Seeing a herd of 13 Bighorn sheep in Anza Borrego State Park; so close you could hear their breathing. Some people told me they’ve visited the Park for 20 years and never saw one!
The Perseids Meteor shower in Escondido, CA 16 years ago. At first, it was sharp traces of light, but then, the fog very, very slowly started creeping in as a light haze…at that point it became magical. The traces became gossamer and ethereal–as if faeries streaking across the sky. It was one the most unexpectedly beautiful things I’ve ever seen.
Oh yeh, I’ll never forget the time (in my late teens/early twenties?), my friend and I were hanging out late at night at a Denny’s. He turns to look out the window, and I follow his gaze. Then I see what caught his eye: A brilliant green streak, that penetrated the thin cloud cover, lighting it an eerily radioactive-like color on the cloud’s ceiling, continuing it’s brilliant neon trail behind the tree-line. We naively jumped into his car in a race to find it (it seemed close to us)… hey, we were awed and excited!
It was a meteorite, of course. The next day, reports of the sighting were all over the radio, and it was assumed it landed somewhere in Lake St. Claire, or thereabouts.
I doubt I’ll ever witness a meteorite again. I highly recommend it.
Have had some cool experiences as part of my job. Have played with plutonium heat sources. Went down in a MMIII silo in Wyoming a few years ago. And just yesterday I was inside a B-52 cockpit in Louisiana.
This is the first one that came to my head and keeps sticking.
I live in Manhattan.
Years ago ago I got a lucrative gig that required that I get up real early and shlep to an outer borough, first by subway, then by bus. (The money was that good.) It was a long train ride to the last stop, but it was a reverse commute. What I mean by reverse commute is that, at such hour, the rest of NYC was heading to Manhattan and those returning cars were of very light load.
My kid was a baby or toddler. I was wiped. Typically these cars were empty so I would stretch out and sleep. I mean what the hell?
One time I got woken up suddenly by an elderly black guy who, I was to find, was chewing me out.
“Never sleep with your eyes closed!” I opened one. “You just don’t sleep with your eyes closed! You have any idea what can happen if you sleep with your eyes closed!” Both were open now. “I never, ever, ever sleep with my eyes close! Never! Don’t ever sleep with Your Eyes Closed!”
I thanked him and told him I wouldn’t.
He was one of the nicest people I ever encountered.
I think most of mine are animal related. Getting dive bombed by a hummingbird. And a toucan. Getting to hold a huge python. And a two-headed turtle. As a kid I got to play with some big-cat cubs.
One summer I was on a canoe trip with my sweetie. We had a huge lake to cross, and the winds would get bad as soon as the day started to warm up. So we got up at the crack of dawn, packed quickly and were on the water by first light. When we crossed the lake we stopped and made breakfast. As we were sitting contemplating the lake and a new day, a moose cow breaks out of the underbrush no more than 20 feet away, wades into the lake and joins us for breakfast.
The lion that roared close to our tent in Africa I will remember too.
when my first child was born, after the usual bonding moments, I was holding her when my DH said something. Instantly she whipped her head around (as much as a newborn can) trying to see him. It was clear just how much she recognized his voice and needed to look at him.
My friend and I crawled into a tunnel that went down into the breast of a dam. We could crawl on our hands and knees but no more, and it went steeply down for a long long time, and then got less steep. Then it seemed to join another tunnel and continue on, but we eventually hit water that filled the tunnel, so we backed up and checked out the other tunnel. We went along horizontally for a while and the tunnel just ended, just turned into a flat wall. We thought this weird and hung out there for a while trying to make sense of it. Then we noticed these fine fine jets of water emanating from the corner where the flat wall and the tunnel wall met. Eventually we guessed we were inside a valve.
Just wanted to say that as a nervous first time mother, your post just chilled me to the bone. Of you have any advice as to how to convince a curious child to stay out of drowning hazard without killing an adventurous spirit I would appreciate it. Inside a valve. Jesus.
At first I thought those two first points where describing the same event. Like, someone jumping through the glass while firing his weapon. That would be kinda bad ass.
I remember driving alone across the North Slope of Alaska in summer and seeing a herd of a dozen musk ox about a half mile away. With my camera I slowly approached and got within probably 40 yards of them. For the next hour I lay out on the lonely plain listening to the wind through the tussocks and watching them graze and evaluate my presence. The tundra had wispy clumps of their coarse hair about and I would smell deeply of it. The two biggest males would face off and challenge each other, then turn back and look at me. I kept looking around the horizon to make sure no grizzlies came up because I had no weapon at all. It was just me, the prehistoric beasts and beautiful nature on a pleasant afternoon and if it could have lasted I would have stayed there forever.
Welcoming home the UNDEFEATED Miami Dolphins. That was a fun night.
The entire city was celebrating, singing songs (actually one song over and over again). The racial tension that usually plagued the city was totally absent that night. It was awesome.
Memories of my own kids birth and the Birth of the child I delivered will never go away. But the memories of dead babies are more vivid. Part of the cost of the job.
But probably true. Over the years I have heard that song mostly talked about with sneering derision, here and elsewhere. But it brings me back to a place in my life. I was stationed in Germany. Half my unit was deployed to Desert Shield. Their future was uncertain. At the end of the night at the all ranks club on post they would play that song and we would sing it and think of distant friends in harm’s way. Those that put the song down as hokey don’t understand that.
I was about 11 or 12 and one night my Dad and I were walking from the car around to the front of the house. For some reason we both stopped and looked up at the night sky - just in time to see a falling star. My Dad had his hand on my shoulder. I don’t remember if we said anything about it out loud, but we both knew the other had seen it too. Carried on into the house like nothing had happened.
As the mother of a young, mature but very typical teen, I’ve had a few recently. One that made me so proud and happy took place just this week. I was cooking dinner. I hate cooking and am rarely prepared but this was one of those rare good days. I had things going and even looked like they’d all be ready at the same time, when my son came up to me and asked if we could go out instead. I really sort of blew up at him and he sat down and sulked. I thought about it as I cooked and realized there was no need for me to yell so I went over and apologized to him. He said something that, at first, I believed was a combination excuse/accusation but then realized that he was telling me that he doesn’t know why he gets so upset with me sometimes and that he felt bad about it. My husband I assured him it was just teenager stuff, he agreed that this was probably the case, accepted my apology for yelling and we shook hands.
A night in the middle of nowhere in Malawi, Africa, the first and only time I’ve seen the Milky Way on a cloudless night in a remote area without light pollution. It was mindblowing.
My father slapping me in the face, over and over, for some imagined infraction on a family trip, then dumping my crying, humiliated ass in the family car while the rest of the family (and my friend who was with us) continued sight-seeing.
My father slapping me in the face, over and over, for a different - but equally imagined infraction - on a different family trip.
