We went to pyramid lake for the meteor shower. Arrived
around midnight, took a right off pyramid hwy and pulled in at the sign for
‘cattle guard beach’, parked and walked down a steep hill to the beach. Sand
filled our shoes as the moon lit the way. At the shore the waves seemed more
energetic than I remembered in past daytime visits, with an ocean-like rhythm. For several hours the skies
delivered views of all kinds of fantastic meteors periodically blasting through the grid
of stars in the powdery mist of the milky way, the moonlight fading over the
western horizon as the earth spun. The beach then lit faintly by a distant moon
and the glowing sky, enough to see the features of a human face a few feet in
front of you. Occasionally headlights would shine across the water and onto the
beach, lighting edges of things from a low dramatic angle, the right kind of
subtle, the right kind of strange. Other people were out at the lake viewing
meteors but we never came into contact, completely solitary at the spot save for the bats which
fooled us first into wondering why there were black meteors sailing across the
sky. I was glad to have remembered my glasses with a
prescription over a decade old but still powerful enough to sharpen everything
into crisp photographic definition. Hours passed. The temperature was perfect.
I was gazing south around 4am when I first noticed that a bright star which had
caught my eye appeared to be moving. After a period of ten seconds it was clear the nature of the movements was not that of a plane or satellite. I stared
at it for another full minute to take it in and assess my mental state, rub my
eyes, take in the view without lenses, and prepare to confront the facts of the
vision. I pointed out the light and it was immediately confirmed that I was not
the only one seeing this. my first goosebumps rose at the realization that it was a shared and therefore much more credible visual phenomenon. For ten minutes we watched as it moved in a manner
which defies everything I thought I knew about the physical and visual world.
The light occupied a general area that was lower in the sky, at arms length your thumb and pinky finger in a sideways 'shaka' could make a gap 8 inches between the faintly visible top of the ridge and the light
itself. The nature of the light was active, not a static continuous glow but an
irregular pulsing of intensity, and never getting faint enough to lose sight of it. For the most part it was a white light similar to a standard star, but
it had warmer hues shining at times, faint red or yellow periodic glints, which
gave the impression that it may have been rotating or tilting, and with
different 3 dimensional planes. it was the size of a large star or distant
plane. The movements of course are what was most breathtaking and confounding. With no apparent
pattern or purpose, it freely moved fluidly in a variety of aspects and speeds. It
would ‘scoot’ in a start-stop manner to one side. It would ‘slide’ to a stop to
another side. It would ‘dip’ in the path of an inverted rainbow. It would zip around, move in lateral zig-zags, shoot straight up and then quickly to the right or left, and then back down,
and to either side. It would bob and hover. The energy was continuous but there
were periods of lesser activity peppered in with a series of almost spastic
bursts, impossible to anticipate what it might do next. I would lie if I did
not imagine this thing all of a sudden coming towards us, or exploding into a
bright light. I took extra care to keep my imagination at bay and observe with
the most strict objectivity, just gathering the facts of a visual event - we are watching a light move in a strange manner, which is all we know - this is NOT the first stages of an alien invasion, though it couldnt hurt to mentally prepare for an encounter that close, right? For
those ten minutes we wrestled with the preconceived bounds of reality and
perception, we questioned our sanity, our safety. We gave thanks to both be
there sharing a completely unprecedented, unexplainable and
downright surreal event. I got a feeling about ten minutes in where I suddenly became
aware that there was an entire sky above and around us which had been otherwise
completely ignored as we stared at this moving light in the south. I said “keep your eye on
this one, im going to have a look around…” my eyes left the general area
directly south of us and up to the east, where first they stopped at orion’s
belt, which sat in a pretty vertical orientation. then my attention was pulled
to a pair of the same moving lights on either side of the belt, equidistant
from the trio. The light to the left was red/orange and moved in the same
manner as the light in the south but more active. The light to the right of the
belt moved as well to a lesser degree. Each of these lights I recognized as
stars in the orion constellation and could not understand now how things which
should be stationary stars could appear to be so obviously moving around. To be
certain, we used the trio of stationary stars in the belt as a reference point
when viewing the moving lights. Even when the eye viewed the 4 stars as a
singular shape the autonomous star would appear to continue dancing around on
its improvisational course. We concluded that this was proof enough that the
lights didn’t just 'seem' to move when we concentrated on them singularly, but
that they were moving whether or not our focus was fixed on them. I took note
of at least 3 other lights of the same size and color each making their own
movements all across the sky from the NE to the direct S, with most of the
action taking place around Orion, save for the first light which still jittered
about in the southern sky. A few times it appeared that these lights or other smaller, slowly moving lights would separate into two or shoot
secondary lights off of it into the blackness, and they would go streaming off in
a straight line and mix with the other stars. To see these things break apart
was as mind bending as it was to watch them shift around so freely. The feeling
of being so completely perplexed was overwhelming. My mouth was dry and my body
shook. As our gazes shifted from the south light to Orion we simultaneously
recognized a new light, a much brighter orange, and a much larger, pulsating
and slowly moving light directly on the horizon, appearing to sit at ground
level, on the south east end of the lake towards marble bluff, not many miles
at all from where we sat. this light was disconcerting in that it was at ground
level and was clearly moving in small gestures from side to side and up and down, as if
traversing or tracing the topography an uneven landscape. We kept our eyes on
it as we monitored the other moving lights that by now had maintained their
activity for over 20 minutes. We decided it was best to leave as there was
something so unsettling about seeing an unexplained light event that was so
obviously down on our level and at times appearing to be getting closer to us. We packed our things quickly and scurried back up
the sandy hill to the truck. I was shaking and out of breath when we drove out
to the road, and made the left turn east towards Nixon, with the hopes that we
could get a better view of the ground level light, [from the perceived safety of a gigantic, bright, noisy, moving vehicle]. this large orange light was visible periodically
as obstructions of the landscape would allow, but we eventually lost sight of
it. As we drove, the south light was still visible and it kept on its movement
as did the two larger main lights in the orion constellation. I kept making
note of the time on the digital clock as we drove with the high beams on.
Rabbits bounded across the road. A half mile later a great white barn owl flew
out from the roadside about 20 feet in front of the truck and then took a turn
back into the darkness. Its wingspan could have been 4 feet. Immediately I
thought back to all the things in abduction lore I read about screen memories and
the frequency of the image of owls. I had to chuckle a bit at the thought since
the appearance of the owl was not limited to a static image or scene but was an
actual event, one which may have ended in a collision if we were another car
length or two further up the road. Regardless, it was damn spooky to see
something large and white come exploding so powerfully out of the blackness of
the night into view over the road. At the 447 junction in Nixon we stopped to
view the orion lights continue their jittery movements. I felt sad to leave
without any kind of resolution but also relieved to put the unsettling fears of
facing something so odd and unexplainable behind me. As we drove south on 447
towards I80 daylight was breaking slowly. We stopped a few miles outside of
wadsworth to catch our breath and stand in awe at the still vibrating lights of
orion which eventually faded with the increasing morning light. I have no conclusions or even theories about what could have caused any of these experiences of perception. only the classic haunting conviction that "I know what I saw" actually means "I know I saw SOMETHING but have no idea how it was possible."
