In 1973 I was out of the army for a couple years and tried marriage for the first time. We didn't have a dime and so in lieu of a honeymoon we went camping in the desert. We drove out to a box canyon near the abandoned railroad depot at Dos Cabezas in the Anza-Borrego, where there is an oasis that draws migratory birds and their binocular-toting devotees. It was January when we were there, and we had the place completely to ourselves.
The California desert is a magical and strange place. It's not sand dunes and cactus for the most part, but is characterized by steep, rocky granitic ridges and whole mountain ranges of gigantic boulders. There are openings and caves among them, which have been used for millennia by people. One of the main reasons these sites are not on maps is so that people won't vandalize the petroglyphs. Many of them remain undiscovered. At night, the rocks appear almost as ancient cities in the moonlight - the walls and citadels of a people unimaginably ancient, now long gone although their spirits remain, whispering secrets among the rocks.
Doz Cabezas Canyon is actually not far from the freeway as the crow flies, but it is separated from it by a couple of sheer, rocky ridges that make it necessary to approach via several miles of unpaved ruts. When we arrived and set up camp, an incredible windstorm was blowing. It took forever to get the tent set up, and when we did it seemed the only thing that kept it from blowing away was the fact that we were both sitting in it. It would lean so far over it seemed ready to simply shred, then suddenly it would whip over the other direction into some new contortion. And it was freezing cold. Somehow as the evening came on we managed to heat some soup and go to sleep.
When I woke it was sometime in the wee hours. The wind had gone and in its place the night was dead calm. Lori was shaking me and whispering, "Dave! Dave! Wake up!" The tent was blazing in a blue-white light that came directly from above - as bright as noon. There was no sound, nothing. I scrambled out of my sleeping bag and into my jeans, and unzipped the door of the tent. I popped my head out and looked up into the light and saw - nothing! It simply vanished. The sky was completely clear and full of stars, and also completely empty. There was no helicopter. There was no sound. The night was silent.
Weird story, right? It gets a little weirder, because as far as I can remember, we both rolled over, went back to sleep, and never talked about it until years later. The next day we explored the canyon, took a few Kodaks, packed up and left. There were two sequels to this incident. The first was many years after Lori and I had gone our separate paths. We'd stayed in touch occasionally - Christmas cards and the like. I don't remember why we happened to talk on the phone, but I asked her if she remembered that night. She became very agitated and said, "That never happened! And don't ever mention it again!" She slammed the phone down, and as it happened that was the last contact we ever had. I guess that was about 1990 or 91. And then, about the same time I happened to come across a paperback copy of Whitley Streiber's book, Communion. On the cover is an illustration of a typical "grey" alien, with the big eyes and no ears, etc. When I saw it, for some reason I blurted out, "They got the mouth wrong." I can't tell you why I said that - except that at that moment, the memory of the night in the desert in January, 1973 came steamrolling into my mind.
I've thought that it would be interesting to be hypnotized and see what I could remember about that night, which is no more than what I've told you. Other times I think, Naaaah! I've shared this story a few times over the years, and I've always wound up by saying, "If it wasn't a UFO, I can't think of any other explanation." I still can't, but who knows?
8-D