Thursday, November 27, 2025
I had not heard about national parks until we came to the United States. When we visited Yellowstone National Park and Grand Canyon National Park in 2013… I. Had. No. Idea! I was enthralled by how awe and delight enraptured me in the presence of the natural resplendence.
I was born in the lap of the Himalayas, in the valley of Kashmir. I was two years old when we moved to New Delhi the overcrowded metroplex with high-rise buildings. But it was home. To get away from scorching summer heat in the capital city, my family would return to the valley for a month. We exhaled in the most pleasant weather in my birthplace about which the Mughal Emperor Jehangir soulfully exclaimed, “If there is paradise on Earth, it is here, it is here, it is here!” Awe-inspiring nature was ingrained in my visual vocabulary. The magnificence of nature affects me because appreciation for it was cultivated in me from my childhood.
Shikara boat rides over Dal Lake, picnics in paradisical manicured Mughal gardens, horse riding in heavenly Gulmarg Valley – at each one of these sites, nature held me in its lap and stood guard as the backdrop. One of the most glorious, most spectacular, and celebrated places on earth… no wonder king Jehangir compared it to heaven.
By now, almost all countries of the world have conserved their most beautiful landscape and natural habitats as national parks for the benefit of their people and future generations. Those who visit them share a kind of reverence for mother earth, for the environment, and for the feeling it evokes in their hearts, the feeling of connection, kindness and wonder.
The experience of awe and wonder does not just happen. It requires action on our part. Like any mental training, we need to practice it. At the moment when something deeply touches us, we think: Why did this feel so good? It is important to reflect and remember. Because when next time we are at a similar space or in a similar situation, we can recreate what happened the last time we experienced that unfathomable pleasure.
The moments of awe and wonder are sensed in natural beauty when we are in the “zone,” with the “flow.” When we and what we are observing is one we feel an afterglow, and the world around us glistens. This is so because nature and art have power to change us deep inside, the reason it shows in our eyes and face. In time, this creative sensibility becomes the needle of our inner compass, and we carry our radiance everywhere we go.