I remember seeing aliens, surfing high in the midnight sky along the cosmos, nudging by hordes of stars in their ship that cut a temporary skid mark with an unimaginable color before they vanished into another galactic arm. Planted to the ground like the sagebrush that neighbored me; it was easy to summon a feeling of vulnerability and insignificance, glimpsing the flares that once were energy sources to entire solar systems dash above, each with a different poetic magnitude true to itself.

This was at Natural Bridges National Monument, a small world of it own in southeast Utah. A place where in the daytime, you are humbled in the shadow of these arches, each shaped through its time spent resting in the blowing sand over the millions of years. However, at night, a dense night sky emerges.

One notably mentioned as being the darkest in the country.

Forever may I dismiss this claim, that night I saw an illuminated universe.

The glowing Milky Way’s scar was cast from one side of the horizon to the next. Infinitely deep into an unreached chasm, the speckled light reached as stretched rows, infinitely deep into an unreached chasm.

As I merely adjusted to what there was to see, it was like there would be another chapter opened, filled with an unneeded plot twist. The amount of stars that vast across the sky was confusing. I could not believe what was out there and why we were here. Every thought was incomprehensive. Every sight seen in my past seemed to be miss-witnessed. I remember saying “We are inside this,” it was something I had always understood, yet, never had it ever been so obvious.

I near had self-inflicted whiplash, giving an effort in trying to see all the shooting stars. I’m not kidding when I say I believe I saw a speeding alien spacecraft too.