From: UFO UpDates - Toronto <post.nul>
Date: Thu, 05 Mar 2009 10:36:06 -0500
Archived: Thu, 05 Mar 2009 10:36:06 -0500
Subject: Mysteries In The Sky Intrigue Us




Source: The Anchorage Daily News - Alaska, USA

http://www.adn.com/life/lende/story/711022.html

March 4th, 2009


Mysteries In The Sky Intrigue Us

Heather Lende
Around Alaska

Haines -- My friend Joanne called Saturday night to ask if I saw
what she saw in the sky. I was at the table, just finishing a
moose stew dinner with the family and listening to the play-by-
play on KHNS of the girls' high school basketball game down in
Craig, on Prince of Wales Island. I hadn't been outside since an
afternoon ski along the beach around Jones Point to the set
tracks on the golf course and back. Then, the sun had been
shining on white snow and it felt like spring, especially with
the wind at my back. Now, I took the phone out on the back porch
and looked up.

"See it?" Joanne said.

"No," I replied.

"You've got to, it's the brightest thing out there," she said.
Then I went back in and got a coat and my glasses and
binoculars. With the phone in one hand and the binocs in the
other, I had Joanne direct me south down the inlet, toward
Sullivan Island and low on the horizon, across from Rainbow
Glacier. Sure enough, there among all the other stars was an
extra-bright orb with flashing red, green and blue lights. It
was low enough that my view was partially blocked by the
neighbor's spruce trees.

With Joanne still on the line, explaining that she had been
walking her cocker spaniel Harry when she saw whatever it was, I
took the stairs up to the top of our house two at a time and
focused the binoculars on the strange object in outer space from
my bedroom window. The double-paned energy-saving glass distorts
things, so I opened the window to get a clear look.

"Have you called Hertz?" I asked Joanne, watching the thing
twirl. "He has seen a UFO, so he'd know."

"Really? I didn't know that," she said, and decided to call the
science teacher. "Fontenot will know," she said.

I asked her to share what she learned.

My husband and daughter weren't interested in the UFO. He said
it was probably a satellite. She was busy ironing the squares of
paper she had cut out of old grocery bags, crumpled, soaked in
water and then hung to dry on two lines tied across our living
room. She is student teaching in the first grade and the bags,
she explained, would become covers for the children's make
believe, but educational, African adventure journals.

Joanne called back after talking to Fontenot. That's what we
call Mark; some people have last names for first names in
Haines. Hertz does too; his name is Irwin, but everyone, even
the priest at his church, calls him Hertz. He is also an
electrician, which figures. With a name like Hertz what else
would he be? Certainly not a dentist.

Back to the light in the sky. Joanne said that Fontenot said it
might be the International Space Station. "It was just a guess,
though." He was finishing up a late supper too.

All the extra daylight and the sunshine that has come with it
have kept a lot of us outside longer. Last Sunday, my husband
and I went all the way up the Chilkat River to Turtle Rock and
back on snowmachines. The weather and snow conditions were so
nice that our party ran into half a dozen friends along the
remote route, all of them smiling broadly and exclaiming about
the great day.

After Joanne and I finished talking, I checked on the Internet
and learned that the International Space Station was only
visible in the early morning sky and that the comet Lulin was a
possibility, except it seemed that we were four days too late to
see it so clearly and it didn't look like our UFO.

It snowed the next night, and it is still snowing, so I haven't
seen it again. I did see Hertz in the market on Monday, though.
He hadn't looked in the sky on Saturday night. But he said that
an old-timer, who is long gone, had once seen a hovering flying
saucer out at Ten Mile about this time of year.

The one Hertz saw was in Montana, on the family farm when he was
a kid. It appeared silent as snow, right above his shoulder, and
was, he said, "big as a football field."

There's so much we can't explain. This morning a snowflake
landed on the dark sleeve of my coat. It was perfect, like a
crystal Christmas ornament.

How did something so fragile and so tiny fall all the way from
heaven to Earth without breaking? They say that no two are
alike, but how can anyone know that for sure?

I'm sure there's a good explanation for our flashing light and
for the miracle of snowflakes. But a big part of me would rather
not hear it, at least not at the end of long winter. I prefer to
imagine a divine player is out there in the great beyond,
spinning electric tops among the stars and gently shaking the
last, perfect snowflakes of the season gently down on us.


Heather Lende lives and writes in Haines.



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