Aliens in the Aurora Borealis: Sometimes You Just Gotta Believe
I had the bizarre experience of strolling out onto the back deck and looking up to see the Northern Lights last night, which should already tell you I’m not in my flat in Madison, WI this week.
But in one of those “someone is messing with you” moments, our enjoyment (I say “our” because I actually have two other witnesses for this one, my mother and father) was interrupted by a weird floating light similar to a plane’s undercarriage lights.
Only this blip of light kept changing color, direction, and altitude, flitting merrily around inside the glow of the Northern Lights. It bounced around more like a kite in high winds than anything, but far too high up to be any sort of kite.
So I had an odd moment, standing there on the dock and thinking “ok, yeah, that totally is what UFO crazies describe their sightings as.” It was very X-Files.
Lord only knows what the actual cause was. A very high, thin antennae with a warning light? The iconic weather balloon? Actual aliens? Who knows.
But it was a valuable reminder that people have reasons for believing the things they believe. Most crazy-sounding sightings are reported by people who did see something, even if it wasn’t what they thought.
So with Nessie back in the news lately (photos of her, that is, not the Christian textbooks citing her as evidence for creationism, which are admittedly newsworthy in their own depressing way), I have to say I’m happy for the personal reminder that sometimes you just gotta believe a tiny bit.
Or at least accept that you don’t know what’s really going on any better than the people who do believe — I’m willing to settle for that. “We can all be wrong together” is a surprisingly strong basis to start a shared society on.
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