One Saturday in mid-May, five of us stood inside a cave in the Ariège Valley in southern France, in complete silence and absolute darkness. We were two archaeologists, a Jungian analyst, a painter and me. I opened my eyes wide and saw nothing. I heard someone's stomach rumble, heard my companions breathing, felt them beside me. Water dripped, each drop echoing. Was this what our prehistoric ancestors heard?Homo sapiens first entered this cave between 14,000 and 17,000 years ago. They ventured into its depths carrying torches and oil lamps to paint animals on its walls. More than 500 human footprints have been discovered here, including those of three small children.I closed my eyes. I found myself looking into myself and into the eternity before I was born. I had never felt anything like it. Uncontrollable sobs rose from somewhere deep inside me and filled the cave. I stood there and wept, longing for everything we humans had been before we became estranged from the world, and for everything I, too, had been tens of thousands of years ago.We spent three hours inside Niaux Cave, but had no sense of how much time had passed between entering and leaving. Time inside a cave is different from time outside. We were deeply moved.Bison on the walls of Niaux Cave. For years, researchers believed the paintings were the work of a single artist. In the 1990s, they discovered that different artists had created them over hundreds of years. Credit: Philippe CrochetBison on the walls of Niaux Cave. For years, researchers believed the paintings were the work of a single artist. In the 1990s, they discovered that different artists had created them over hundreds of years. Credit: Philippe CrochetDr. Ella Assaf Shpayer, 39, a researcher and lecturer in the Department of Archaeology at Tel Aviv University, was very quiet inside the cave and remained so after we emerged."What did you feel in there?" I asked her."A year ago, I dreamed I was swimming inside myself," she replied. "I was consciously searching for quiet. I knew I had to go deeper and deeper to find it. When I reached my diaphragm, I found a long, spiraling seashell. I felt it inside me, along with the quiet I'd been looking for. I knew I'd come to the right place."Prehistoric humans had a thing for seashells. In Europe, Neanderthals collected them, painted them red, wore them and buried their loved ones with them. Sometimes they even risked their lives diving deep to find them. The shells must have been more than ornaments. Surely they wouldn't have risked their lives just for decoration. In the cave, I felt I was swimming inside myself, and I felt the quiet I'd experienced in the dream. Standing in that darkness, I felt a profound peace. The darkness was powerful, but also enveloping, soft and deep. It even felt familiar. An ancient familiarity, something the body and soul remember from long ago.""It made me think of the Ten Plagues of Egypt," added Dr. Guy Perel, 58, a Jungian analyst and poet. "The plague of darkness is described as a tangible darkness, something you can feel with your hands, touch. The darkness in the cave is dense, but not frightening at all. It holds you up. It's amazing, and cold. You feel as though you're flying."Niaux was the first stop on our journey through seven caves where prehistoric paintings have been discovered. We had come to experience these places together and better understand how creativity, belief, consciousness and human ability had converged here, finding expression in paintings tens of thousands of years old.We wanted to enter these ancient wombs, the places where prehistoric humans had experienced an expansion of consciousness. We hoped ours might expand, too.We set out just days after the cease-fire was announced in the 2026 Iran war. We came from the painful reality of our lives, a reality devoid of reason, compassion and love. Perhaps the instinct that had drawn prehistoric humans into the depths of caves had brought us here, too.But first, the story of how this journey began.About 10 years ago, Perel came across "Return to Chauvet Cave: Excavating the Birthplace of Art," by the French prehistorian Jean Clottes. Through it, he encountered the 36,000-year-old paintings discovered in Chauvet Cave in 1994.The cave contained hundreds of paintings of animals: bison, woolly rhinoceroses, mammoths, deer, cave lions, horses, one particularly famous owl and many others. Yet there was only one painting of a human being. Known as "Venus and the Sorcerer," it depicts a woman's lower body with a mysterious figure above her. Many researchers believe the figure combines human characteristics with those of a bison or an aurochs.Perel was astonished. He had never imagined cave paintings could be "so beautiful, profound and complete." They stirred powerful feelings in him, and he began studying the subject."At some point, insights started coming to me," he says. "They weren't intellectual. They came through experience and a spiritual connection. I felt I was stepping into the shoes of the prehistoric artist."That was how he began writing the long poem "A Cave," which took him three years to complete."I would sit down to write, and the questions and answers would emerge through the poetry. 'Why did you go in? What happened to you there?' I asked the prehistoric artist. Writing was like entering a cave. I felt I'd managed to enter an altered state of consciousness without actually going inside one."A year after "A Cave" was published, Perel was contacted by Prof. Ran Barkai, 58, a prehistoric archaeologist, researcher and senior lecturer in the Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Cultures at Tel Aviv University. For 17 years, Barkai directed excavations at Qesem Cave, an archaeological site near present-day Rosh Ha'ayin. His research focuses on the Paleolithic and Neolithic cultures that existed in our region. His particular interests include stone tools; prehistoric humans' relationships with animals, the world and caves; and the altered states of consciousness experienced by prehistoric artists.An ibex painted on a wall in Niaux Cave. Credit: CCNB-N. FerrerAn ibex painted on a wall in Niaux Cave. Credit: CCNB-N. FerrerBarkai walks everywhere, whenever he can. He is almost never cold, but he enjoys gathering wood for the fireplace at his home in Pardes Hanna and sitting by the fire in winter, "just like Neanderthals and their predecessors, because gathering wood was a central task throughout the human past," he explains."I started playing with ideas about what caves and their paintings meant for human consciousness," Barkai says. "I was looking for things to read outside the mainstream, and that's how I came across Guy's poem. It blew me away."The two began meeting beneath the royal poinciana tree at the entrance to Tel Aviv University. Their long conversations led to a book they wrote together with the mysterious title "Why Do They Have No Faces?" (in Hebrew, Idra Press, 2025).In it, they ask why, some 40,000 years ago, our forefathers and foremothers began painting deep inside caves they did not live in. Why did they so rarely depict themselves? And when they did, why did they leave the human figures faceless? Both authors were also preoccupied by how these questions might relate to the disappearance of large animals from the face of the Earth at that very same time.In their view, cave art served a shamanic rather than an aesthetic purpose: it was a ritual intended to repair a disruption in the world by appealing to what anthropology now calls "the spirit world." Drawing on their respective fields, they offer a complex explanation. They believe the paintings were an attempt to mend a deepening fracture in the world by recreating the animals on cave walls.Shortly after its publication, the book found its way into the hands of the painter Gideon Rubin. Rubin, 53, who has lived in London for 25 years, is known for paintings in which every human figure is faceless.The grandson of the painter Reuven Rubin, he did not always paint this way. On September 11, 2001, he stood on a rooftop in New York and watched the Twin Towers burn. He says he will never forget the taste of dust that lingered in his mouth for four days after the disaster. He has not painted a person with a face since."Boy and Horse," Gideon Rubin, 2019. His human figures are faceless."Boy and Horse," Gideon Rubin, 2019. His human figures are faceless."Sometimes you come across a work that feels as though it was made just for you. That's how I felt about this book," says Rubin, who became friends with Perel and Barkai after reading it. "I understood not only why I paint without faces, but so many other things, too. It was as though someone had lit little candles along the path I'm walking.""Ran and Guy's book looks at how human beings cope with crisis," says Dr. Assaf Shpayer, the fourth member of our group. As a child, she was intrigued when her father told her that other human species had once existed and become extinct. When she began studying archaeology at Tel Aviv University, she realized she wanted to investigate these mysterious people. Her research has since focused on two subjects: prehistoric children and the significance of horses to prehistoric humans."Children in prehistory have barely been studied," she says. "I'm very interested in how people understood childhood, and how prehistoric humans saw children and their place in the world."It was the children, and the traces she believes they left in the caves, that drew her to the journey.My work as a journalist brought Perel and me together, and we became friends. A year and a half ago, I read his and Barkai's book between ayahuasca ceremonies in the Peruvian jungle. It affected me profoundly. In one vision, I was an old woman dying in a cave. A fire burned beside me, and a prehistoric woman sang me a farewell song. I felt a peace I had never known. I was happy.When the two invited me to join them on a journey through the caves, I agreed immediately. The five of us set out.Almost all the paintings we saw were made by people researchers now call the Magdalenians, who lived in Western Europe between 20,000 and 13,000 years ago. They take their name from Abri de la Madeleine, an archaeological site in the Dordogne region of southwestern France discovered in the 19th century.The Magdalenians were hunter-gatherers who lived in small groups, probably of 15 to 30 people. They moved fairly often, depending on the seasons, their neighbors and the availability of food. They were skilled hunters whose main prey were deer, horses, bison and ibex."What was life like for the Magdalenians?" I asked Barkai."Life was one long picnic. They got up in the morning, hunted, lit a fire, ate, gathered food, chatted, danced, sang and painted, until circumstances told them it was time to move on. They followed a familiar circuit, returning to the same places again and again. At certain times, they gathered with other groups to celebrate, exchange gifts and exchange genes."How do we know this?"Objects from distant regions have been found at some archaeological sites, which suggests these encounters took place. Modern hunter-gatherers live this way, so we assume prehistoric humans did, too. We also assume their creative expression went far beyond the evidence that survives, because much of it involved perishable materials or decorations on their bodies."What happened to them when they entered a cave?"Entering a deep, dark cave changes the way the senses work. Sight, our dominant sense outside, is completely neutralized, so the other senses sharpen. Consciousness is a sensory response to the world, so it takes on a different character inside a cave. You also need light to find your way through deep, dark caves and paint inside them. There's abundant evidence that prehistoric humans used torches and stone lamps fueled by fat."The air in these caves contains about 21 percent oxygen, and fire brings that down to as little as 13 percent, causing oxygen deprivation. This increases dopamine release in the brain, heightening feelings of contentment and euphoria. So that, too, necessarily alters consciousness. We assume people knew fire had this effect and experienced it from an early age. It gave them the expansion of consciousness they were seeking in a space they saw as a portal between worlds."My traveling companions. From left: Gideon Rubin, Prof. Ran Barkai, Dr. Guy Perel and Dr. Ella Assaf Shpayer.My traveling companions. From left: Gideon Rubin, Prof. Ran Barkai, Dr. Guy Perel and Dr. Ella Assaf Shpayer.My heart skipped a beat when the entrance to Niaux Cave came into view. Everything around it was in bloom, and enormous white clouds sailed across the blue sky. I could feel its depths and coolness waiting for me."It looks as though it created the whole valley," Perel said."Not created it. It's swallowing it," Barkai said.The cave is two kilometers long. Soon after entering, you encounter graffiti that visitors have been leaving here since the early 17th century. Martin, for example, was here in 1652, and Louise came 34 years later.The cave is damp, with a constant temperature of 12 degrees Celsius, or 53.6 degrees Fahrenheit. This is one reason the magnificent paintings in its depths have survived so well. In places, the ceiling rises dozens of meters overhead; elsewhere, visitors have to stoop to avoid hitting their heads. Stalactites hang above still pools of water. The cave is vast, spacious, beautiful and regal.After walking 400 meters, we passed through a narrow passage, and the first paintings appeared: red and black dots, short lines, dashes and stripes, and a line with a loop at one end that resembled a club or a pregnant woman. These symbols also appear in many other caves in the region and in neighboring Spain. Some were painted with tools, others with fingers. A few are so well preserved that fingerprints are still visible.Sometimes the paintings face one another or appear on either side of a prominent crack in the wall. Perhaps they are waymarkers, a tribal language or even musical notation. Perhaps they prepare visitors to enter a sacred space. There are many interpretations, all conjecture.The spot where we stood is not part of the regular tour because of an especially fragile work etched into the clay and sand of a small passage: a rare depiction of a fish. A salmon or a trout, rendered in a few precise lines, it has been swimming in place for some 15,000 years."Why was this fish etched in that little passage, in that hidden place?" I later asked Barkai."I think they chose animals that embodied the ability to pass between worlds and reach places humans cannot," he said. "Deep water is one such world, one that has always had a place in mythology. Just as birds mediate between humans and the heavens, fish may mediate between humans and the depths. There is clay where the fish was etched, and water certainly flowed here. That supports the hypothesis, but it's still only a hypothesis."We hadn't realized it, but our encounter with the fish and our silence in the darkness had taken place at the entrance to the Salon Noir, the cave's holy of holies. This cathedral of rock, some 20 meters high, contains six panels with dozens of animal paintings, together considered one of the pinnacles of prehistoric art. All the animals are drawn in charcoal, hence the name Salon Noir, or Black Chamber.Niaux Cave. Its inner sanctuary, the Salon Noir, is a cathedral of rock some 20 meters high, with dozens of paintings considered among the finest achievements of prehistoric art. Credit: Philippe CrochetNiaux Cave. Its inner sanctuary, the Salon Noir, is a cathedral of rock some 20 meters high, with dozens of paintings considered among the finest achievements of prehistoric art. Credit: Philippe CrochetBefore entering, visitors are asked to turn off their flashlights. For a moment, they stand in darkness while the guide fits a filter that allows her to illuminate the paintings without damaging them. The pause is brief, but the effect is dramatic: when the flashlight comes on, the animals emerge from the darkness. There are dozens of bison, horses, ibex and deer, including one deer particularly celebrated for its elegance.For decades, researchers thought a single artist had painted them all. The styles are remarkably similar, and the arrangement suggests a carefully planned composition. The cave's curves, protrusions and hollows give the animals volume and life. They seem to spring from the walls. When the guide moved her flashlight to mimic a flickering torch, they actually galloped.But in the early 1990s, radiocarbon dating revealed that the animals were not the work of one person. Magdalenian artists, men and women, had visited the cave over hundreds of years, each adding a contribution.For decades, many researchers believed the paintings were a form of hunting magic intended to ensure a successful hunt. The problem is that they contain almost no hunting scenes, and depictions of wounded animals are also rare. Today, most researchers believe we will never know why the paintings were made and are unwilling to endorse any particular theory. Many disagree with Barkai and Perel's interpretation of the art as a shamanic attempt to repair a disruption in the world by recreating the animals' spirits on cave walls.What does seem clear is that the artists must have spent a great deal of time observing the animals and knew them well. The creatures are majestic, sometimes enormous. Standing before them, you feel awe."People sometimes think they painted what they dreamed or imagined," Perel says. "But we argue that they weren't painting imaginary animals. They were bringing the animals' spirits into being on the rock to repair something in the spiritual, archetypal world. The cave is a portal to that world. In the Jungian approach, what emerges from the unconscious isn't considered imaginary or less real than everyday reality. A dream is a way of encountering another layer of reality, one that is usually hidden from us.Haaretz Podcast | Behind the scenes at the Republican Jewish Coalition confab"In the encounter with the rock and the painting on it, something from that hidden world took on a body and became visible. By entering a particular psychological and creative state, the person allowed the 'animal spirit' to materialize on the stone. In that sense, the painting doesn't represent another reality. It is that reality appearing within our own."It was already evening when we sat by the river in the town of Foix, watching swallows fly above the water. We talked and fell silent, laughed and fell silent. We were human beings and we were animals flickering on the cave walls, drawing closer to ourselves and to one another.That night, I dreamed of my mother.Months later, each of the caves we visited still returns to me, especially at night, when my consciousness hovers between waking and sleep. The Gargas cave complex left a particularly deep impression. At the foot of the Pyrenees, near the village of Aventignan, it is known for its hand stencils: 231 in all, in different sizes and colors, some belonging to children.The stencils were made by placing a hand against the rock and spraying pigment from the mouth. Gargas also contains animal paintings, engravings, some 100 square meters of finger tracings on the ceiling, feminine symbols and numerous depictions of what some researchers interpret as female genitalia. Animal bones, placed there by prehistoric humans, are wedged into cracks in the walls.We had the caves to ourselves with our guide, Nicolas Ferrer, who is in his 50s and lives in Aventignan. His grandmother sold tickets here, his parents were guides, and he has worked here since he was 14. His love for the place, and his wonder at it, come through in every word.Local people have known of the cave complex since at least the 16th century, and a graffito dated 1587 survives on its walls. No one then understood the significance of the art around them. Its discovery and study began only in the late 19th century. As in many other caves, new finds still come to light from time to time. The art is attributed to the Gravettian culture, which existed between 30,000 and 20,000 years ago, but remains of the Mousterian culture, created by Neanderthals, have also been found.We entered through a steel door almost concealed by vegetation and moss. The upper cave is small and narrow, vertical and winding. Bats once lived here, and their droppings damaged the paintings. They were not the only ones to cause harm. Scientists once marked and highlighted engravings in ways that would be unthinkable today. People from National Geographic, for example, used a red pen."Maybe in 50 years, researchers will look at what we're doing here and lose their minds," Ferrer says.The temperature inside is about 11 degrees Celsius. Over the past decade, it has risen by half a degree, and the cave has become drier. Seventy sensors collect data every 15 minutes, but global warming is unlikely to be kind to the art within.Ferrer showed us the hands scattered through the space, tucked into recesses and spread across the walls: black, red, yellow and white. Only 17 show all five fingers. The others are sometimes missing one, two or even three. Ferrer told us that people once thought the stencils had been made by people who had lost fingers, but it later became clear that this was not the case. Those who made them most likely folded their fingers before spraying the pigment. The stencils are thought to represent some kind of code.Children's hand stencils in the Gargas caves. "It's no coincidence they brought children here," says Dr. Ella Assaf Shpayer. "Children were seen as intermediaries between this world and another." Credit: CCNB-G.PujolChildren's hand stencils in the Gargas caves. "It's no coincidence they brought children here," says Dr. Ella Assaf Shpayer. "Children were seen as intermediaries between this world and another." Credit: CCNB-G.Pujol"I met a group of deaf people, and when they stood in front of the hands, they cried," Ferrer told us. "They knew nothing about the new hypotheses, but to them it was clearly sign language. The positions of the hands meant something, and so did the colors."In their book, Perel and Barkai discuss the many hand stencils found in caves. Were these the first selfies in human history? they ask playfully. They then offer a complex explanation: the point of contact with the cave wall expresses an abstract aspect of the self that extends beyond the physical body.Later, we stood before a panel bearing children's hand stencils."Children have something we adults don't, and prehistoric humans recognized it," Assaf Shpayer said. "It's no coincidence they brought them here. They weren't just teaching them or making them part of the community. They also valued their qualities, their flexibility of thought. Children are closer to the other worlds because they haven't been here long, so they were seen as intermediaries between this world and the other."Very different from how Western societies view children today."It couldn't be more different. Today, children are seen as sponges to fill with information. We teach them and turn them into adults like us. I thought about this a lot when I had children. I'm not a hunter-gatherer, and my children go to kindergarten and school, but I try to let them experience things for themselves without constantly telling them what to do or how best to do it. I don't always manage it.""This is where I realized that what makes caves addictive is going in and coming out," Rubin added. "Your age disappears inside the cave. Once you've been in, you experience the world outside differently. The volume goes up. You take everything in, hear everything. I lie on the grass, listen to the birds, feel the curvature of the Earth. I lie with my eyes closed and see. I open them and see a horse in the clouds. Maybe 30,000 years ago, someone lay there just as I do, saw a horse in the clouds and then went and created it?"It's an experience of altered consciousness that brings you back to something that was always there, but that you'd lost touch with. I think I'll keep returning to caves all my life. They're where I understand my place in the world better.""Gargas is another world," Barkai says. "I think people came here looking for answers, performing rituals to solve problems. I think that, for them, caves were places to send messages, to reach wherever they wanted to go."Reach where?"Whatever lies beyond the cave, beyond its walls."Why do you think they put animal bones into cracks in the walls?"I think they saw the cracks as a connection between the cave and whatever lay beyond its walls, like the cracks between the stones of the Western Wall, where people leave notes with their requests. And what they wanted was animals. The animals were disappearing, and people wanted to send the message that they depended on them."Two or three days later, we arrived at Rouffignac Cave. This immense cave, situated between two streams, had been known to local people for centuries. The earliest account of its existence appears in the early 17th-century writings of Jean Tarde, a vicar, astronomer, geographer and friend of Galileo Galilei.A horse in Rouffignac Cave. Some of the animals even seem to be smiling. Credit: Frédric Plassard / Grotte de RouffignacA horse in Rouffignac Cave. Some of the animals even seem to be smiling. Credit: Frédric Plassard / Grotte de RouffignacIn 1929, the industrialist Charles Plassard bought the estate containing the cave. He and his son Louis were curious nature lovers, and on one of their explorations they noticed figures on the ceiling. They invited researchers from the University of Toulouse, who discovered the first engravings: two mammoths facing each other. The cave turned out to contain more than 250 animal figures, including some 160 mammoths, as well as four human figures.The discovery immediately sparked a heated controversy. Several researchers claimed they had seen some of the paintings as early as the late 1940s and had even reported them, only to be told they were modern scribbles. Others claimed the paintings were forgeries. Defending their authenticity was Abbé Henri Breuil, one of the world's foremost scholars of cave art, known as the "Pope of Prehistory." Breuil examined the paintings and declared them genuine.We arrived at midday on a very hot day. Waiting at the entrance was Frédéric Plassard, a fourth-generation member of the family with a doctorate specializing in Paleolithic art. His wife is also an archaeologist, as was his father. In 2020, with visitors kept away by the COVID lockdowns, the couple explored the cave and discovered 12 new engravings, including a figure that may represent a woman."I'm more of a caveman than prehistoric people were," he says, "because I've spent far more time in here than they did."The cave extends for more than eight kilometers, roughly five miles. It was the coldest cave we visited and the only one with an electric train, which carries visitors along the first kilometer. Visitors are not allowed to get off at most points along the route, but that rule did not apply to us.A group of mammoths in Rouffignac Cave. The painting is thought to be symbolic rather than a scene from nature, as mammoths were rare in the region at the time and may already have disappeared entirely. Credit: Frédric Plassard / Grotte de RouffignacA group of mammoths in Rouffignac Cave. The painting is thought to be symbolic rather than a scene from nature, as mammoths were rare in the region at the time and may already have disappeared entirely. Credit: Frédric Plassard / Grotte de RouffignacWe boarded and headed inside, following the route the prehistoric artist had taken 13,000 years earlier. The ride seemed endless, the outside world receding behind us. Along the way, we saw the beds dug by cave bears that had hibernated here for tens of thousands of years before prehistoric humans arrived. The bears had scratched the walls, and people had extended those marks with their fingers. Plassard believes they were continuing the bears' work in the hope of acquiring their great strength.Seven hundred meters into the cave, Plassard invited us to get off the train. Before us was the first mammoth. A simple drawing, just an outline and tusks, yet it looked almost alive. It seemed to be looking at something. There was a young mammoth, too, with two short tusks."I'm sure whoever drew it had studied a real, living mammoth," Plassard said. "They probably studied carcasses, too, and knew the animals' anatomy well."One hundred meters farther on, two groups of mammoths faced each other. We asked Plassard whether such an encounter could have happened in real life. Mammoths disappeared long ago, he explained, but we might learn something about them from their living relatives, African elephants."An encounter like this between two groups is unusual," he said. "We also have reason to think these mammoths are males, not females, and groups of males like this don't exist."How do we know they're males?"Because of the marks near their temples, which may represent secretions from the male's temporal gland during periods of sexual arousal and high testosterone levels. But males don't gather like this, so this isn't a scene from nature. It's a symbolic expression. Even looking at the animals they chose to paint, it's hard to draw a simple connection between the art and the local environment. For some 20,000 years, across different parts of Europe and in different environments, they kept choosing the same small selection of large herbivores."What do you mean?"If there were still mammoths in the Dordogne 16,000 years ago, they were probably very rare. The artists may have studied their anatomy and behavior somewhere else, perhaps 300 or 400 kilometers away, then painted them here months later. So it's hard to see this art as a straightforward depiction of the natural world around them."We ventured deeper and reached a chamber with a low ceiling covered in drawings of 26 mammoths, 12 bison, 11 horses, 12 ibex and three rhinoceroses. Some even seemed to be smiling.We said goodbye to Plassard and drove to our next destination. A rabbit and an ibex crossed the road, and we saw a statue of the Buddha in the forest. Out of habit, I glanced at my phone and read about the world we had sought to escape: a plane crash, people killed, war with Iran looming once again. The suffering of modern humans, inflicted by modern humans.I asked my companions whether they thought there had been wicked people and narcissists among prehistoric humans, too. Had there been troubled psyches and personality disorders? They thought so, but fewer. People then, they believed, had experienced themselves as part of a greater whole rather than as separate individuals. Ego was not what drove someone to paint in the darkness. They hadn't gone there to win admiration for their talent, where no one could see their work. Freedom from the ego is the greatest happiness one can know. There is nothing like it.By then, we all understood: the shift in consciousness that takes place deep inside a cave is the realization that we are part of the universe. It has the power to make us better human beings, humbler, more whole.On our last day, we sat on a cliff at sunset, looking out over the forest and the river flowing far below. We listened to the birdsong and said nothing. For those few minutes, we were human beings without nationality, without culture, without history. We were blank pages flying through space.