Looking back on that night on the mountain, I’m tempted to call it a singularity—a sudden leap forward in consciousness. Sometimes it’s only much later that we find words for an experience we’ve had in the past.
I was camping in early January on a mountaintop in the Missouri Ozarks. Waking up in the middle of the night, I had a feeling I’d experienced before when backpacking alone: I knew I was being watched. With the dog still asleep beside me, I knew that whatever it was couldn’t be very threatening. Something high overhead had fixed me in its vision—maybe a night-hunting owl or a peregrine falcon.
As I stared up into a sky full of stars spread from one horizon to the other, I was struck by the brightest star in the constellation directly above me. It was Rigel, a blue-white supergiant that marks the left leg of Orion the Hunter—a familiar but stunning image. I had an uncanny sense of being singled out by this star, like a rabbit held paralyzed in the hunter’s gaze. But in this case, I sensed being looked upon with wonder—the same wonder with which I responded back. One attraction prompted another.
