"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate... "
OH. Really Real Life (tm)
Well, you still might not believe it. Comes down to a close tie so you get a two-fer...
The first was a night ages ago when I was still young. I was out playing kick-the-can in the dark with some friends one fine fall evening. I came around the corner of a house, moving my hide closer to the can, into the perfect dark of shadow from the low orange harvest moon just rising. I don't know why but instead of keeping my eyes out for the seeker I stopped and looked up, just in time to catch a huge fireball with a tail streaking across the sky right overhead. It was a sight. It seemed to last several seconds, time kind of standing still, but I'm sure it was only a few seconds and then it was gone, faded to black. Either the meteor burned up or passed back into space I guess. It was impressive. Not your usual pinpoint streak of light, it had a sense of size, of presence. I almost thought I could hear it. It was a quiet night so maybe I did catch a whisper of the sonic boom and that's what made me look up. I don't know. I've only caught another fireball and that was from inside the house and mostly through the curtain before I could get to the window and open the curtain.
The second (actually a bonus third I'd forgotten about until typing up the above) was equally awe inspiring. I was taking some friends home from the drive in double feature a few years after the fireball. A dark country road, no lights to impair vision except for the headlights, and they were pointing more in the sky than on the road as we went up a hill. I was focused on looking for the telltale glow of approaching headlights from the other side of the hill so an oncoming car wouldn't surprise me but it was all dark. The sky was cloudy, no stars, no moon, it had been threatening rain but all we had seen during the movie were a few distant lightning flashes. Cresting the hill, straight over the road ahead, seeming to be hovering over the next hill a half mile or so distant was an eerie glow, multicoloured and pulsing, as wide as the road and about as big around. I was freaked and so was my buddy beside me from his reaction. The girls in the back didn't see much if any of it, their view partly blocked by us and the headrests. And then it was suddenly gone. As much as we half-kidded later about seeing a UFO (it was the 70s, and no I hadn't been "smoking"
) I'm sure it was ball-lightning. Tres cool mother nature again.
The third (which would have been second) was a few years ago, and yes I think mother natures hand was in it again, but it might have been more and is the one that requires the biggest faith from you dear readers that I'm telling it fully truthful. It was just before supper, early spring, a nice snow melting day, and I had to take the garbage out. This requires a bit of set up. A minute earlier I had been upstairs, the sun was shining, birds singing, people walking by, cars on the highway a few blocks away zipping by. I stepped outside into a fog bank thick enough I could just see the alley and garbage cans from the door, some 60 feet or so. That in itself was kind of neat but not that unusual, it had been foggy before and we get some lake effect fog now and then if conditions are right. I was about half way out to the cans when I noticed how quiet it was. Dead quiet. No birds. No people. No cars. And the air was so still. Spooky. I put the garbage in the can, disturbing the silence and feeling ill at ease for doing it. I stood there a minute just drinking in the feeling, a kind of alone I'd never felt before. And then the silence was broken by a bird call, and another, and a car, and soon sounds were normal, the fog was thinning and the feeling was gone. But I was again struck by the awesomeness of mother nature. More struck then I'd imagined since when I got back in the house it wasn't just a couple minutes but several that I'd been out there drinking in the quiet solitude.
So there you go. I don't know which to call the most spectacular. Each was equally awesome in it's own way. My descriptions probably don't do them justice. And your own experiences here sound equally incredible and were no doubt only something that could be truly appreciate by the experience.
It's a pretty dang remarkable little planet we live on
