A note on this series: This is a five-article exploration of birds, attention, awe, and the RV lifestyle.
Notice → Understand → Experience → Awe → Meaning
Each article stands on its own but together they form a progression—from learning to pay attention to discovering why awe matters and how the RV lifestyle gives us opportunities to experience it.
For thousands of years, people have described awe. Philosophers wondered about it, poets tried to capture it, and generations of people experienced it without having a scientific explanation for what was happening.
Today, researchers are beginning to ask a different question: What happens to us when we experience awe?
The answers are still emerging. But the research is becoming difficult to ignore. Awe appears to affect not only how we feel but where we place our attention, how we see ourselves, and how connected we feel to the world around us.
And as I read the research, I kept finding something familiar.
I’ve been experiencing some of this for years.
What exactly is awe?
When something exceeds our usual way of seeing the world
Before scientists can study awe, they have to define it.
In 2003, psychologists Dacher Keltner and Jonathan Haidt identified two essential elements: vastness and a need for accommodation.
Vastness doesn’t have to mean something enormous. It can be an idea, a person, music, an act of courage, or a landscape—anything that feels larger than our usual frame of reference.
Then comes accommodation. Our existing understanding isn’t quite enough, so our minds have to adjust.
We’ve all experienced it.
A landscape we weren’t prepared for. A piece of music that stops us. A bird doing something we’ve never seen before.
For a moment, we don’t need an explanation.
We simply experience it.
And perhaps that’s why awe captures our attention so completely.
The world has exceeded our expectations.
Awe captures our attention
For a moment, the mental noise gets quieter
We live in a world designed to compete for our attention. Notifications, headlines, advertising, schedules, and endless information keep asking us to look at one more thing.
Awe does something different.
It pulls our attention away from ourselves and toward the experience in front of us. Researchers describe this as a reduction in self-focused thinking—the constant mental commentary about our problems, plans, and place in the world.
I recognize that immediately.
It’s what happens when I stop to watch a bird. For a few minutes, I’m not thinking about yesterday or tomorrow. I’m watching what is happening now.
The bird hasn’t asked me to meditate.
It has simply given my mind somewhere else to go.
Perhaps that’s one reason awe feels so refreshing.
For a moment, we stop thinking about ourselves and start paying attention to the world.
Awe makes the self feel smaller
And the world feels larger
Another important finding in awe research is the “small self.”
It doesn’t mean feeling unimportant. It means that, for a moment, our own concerns occupy less of our attention.
Think of standing beneath a star-filled sky, looking across a vast landscape, or watching a bird go about its life, completely unaware of our worries.
For a moment, we aren’t the center of the story.
Our problems may still be there but they no longer fill the entire frame.
Perhaps that is one of awe’s quiet gifts: It doesn’t make our world smaller. It makes our place in it feel larger.
Awe connects us
Beyond ourselves and toward one another
If awe makes the self feel smaller, it may also make room for connection.
Research has linked awe with greater connectedness and prosocial behaviors such as generosity, cooperation, and helping others. When our own concerns become less dominant, we may become more aware of the people and world around us.
I’ve felt this while traveling.
A shared view from a trail. A conversation with a stranger at a campground. Two people stopping to watch the same bird.
For a moment, the usual boundaries between us seem less important.
Awe can make us feel part of something larger.
Awe and the body
When attention changes, something else may change too
Awe may reach beyond our thoughts and emotions. Researchers are finding evidence that it can influence how the body responds to stress although this science is still developing.
Studies have linked experiences of awe with lower perceived stress and, in some experiments, lower physiological arousal.
That interests me because it connects with something I’ve practiced for years: mindfulness.
When I slow down and pay attention, I’m not trying to make anything happen. I’m simply noticing what is already there.
Perhaps awe does something similar.
It gives the mind—and perhaps the body—a reason to slow down.
Fifteen minutes can be enough
The experiment that made me think about mindfulness
One study particularly caught my attention.
Researchers asked older adults to take a 15-minute outdoor walk once a week for eight weeks. One group simply walked; the other was asked to look for moments of awe.
The awe-walk group experienced more awe, joy, compassion, and other positive emotions, along with less daily distress. Their photographs also suggested a growing sense of the “small self” as their attention shifted toward the world around them.
The walks were the same.
Fifteen minutes was the same.
What changed was where they placed their attention.
That sounds remarkably like mindfulness to me.
I’ve spent years learning to slow down, notice what is around me, and stay with the moment rather than rush past it.
The researchers called it an awe walk.
I’ve simply called it paying attention.
Awe can be cultivated
We don’t have to wait for it to find us
Perhaps the most encouraging finding is that we don’t have to wait for awe to happen. Research suggests we can become more receptive to it by slowing down, paying attention, and deliberately noticing what we might otherwise overlook.
That feels familiar to me.
Mindfulness taught me to pay attention. Slow travel taught me not to hurry past what deserves attention. Birding taught me to look and listen more carefully.
Perhaps I’ve been cultivating awe without knowing its name.
Maybe awe isn’t something we find. Maybe it’s something we learn to notice.
I think that is stronger. And it sets us up beautifully for the next part of the article where we can move from what the research says to what all of this means in our own lives.
What we don’t know yet
Science is still learning
The science of awe is promising but it is still young. Researchers don’t agree on every aspect of how awe works or how lasting its effects may be. Some findings are strong; others need more study.
That doesn’t diminish what we’ve learned.
It simply reminds us that awe is an experience we are beginning to understand, not one science has already explained.
The world feels different
Perhaps that is the power of awe
The science of awe is still young but a pattern is emerging. Awe can draw our attention outward, quiet our preoccupation with ourselves, and deepen our connection with the world and others. Researchers are still working out exactly how and how lasting these effects may be.
What interests me most is how little may be required.
A walk. A bird. A landscape. A few minutes of paying attention.
Perhaps awe doesn’t change the world around us.
Perhaps it changes the way we experience the world we’re already in.
Continue the series
← Previous: The Power of Awe: An Ancient Human Experience
Next → The Bird in You
How learning to observe and understand birds can lead us toward awe.
Enjoyed this article?
Share it with friends, fellow RVers, or your social network to inspire their next adventure.
Editor’s note
This article was originally published in September 2026. Information reflects what was accurate at the time of writing. Conditions, access, and amenities may change over time, so please verify current details before planning your trip.
To maintain transparency and editorial independence, this website contains no ads, no sponsored content, and no affiliate links—just firsthand RV travel experiences and practical information for fellow travelers.