I grew up in a place where one could walk three miles east and leave the world we have built and re-enter the world that has always been. I still live there. Since history is directional and our minds are steeped in history, moving into undeveloped nature is like moving into the past, into the world as it used to be. A little bit of the world I usually inhabit is developed, somewhat. Town consists of small collection of buildings and fewer than a thousand people. There’s probably a three-story building somewhere in town, but at the moment I can’t think of one. Walk a mile in any direction and you will have left the town behind.

Probably more people live in the country now than in town proper. So the countryside outside town has lots of houses—on most roads you can rarely travel more than a quarter mile without passing one. There are more newer houses, mostly fancier than those in town, than older ones. Everyone wants to live in the country, at their own Walden Pond, though with satellite connections to the Internet and television—to those media dense with signs that refer to themselves, where meaning and value have been lost.

The fact that in less than hour’s walk I can leave all that re-establishes its somewhat ephemeral quality. Very quickly, I can be in a place that seems untouched by history, though in many places stumps and old skid trails are subtle traces of logging. Visiting the high country is a form of time travel. The walk often leads through dense cedar groves along the creek, where at ground level all is in deep shade and nothing grows, up through opens stands of Ponderosa Pine and a thick understory, home to nuthatches and catbirds and waxwings. The mountains is forested in a rich mosaic of conifers, including varieties of pine, fir, larch and spruce. At higher elevations, the vegetation thins.

Awakening at a lake above tree line in the crisp thin air (treeline varies depending on exposure to wind or sun, but in Montana it tends to be around 9,000 feet), you are in a climate that moves from winter through a brief spring then back into winter. At the end of July small streams from melting glaciers water the spring wildflowers and grass. The alpine world is very young, with plants struggling to establish and maintain themselves.

In such moments, one sees again the first day of Creation.

I was paying attention to the discreet birds today, the ones that you have to sit still and watch closely to see: the nuthatches, pine siskins, warblers, catbirds.

The raptors at the top of the food chain, Red-tailed Hawks or Bald Eagles, like to perch high and visible so they can see the terrain around them. But many birds understand that though they may be predators they are also prey. Today, their caution and discretion seems admirable.

We live in an expressive society, based more on therapeutic myths than any established wisdom from philosophy or religion, full of people driven by the strange hope that baring their souls to strangers will lead to connection and healing that they sense they need. It can be costly, needing to be noticed and admired, wanting the be the prettiest bird on the highest branch whose song is heard everywhere.

Other birds at any particular moment are more intent on seeing than on being seen. It takes patience and effort to see them at all. Catching a glimpse of a Marsh Wren or a Yellow Warbler always reminds me of how much of reality we normally don’t see. The Divine characteristically hides itself, and some revelation is available only to those whose desire leads them to effort and endurance. The highest knowledge, Socrates suggested, is always a gift from the divine, a tanager that appears suddenly on a blue spruce bough after hours of looking. It should not be profaned by disclosure to the unworthy. Besides, they can’t receive it. It is foolishness to them. It’s not really a secret. It’s sacred.

We feel the change, exhilarating and ominous. The loss of the warm easy—long days, shorts and sandals, swimming, midnight sunsets, warm nights. After long drought, torrents of rain whipped by rough wind, and when the clouds clear: blue mountains topped with white snow.

Summer dissipates like morning reverie the moment I get up from breakfast and turn to work, and back at school I wear long jeans and socks and shirts with buttons. Nights have become chilly. Young girls have sorted through their closets, coming out pretty in their woolen scarves, puffy vests, sweaters and boots. Everyone becomes prettier or more handsome—without sweat and bad hair, imperfect flesh enhanced with layered beauty, and the younger ones exuberant about something they can’t quite find.

Pumpkins continue getting heavier; hard green pears turn slightly gold, softening. The rules are shifting.

A feeling flits in and out of me, like bats through a cavern—a hollowing sense that it’s all slipping away. I remember when the world was darker and colder than this, the relentless winter, the simple knowledge that nature is deadly wild, always, even when it seems to let up in March and April. Now, again, gentle summer has gone. Fire becomes important—we remember a need for warmth and light. We plan an autumn bonfire, light the furnace.

And we enjoy the earthy joys—apples turning sweet and red, heavy clusters of elderberries and grapes just in time for neotropical birds, flitting and feeding, building energy to migrate away. Bears come down from the high country, a lumbering hunger drawn to the ripening fruit.

I wrote a poem once, inspired my grandfather, about how blinded we can be by the light we have. The sun sheds light on an amazing world around us, but it also blinds us to the breathtaking cosmos beyond, which we glimpse on dark nights.

I’ve been reminded of all that while doing night photography–setting up on a hillside overlooking the Mission Mountains, and being outside, watching and waiting, as the day fades. The vast, slow changes of light permeate the soul with a sense of beauty. We are never alone in the presence of a created world on the brink of something so majestic and alive our words fail.

The sky darkens and the pink fades through orange and blue toward the unspeakable depth of night. And yet, there is more. The moonless sky doesn’t stay dark. Our vision begins to twinkle, a star here and there. Then more. And more.

Before long we are immersed in a cosmic fire of such scale and beauty that we could not have imagined it if we had not seen it. And seeing such a spectacle emerge where before we had stared at an apparent void, we are assured that what we do not know and cannot see is as vast and wonderful as we dare to hope. And more.