A picture from the Grand Canyon trip (the cactus I sat on is right behind the rock I’m sitting on).

My family is made up of outdoorsmen, and women. Being raised a Wilson, is in essence being raised a boy scout. Family vacations usually involve more walking up mountain sides with 60 pound backpacks than reclining in beach chairs armed with mimosas. From the trips I went on as a child I can safely say I don’t know how to ride a subway, and I’ve never set foot on a boardwalk, but I’ve straddled the edge of the world’s largest ice field and I can pitch a tent with my eyes closed and a hand tied behind my back.

Knowing all this, it wasn’t very surprising when just after my tenth birthday my father hatched the idea of hiking the Grand Canyon. It was an easy two-day trip, nothing out of the ordinary: hike to the bottom on day one, camp overnight, and hike back out day two. Late that summer we set out; everything went smoothly the first day, minus a short incident involving my rear end and an overly friendly cactus… but I’ll spare you the detail on that one.

We pitched our tent that night on a cliff top overlooking the raging Colorado River. Our cliff jutted out from the canyon ridge we had been following for the last few miles, a little bit like pride rock in The Lion King if you’re a Disney aficionado.

The camp site was quiet that night (PAUSE) not a soul but my parents and I.

It was probably 3AM when I decided our two-person backpacking tent was not at all comfortable with 3 bodies, so I stepped out to stretch my legs. Apparently, my dad was also finding comfort impossible because he joined me outside. So, there we stood beside our little orange tent, (PAUSE) far ahead of us I could see the towering southern wall of the canyon, and on the wall, little flickering white lights like fireflies: the headlamps of hikers starting their days walk. The sliding of our boots in the red Arizona clay and the roar of the mighty river far below the cliff edge were the only sounds to break the silence of that morning. (PAUSE)

But, it was what I saw next that would change my life… Exploding in the night sky above us were the most magnificent stars I had ever seen. Stars so numerous one could have counted for hours and barely swivel their head. No moon shone that night and yet I could see perfectly, the stars illuminated the night with the brightness of an eternal late evening dusk. It was impossible to focus on just one, for as soon as you did it was lost again, drowned out my its thousands of neighbors. And there was more, overlaying the individual lights of the stars billions of miles away, I could see the swirling gas clouds of our Milky Way galaxy itself. Purple and orange and blue were swirled together stretched out across the horizon like a jet stream that covered half the sky.

It’s something I have yet to see again; my own real-life screen saver.

In the near decade since that night, I have come to this, my favorite memory many times. I’ve tried to recall and retell the story but never once, including this retelling, have I ever come close to finding the words to describe the majesty of that Arizona sky.

I sat on that canyon cliff for close to an hour, long after my dad returned to our claustrophobic North Face. I lay in the dirt just staring up. I found myself thinking about the Navajo children who have played under these same canyon stars for thousands of years. I thought of the bighorn sheep, and the bats, and the mountain lions, and the elk, and the rabbits of the canyon who have gazed upon those stars for millennia. And I imagined the similar amazement felt by the European explorers of the 1500’s when they first laid eyes on this sky. It was a beauty that had existed long before I was born and one that will exist long after I’m gone.

I felt as if I was being granted a rare gift to look upon that sight. A gift so few have been given outside of a google image search. It was a place not easy to reach, but in a way that made it all the more worth it. (Pause)

I’m not exaggerating for effect when I say those stars changed my life. They inspired me to keep exploring, to travel, to keep searching for the places not easily found, and to find the natural gifts hidden there. There’s a reason I own more pairs of hiking boots than sneakers.

I believe in exploring the outdoors. I believe in the beauty of places untouched by the modern world.  I believe these places of natural wonder should be preserved so that as many people as possible for generations to come have a chance to receive a similar gift to what I did that summer night I was when I was 10.  If everyone, just one time experienced a beautiful natural sight that went beyond the grasp of their words or their photographs, maybe… just maybe it would change the way we value our planet, and that I know would truly change the world.