“Throughout human history the direct experience of transcendent awareness in the beauty of nature has been central to spiritual awakening. The Buddha awakened after a long meditation under a Bodhi tree; the Christ was spiritually tested for forty days in the emptiness of the desert; and the prophet Elijah, after running in fear for his life, stood quietly on the holy mountain of Mount Sinai and heard the whisper of the “still small voice” of God. The wilderness has always been a place for self-transformation.”