Trail in the BlueCopyright 2007, V1VrV2
My Mom says that one day, when I was about three years old, I was sitting in the grass behind our house watching an airliner pass high overhead. I turned to her and said, "Plane pulls line 'cross sky, Mommy."
I watch contrails from close-up now, and I still can't think of a more concise way to describe them. They're still fascinating, and still beautiful to me.
Just for a laugh, I occasionally check up on what the "chemtrail" kooks are doing. These are the people who sincerely believe that contrails are a government conspiracy to secretly spray the public with dangerous, DNA-altering substances. These people have extensive websites containing hundreds of photos purporting to be "proof" of the massive program to control our minds (or whatever it is they believe). Every one of their photos looks like to me like normal contrails in a normal sky. Some days, the sky is covered with spread-out contrails, and some days there's not a single one in sight. Sometimes the trails cross in interesting ways: X's, Z's, tic-tac-toe crosses, and even oblong ovals. All of this is utterly normal, everyday stuff, and yet there are folks who see something completely different when they look up. It's an interesting sociological phenomenon.
It's very similar to the widely-reported "Phoenix Lights" event in 1997. A city full of people "saw" something. A big, V-shaped, black something with lights on it that flew over the city. I saw video footage of the object, and what I saw was something I've seen many times before: A military fighter aircraft, many miles away behind a mountain range, dropping regularly-spaced flares. In fact, I used to fly aircraft that dropped flares just like them.
Every once in a while, a passenger on my plane will frantically ring their Flight Attendant Call button and point to something out the window. It could be a far-off aircraft landing light, or the twinkling lights of a nighttime city passing behind a cloud, or something else they can't figure out. Most often, it's a meteor, or the Northern Lights, that gets their attention.
One time, we were crossing the Atlantic on our way to Amsterdam. It was 2:00 AM. We were 400 miles northeast of the coast of Newfoundland. The Captain and I were deeply immersed in eating our fine Rubber-Chicken cuisine and discussing the day's news between bites. The cockpit's bright, overhead lights were on, so we couldn't see much outside. Suddenly, two Flight Attendants called us at the same time, from two different locations in the airplane's cabin.
The first F/A said, "The passengers are really concerned about what's going on outside, and frankly, so am I." The other one said, "Yeah, what IS that?"
The Captain and I looked at each other. We had no idea what they were talking about. The Captain reached up and turn off the dome lights, plunging the cockpit into darkness. There, stretching from in front of the aircraft's nose to far behind our left wing, was the brightest, most pulsating, and most bizarre example of the Aurora Borealis either of us had ever seen. This wasn't just the usual shimmering curtain of gentle blue/green light. It was a wild, gyrating swirl of blue and white light, like what time-travel looks like in a bad sci-fi movie. It was a veritable light storm.
No matter who you are, there are times you just end up using the f-word, because no other word will do. This was one of those times. (Actually, I believe we both added the prefix "Holy," which makes it OK because it's sort of a religious thing.)
We watched the lights for awhile, then the Captain made an announcement to the passengers, carefully explaining what everyone was seeing. It was a good announcement -- soothing and calming without being too wordy, technical, or dramatic. Nevertheless, when we reached Amsterdam and the passengers were deplaning, one burly man strode up to us and loudly proclaimed, "You don't expect me to believe that was anything but a UFO, do you? There ain’t no way those were some kinda 'Northern Lights,' or whatever..." Then he was gone, before we could even reply. He didn’t want to hear any explanation.
Or maybe he merely had to hurry off to his hotel for the Chemtrail Enthusiasts Club's annual "ChemCon" Convention.
