triumphant places you arrive after hiking a crazy hard summit or coming over the ridgeline after a particularly difficult skiing expedition. I didn’t make it to the top, breathing hard, and yell out, whooping with joy. I doubt whether the people who were with me even remember it. I first wrote about this place and this moment 13 years ago, and it’s stuck, inexplicably, like when you catch a scent that transports you home or a riff from a song that brings back the memory of a younger self.

The evening arrived in Israel’s Negev Desert awash in rose gold light, and the temperature dropped quickly as the sun dipped behind the edge of the crater. We had spent the better part of the afternoon hiking into the Makhtesh Ramon, the world’s largest erosion crater. The heart-shaped depression was left behind when the oceans retreated from this area millions of years ago. The land is now stark and dry; fossils from ancient sea creatures dot the hills, and only ibex, lizards, and small desert creatures dare to spend much time here any more.

The Negev and its Ramon Crater sit in the southern part of one of the most fraught geo-political landscapes on earth. Travel north from the desert and you’ll soon run into the Dead Sea with Jordan to its east and the Gaza Strip with the Mediterranean Sea to its west. Eventually, you’ll make your way to Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, the Sea of Galilee, and then the Golan Heights and the northern border with Syria. If you drove from the southern tip of Israel at the edge of the Red Sea to the northern border, it would only take you about nine hours. The same amount of time it would take you to drive from Denver to Yellowstone National Park.

Thousands of years of human struggle and war have left this land and its people scarred and battle-worn, but as sunset approached, the Negev Desert was quiet and beautiful. We set up our campsite as it grew darker, choosing to lay our sleeping pads down on the desert floor with no tents or cover. The ground was still warm from the heat of the day, and the stars came out slowly and then all at once.

I was edging towards sleep when I heard the humming. It was distant at first but gained momentum and volume and then it boomed across the desertscape. My eyes shot open, and I watched as fighter jets rushed towards the far horizon, their wings blocking out the stars. The sound was unlike anything I’d ever experienced; it reverberated against the walls of the crater and through to my bones. The ground vibrated against the sound waves with each pass of the jets, a screaming reminder of the civilization that existed just on the other side of the cliffs. The war games went on for about an hour. The green and red lights on the tips of the wing flashed as they passed overhead. Could they see us? Did they know we were here? After the fear subsided and my heart rate slowed to a more normal pace, I settled into the folds of my mummy bag and watched as the planes dove in and out of formation.

***

In the Jewish cultural tradition, there are fables called midrash which do their best to render relatable and make moral sense of different moments of the human experience. One such story about the creation of humans goes something like this:

On the sixth day of creation, God presents the idea of creating humankind to the angels in the heavenly court. They freak out, chaos erupts, and the angels take sides. One side argues that righteousness justifies humankind’s creation, while one argues that they will be full of lies. Another side says that humankind’s inherent justness justifies his creation, while the fourth argues that he will incite fighting and disrupt the peace on earth. While the angels are going at it, God pops down to earth and creates humankind in his image. He then flies back up to the heavens and cries out, “Hey, angels! What good are you doing with your arguing? Humankind has already been created.”

***

Humans are complicated. What’s particularly interesting about this fable is that there exists a level of self-awareness — just like the angels knew about the pitfalls of human nature, we know that our footprints on natural landscapes, our cities, and our very presence all make things more complicated and dangerous for the natural world. It’s our human politics that make it hard for us to coexist with a world full of natural wonders.

Sometimes awe is loud and triumphant, a “woop, woop!” as you reach the end of the trail and catch a glimpse of the distant mountain range or a guttural yelp as you leap to the next hand or foothold and turn to look at the valley below. But more often I’ve found that awe is quiet in its strength. It’s the wind drifting up the sides of the crater and the scorpion that scoots across the rocky ground. Awe is really about sitting in the belly of a crater, and even in the darkest hours of the night, still seeing the glow of the sun on the horizon. It’s about taking a deep breath and only smelling the hint of rain in the atmosphere. Awe is a reminder that the quiet strength of nature, in spite of our interference and our existence, and even in one of the most wartorn places in the world, thrives as time pushes forward.

I must have fallen asleep at some point and soon sunrise arrived without much fanfare. We cleaned up camp and slowly traversed back up the sides of the crater towards a shower or our next destination. Years have worn away the edges on a specific itinerary. Nature is fully present in a way that humans can’t be when fighter jet engines turn up the volume on fear and uncertainty. It’s not the shock of the sonic booms nor the fear of the war planes that I’ve held onto all these years; it’s that feeling of warmth, of being held by the ground as it slowly cooled from the heat of the day. The fresh air, the uncountable stars overhead. In spite of  the boom of the war planes and the guards with guns that surrounded our camp, I felt a peace that I can only ascribe to being fully present in that space between human chaos and the wild.

Nature-like.

Check out more storyteller’s work from the 2019 Roam Awards!

Check out the rest of the Roam Awards finalist essays below:

A Step into the Thrill by Brett Ninneman

A Sperm Whale Encounter by Phil Shearer

All Wet by Scott Driza

A Thin Place by Christian Gonzalaz Ho

If Mountains Could Speak: Lessons in the Shadow of Mount Hood by Krita Bratvold

The Walk by Brian Ash

Out I Go by Lynnee Jacks

When They Speak to Me by Adam Ramer

The Porter: High Camp by Nathaniel J Menninger

The Beating Heart of California by Stephen Page

Herring Awe by Keith Williams

Physics, As Taught by the River by Christina Cheung

The Dread by Luke Hinz