hope in her eyes as she set out to meet the girls she hoped were her friends now. The black knapsack was on her back as she set out down the street, lighting a cigarette. Jackâs jacket filled with wind,fluttered like a sail when the sky is against the cloth, and forward she moved, toward the Wal-Mart where she would meet the two girls who would bring her along to what she believed would be a Friday night party.
Lights in the Sky
T HE G ORGE is a misleading name, with the suggestion of an abyss or funereal crevice. The waterway has always been a place for idylls. In 1861, Lady Jane Franklin, widow of the Arctic explorer, sailed up the Gorge in the course of an around-the-world voyage with her niece Sophia. Miss Goodie McKenzie, their Canadian host, arranged for the ladies to be picked up by canoes and brought to the banks of the Gorge, where they picnicked under the boughs of the oak tree. Goodieâs cousin, Alice, a girl whoâd come from England in 1857, recalled in her memoirs how âthe roar of tumbling waters from the Gorge at low tide made a lullaby for me.â
On the night of November 14, two occurrencesâone natural, the other man-madeâenhanced the beauty of the waterway. There was a full moon on November 14, so large and full, the radiance illuminated what was normally hidden and so difficult to see. Another kind of light would break suddenly and wondrously through the dark above. According to the North American Aerospace Defense Command, this phenomenon occurred at precisely 9:12. At 9:12, the sky was silent, and yet it seemed as if fireworks were above, streaming across the sky, like wisps of fire, red and yellow, these lights, which left a glowing trail, shimmering as if in competition with the boldness of the moon.
At 9:12, a Russian rocket fell back to earth and exploded as it fell. The fuel tank and motor, all the mechanics of ascent, collapsed, and jettisoned, slowly, and could not orbit around the earth, and instead burned up as they hit the atmosphere. A scientist could better explain this demise. Debris in the sky turned to a light show and left no hazardous materials on the ground. There was merely an implosion and transformation to fire in the sky. And in this way, the night sky, already so clear and rainless and lit with moon, had never before been so strange and fiery.
*
On the Gorge that night, Patrick OâConnor was in a canoe with friends when he witnessed the sight. âWe lucked out,â Patrick OâConnor later recalled. That night, the Gorge seemed possessed of a magical beauty, as idyllic and wondrous as a place could be, and the men paddled. âWe were in the right place at the right time,â Patrick OâConnor would later say.
Others in Victoria were frightened by the fire in the sky. The phone rang rapidly, more so than usual, at the police station. Dispatchers received thirty-six emergency calls from people saying, âI heard a gun-shot.â âI saw something weird in the sky.â âI think thereâs a fire outside.â âThere was this noise, this light, I donât know what it is, but something went up somewhere; something lit up and burned.â The dispatcher, Derek Morrison, told the frightened citizens of his city not to worry. âItâs a four-stage SL 12 rocket,â he told one particularly interested but skeptical former military man. âThatâs right, sir, a Russian rocket. Nothing to worry about. Just a little spacecraft debris.â
In the morning, the U.S. National Weather Serviceâs Spokane, Washington, office would further reassure those frightened by the blaze above when they reported that the âspace debris landed safely in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Washington.â
In Victoria, the morning paper would report on the vision with a headline telling the townspeople to relax. âRelax. It was the Russians, not the Martians.â
On the field at Shoreline School,
Lights in the Sky
T HE G ORGE is a misleading name, with the suggestion of an abyss or funereal crevice. The waterway has always been a place for idylls. In 1861, Lady Jane Franklin, widow of the Arctic explorer, sailed up the Gorge in the course of an around-the-world voyage with her niece Sophia. Miss Goodie McKenzie, their Canadian host, arranged for the ladies to be picked up by canoes and brought to the banks of the Gorge, where they picnicked under the boughs of the oak tree. Goodieâs cousin, Alice, a girl whoâd come from England in 1857, recalled in her memoirs how âthe roar of tumbling waters from the Gorge at low tide made a lullaby for me.â
On the night of November 14, two occurrencesâone natural, the other man-madeâenhanced the beauty of the waterway. There was a full moon on November 14, so large and full, the radiance illuminated what was normally hidden and so difficult to see. Another kind of light would break suddenly and wondrously through the dark above. According to the North American Aerospace Defense Command, this phenomenon occurred at precisely 9:12. At 9:12, the sky was silent, and yet it seemed as if fireworks were above, streaming across the sky, like wisps of fire, red and yellow, these lights, which left a glowing trail, shimmering as if in competition with the boldness of the moon.
At 9:12, a Russian rocket fell back to earth and exploded as it fell. The fuel tank and motor, all the mechanics of ascent, collapsed, and jettisoned, slowly, and could not orbit around the earth, and instead burned up as they hit the atmosphere. A scientist could better explain this demise. Debris in the sky turned to a light show and left no hazardous materials on the ground. There was merely an implosion and transformation to fire in the sky. And in this way, the night sky, already so clear and rainless and lit with moon, had never before been so strange and fiery.
*
On the Gorge that night, Patrick OâConnor was in a canoe with friends when he witnessed the sight. âWe lucked out,â Patrick OâConnor later recalled. That night, the Gorge seemed possessed of a magical beauty, as idyllic and wondrous as a place could be, and the men paddled. âWe were in the right place at the right time,â Patrick OâConnor would later say.
Others in Victoria were frightened by the fire in the sky. The phone rang rapidly, more so than usual, at the police station. Dispatchers received thirty-six emergency calls from people saying, âI heard a gun-shot.â âI saw something weird in the sky.â âI think thereâs a fire outside.â âThere was this noise, this light, I donât know what it is, but something went up somewhere; something lit up and burned.â The dispatcher, Derek Morrison, told the frightened citizens of his city not to worry. âItâs a four-stage SL 12 rocket,â he told one particularly interested but skeptical former military man. âThatâs right, sir, a Russian rocket. Nothing to worry about. Just a little spacecraft debris.â
In the morning, the U.S. National Weather Serviceâs Spokane, Washington, office would further reassure those frightened by the blaze above when they reported that the âspace debris landed safely in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Washington.â
In Victoria, the morning paper would report on the vision with a headline telling the townspeople to relax. âRelax. It was the Russians, not the Martians.â
On the field at Shoreline School,
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