Smoky Mountain Surprise: Chapter Four

Four

         I was more than tired.  Weeding the cliffside garden meant I wore my son's high school navy plaid flannel shirt. Sure there were a few paint marks around the cuff.  That happens with a twenty year old shirt.  Besides it was the only shirt big enough to go over my work clothes.  I didn't want to wear dark pants, but yoga pants were the only things old enough to do garden work.  Sitting on the soil with my knee pad.  Rubber bands nearly closed off my circulation at the cuffs and ankles.

No-seeums seemed to enjoy my oliver skin.  Like the time four summers ago when they zoomed in for the attack.  Across my untanned midriff.  Like dots in Morse code.  Only larger. It took three months of non-stop pain and itching for the welts to heal.  That I didn't scratch once was a miracle. That I was still raw for the wedding says a lot about their determination.

A basket weaved sombrero provided much needed shelter for my face in the intense southern sun. Mosquito netting around my face would have helped.  None was to be found. It wasn't just the no-seeums.  Gnats and mosquitos also made a beeline toward raw flesh.  Bzzzz. Ouch! Six dots that grew in the week to come.

           The air was thick with moisture.  Buggy.  Oppressive. With the nut grass removed and composted over the hill, it was time to get ready to meet my new friend.

I’d met  Carol at a local UFO Conference.  A slender, blond woman with a nicely coiffed bob from South Africa looking older than her fifty years.  Living in a country where apartheid was the main stay wasn’t easy for this free spirit. Her pasty white skin and angular facial features made her stunning with her model’s figure. 

Carol lived  some forty-five minutes over the mountains to the northeast.  I'd met her at a local UFO Conference.  She spoke about numerous encounters that night in town.  The conference center was packing.  Many stood even outside the doors.  Meeting this eclectic woman was like dining with a butterfly.  I kept wondering where and when she would land.

Almost immediately, I was whisked to her garden.  Mystical, magical, Yoda-like.  She told me about the waterless stream on her property.

“I dug the creek myself.  Some neighbors came by to help.  Look at it.  There was no water here and now it is abundant. After seeing the spaceship and setting my intention, the water appeared one morning.  A splashing brook."

She ushered me into her more than comfy home and left to prepare our meal. Carol said she preferred to make dinner.  I hadn't eaten all day.  Since I hadn't tasted South African food before, I was excited to eat.    After a few minutes, Carol appeared from behind the tiny bar in her tiny closet sized kitchen.  A plate with four hind quartered chicken was served.  They had been roasting for some time.  I learned that evening she didn't use spiced.  That was the meal save for dry red wine.  An hour later, her friend met us on the balcony. Her friend stayed while she spoke.  Carol softly retreated to the chaise.

As the evening faded, I left to go home to eat.  Foreshadowing was everywhere. The air was still and silent. Once I left the gravel road and densely covered woods, bright lights appeared in the sky.  They seemed to leapfrog.  I was glad to know the winding road.  The lights followed me until the road became more circuitous and my eyes were firmly planted on the road.  The Highlander followed the road down toward the basin.

It was only when I made the u-turn from the Webster Road, that the sky seemed to darken.  I couldn't find the lights in the sky as the canopy opened. Coming off the mountain felt like being in the zone. Something beckoned me to look up. There it was hovering over the road as I crested the innocuous hill. At first I thought it was crashing.  On a closer look I could see it was tilted to the right, stopped in midair.  Motionless.  Quiet.  This metallic-looking structure was about fifteen to twenty feet tall, about sixty feet wide.  It looked very 1950. As I turned my head to the right, I could see two white sedans in the distance.  One was further back than the other.  The one in the fast lane behind me was closer, some one quarter to a half mile away.  The other vehicle at least half a mile away.  There speed was constant for a while.

My body tingled gently.  I was more aware than I ever imagined.  The five narrow dimly lit salmon-rose windows on the spaceship revealed no beings.  As my eyes scanned the ship some thirty-five feet over the ground, I heard a jet in the distance somewhere to the right and behind the ship.  I never saw the jet.

Fully sentient, I felt the presence of something evil lurking.  Perhaps it was just over the ridge at Cowee Mountain.

The clock in my silver Highlander read 9:40 p.m.  The road was empty of traffic from the south on an otherwise busy highway for a July 20, 2010 summer evening.  Even my new Magnavox cell phone, purchased for its excellent reception in the southern Appalachians was working.  Nothing on the dashboard dimmed.

There just below the twin peaks it hovered. It never moved. 

Looking backward in the darkness of the night, I could see nothing.  But like I said, I knew I would see this that evening.

There is something uncanny about being in the zone.  Everything is possible.  Like the athlete who is one with the football.  Just getting it over the goal post is a matter of the next step.  Everything is possible.  An easy focus.

I remembered the feeling of the evil presence of the jet sounds in the distance.  A pilot later told me the sound was the hydraulics coming from the jet just over the mountain range. 

My whole body felt I was not to have this experience without sharing the moment.  To be fully present. I wanted to call a friend, to have other ears hear the sounds in the distance for their were very loud.  But I was told that it was not necessary to use the cell phone sitting on the seat next to me.  This was to be a singular experience.  I alone was meant to see this.  A conduit.

I kept looking behind me at the two seemingly identical cars in the distance.  One in the fast lane behind me some half a mile and the other similar white vehicle in the slower lane further away than a quarter of a mile.

Even driving under the UFO the sky was totally black.  As I drove out from behind it, I couldn't see anything as I turned my head again looking back.  A void. But as I left this highway, crossing the bridge under Savannah Creek, it felt okay to make a phone call.  I telephoned a photojournalist friend.  He would more than understand.  I recounted my experience as I was glad to be home.  Safe inside.  At least on an earth plane level.  I continued to talk to my friend for a while that evening.

Being home felt like an illusion. I knew any being with this level of technology accesses what they want.  They probably read, know...my thoughts.  I wasn't kidding myself.  I had been exposed.  And more than tired.  My organic, ivory sheets awaited me.  Bed was more than welcomed.