A stary night

I have had lots of "enchanting" experiences while amongst nature. However, one night stands out in my mind above all the others. My father was a boyscout leader while I was growing up. Thus, I had to go camping with a bunch of boys at least one weekend a month. I remember that on one of the trips, I just wanted to get away from the boys, my parents, and everything. So, I wandered into the woods on my own. I know it wasn't very smart, but it was worth it. The weekend was not going well, and it was just one of many miserable nights I had as a child for several other reasons. I remember wandering aimlessly crying and kicking leaves. As I kicked one pile of leaves, my foot hit a root and I fell. Just as I started cursing and thinking "Why me?", I looked up. There was a clearing in the trees, and through the clearing was an image still ingrained in my mind. Colors like I had never seen them, blues, purples, green, whites, ...took my breath away, just as the memory still does today. The sky was so clear that I could see thousands of stars. I spotted Orion's belt and all the familiar stars above my house, but there were hundreds of thousands of stars surrounding them I had never seen. I sat there for hours until my mother came and found me. Then, without me saying a word, she sat with me and looked. I slept outside that night right on that spot. I didn't want to leave something so beautiful. To me, it was a sign of hope. Although we have our systems and ways of doing things and norms, we are so small and insignificant that they don't matter. Those silly boys and all of the things bothering me didn't matter. Those things were so small in comparison. I can't help but to think how God or whoever you believe made the universe, just sits back and laughs at all of our stresses and our narrow mindedness. There's something so much greater, a much much larger picture than what any of us ever see. In the city, amongst the stress and chaos none of us ever have the time to see sights like that night. Most of us couldn't even if we tried, due to lights and pollution. Those who do see sights like that try to categorize them and catalog them into our systems, but they miss the bigger picture.
We are missing the larger picture! What is more important to us? Would you really want to live a life without such beauty and grandeur?? I ask myself these things virtually every day, but then I remember that most of us have never seen or experienced such beauty at all. So, how could it be missed? I have not seen the sky so clear nor so colorful since that night, not even when I went back a few years ago. There were too many lights around and a haze. We have evolved to a point where nothing is beyond our reasoning or systems. Thus, there is nothing to restore our humility. Once we loose the bigger picture forever, all we have left are our silly insignificant stresses and worries. Cutting down trees and inventing bigger cars may make us happy, according to our systems, or may help us sustain more people based on our systems, but all that beauty, everything that's nature/natural will be lost forever. The only meaning in our lives will be what we have invented. Even if we could survive as a species without nature, would we want to??? I can't see those sights anymore, but I know they're there, and it's hope that there's something bigger than me, something more meaningful and awe inspiring. Nature should be the most important concern for contemporary environmentalists, as once we loose the bigger picture, we loose our sense of humility, awe, and hope. What would be the point in living in a world without them?????