The Glimmer

This story of my unusual encounter, one that remains a baffling and frustrating mystery, begins at the end of a hike through the wooded foothills of the Cascade Mountains. I had parked my car and set out in the afternoon, enjoying the warmth of the sun and the azure haze smudged across an August horizon. After walking six miles in the direction of a lake, the terrain leading up to its bank went up steeply. While studying the outline of the hill above me, I noticed that the sun was already on its way down.

It was too late to make a plodding ascent, so I turned around. The light dimmed peacefully during the hike back. The heat of the day weakened. About a mile from where my car was parked, I spotted a connecting trail leading away from the main route. My legs were sore but the less-worn side path looked intriguing. Knowing the car was not too far away, I decided to try the detour.

The thin trail wound its way between cedars bearded with moss, desiccated from a lapse in the rains. I wondered how the trunks had pressed so close together while managing to grow tall and wide. They worked with dusk’s shadows to confuse my eyes and cause me to lose the outline of the path. It looked like an omen to turn around. Not to mention that I had forgotten my water bottle back at the car. A feeling of lightheadedness had come over me during the walk back, making me paranoid about heat stroke. I was eager to get back to the car and gulp down my water. 

I stood and scanned the surrounding carpet of dark ferns. There, in front of me, the faint strip of trampled earth crawled through the undergrowth. I decided to go a bit farther.

It seemed only a few minutes longer before the labyrinth of bark and branches ended abruptly and I emerged into a clearing. The ground was even and covered in grass. It was a uniform shade of green, and short… mowed. Blinking in surprise, I stood in someone’s yard.

A remarkable house sat at the other end of the field, about fifty yards away. I tried to appraise it based on places I had seen before but my memory failed. The three-story cabin was constructed out of hulking timber beams, not round but square. Their wood-grained surfaces, stained a deep shade, had a smooth and shiny appearance. The whole thing rose up, wrapped and held together by large bolts and steel ties, and girded by two, spacious balconies.

A fire roared up from a neat circle of brick that sat closer to me than the house. The sun was behind a nearby mountain but hadn’t fully gone down yet. Under a sky that was giving up the last bit of blue to a handful of early stars, I looked down the yard at the long, flat terrace that extended from the cabin toward me, at the fire pit at the end of the terrace, and the four people who encircled it.

The sudden presence of the figures frightened me. I was hit by the impulse that they were anything but ordinary. Each of the four looked to be a few inches taller than me, and I’m above average in height. But that wasn’t it, exactly. The campfire disfigured their faces into sharp features with exaggerated cheeks and chins and foreheads, like a ravishing installation of cubism depicting creatures more humanoid than human. But that wasn’t the reason why they seemed so unusual, or why I felt fear. It was an impulse that I was somewhere I shouldn’t be, interrupting an important… I don’t know what, exactly. And there was another, even more urgent sensation: that I had wandered into a thing that was beyond me. It sounds strange to say, but I wanted to disappear from that place.

Four pairs of eyes, darkened by the approaching night, wavering in the glow of fire, watched me. I looked at the faces nervously, fighting the urge to turn around and leave immediately. I noticed that they were two couples, possibly in their thirties. Their clothing reminded me of hiking pants and jackets but not exactly what I was used to… I couldn’t put my finger on it (from overseas, maybe?)

“Hello. Do you live around here?” One of the women finally spoke up.

I exhaled loudly. A flush of reassurance passed through me, triggered by her clear and simple voice. Leaning back in their lawn chairs, the four looked relaxed and present. My eyes orbited their circle, scanning faces rapidly. But the only emotion I could read in their expressions was curiosity.

“No, sorry, I’m just hiking. I shouldn’t have walked onto your property.” My face turned red.

“It is not our property.”

“Oh…”

“Hiker?” said the man sitting next to her. “In that case, will you join us? I can bring a new chair.”

“Oh OK.”

The man stood up and loomed over me. I appraised him and his three companions, marveling at their height. I wondered if they were professional athletes. The man walked toward the house and I watched him go, noticing how serenely he moved. It reminded me of a supple cat gliding across the ground in no hurry, using no extra energy.

I approached the fire and warmed my hands on its glow even though the evening was only slightly cool. I introduced myself. The three strangers didn’t reply. They moved very little, almost not at all. I stared at the woman who had invited me, feeling uncomfortable in the silence.

“Nice to meet you,” she finally said. Her words eased my tension further. “My name is Mary and my husband is Mark. These are our friends Luke and Elizabeth.”

“Hello,” they both replied. 

Their politeness couldn’t hide their weird peculiarities: the carefully-measured way in which they spoke, the long pauses they took that seemed so natural to them, and the very purposeful yet tranquil bearing in their movements. And their names sounded… contrived, maybe? These facts, combined and condensed into the brief few minutes that had passed, affected an atmosphere that felt both mysterious and fragile. I wondered if their hospitality was faked…

The warm campfire radiated a heartening glow. Looking around, I took in the vast yard and spectacular cabin. The flames crackled and waved toward the sky, obscuring the details of the building, so I stepped to one side.

“Look at that thing!!” I exclaimed to release tension, “What a great house. Amazing!”

They followed my gaze to the cabin.

“Yes,” said Mary, “It is a lot more than we require. But all that we could find for this time and place. We like it. The top…” she paused, “platform, has an impressive telescope.”

I squinted but couldn’t see, so I walked around the chairs and fire until they were at my back. The house was covered by plenty of lights to illuminate it in the growing dark. Platform? She must have meant the deck on the upper level, where stood a massive, black cylinder.

“Wow, I’ve never seen a telescope that big outside an observatory. That thing’s bigger than me!”

The three laughed at my astonishment.

A door in the house, at ground level, opened and Mark stepped out, carrying a folding chair. He had to stoop his tall body to pass through the frame.

“Do you think about the stars?”

It was the other guy, Luke, who had asked. I didn’t answer, staring straight at him, unbalanced by the uncanny question.

“Think about the stars?” I finally managed to repeat his words.

But instead of answering, Luke tilted his head back slowly. Looking straight up, he smiled, like one admiring a favorite picture.

“That bright one,” he said, not bothering to point, “What is it?”

My eyes followed up into the night canvas. 

“Arcturus?” I questioned the big white spark.

“And next to it?” asked Elizabeth.

I laughed, having no idea what the tiny smudge of light was. All four of us were looking up and I felt amused by the whole thing.

“I have your chair,” interrupted Mark, coming over and folding it out. But instead of handing it to me, he walked around the fire pit and put it down on the opposite side with its back to the yard and forest. Did he want me to sit in that specific place?

“Oh, thanks,” I replied and circled the fire again. Before settling into his own seat next to Mary, Mark held out a plastic bottle of water. I took it, unscrewed the cap, and drank in big gulps. My dehydrated body absorbed the liquid greedily. With a sigh of relief, I fell into my chair.

“Thank you, Mark,” said Mary. Her voice sounded extremely steady and clear, like someone trained in speech. “Luke has already invoked the stars. Elizabeth and Luke love talking about that more than anything.”

“That is no exaggeration,” said Elizabeth.

I studied the four faces glowing and flickering around the bright fire. A realization hit me. While these strangers did nothing but sit there and speak tersely, I was totally impressed by them. Their every action, word, posture, and gesture carried great weight behind it.

“You mentioned this house was all you could find,” I said. “Are you from out of town? Can I ask where from, originally?”

A chorus of frogs droned from the trees behind me. The brightness of the flames was gradually drawing the rest of the space into shadow. I felt that we five were the only people in the world, surrounded by endless, primordial forest and the gaping cosmos. It was a magical feeling but there was terror inside it too.

Mark spoke then, his words sounding counted and measured. 

“We have been traveling for a very long time. And we have been to many different places. Do you know anyone like that? People who have no home?”

He looked at me curiously. I was both puzzled and impressed by how Mark had evaded answering me while redirecting with a profound question of his own. Feeling myself the guest, I complied.

“People without a home? No, I can’t say I know anyone like that—not personally.”

The four looked deeply into the fire. They were perfectly comfortable letting the silent night ebb inside our circle. I decided to change topics slightly. 

“So now that you’re here in the Northwest, what do you think of it?”

Mary looked at me with a piercing gaze.

“It is beautiful,” she said. “All this water. And life. And vitality.”

“Yeah,” I nodded, “water and green plants. That’s what we’re known for. If you live here long enough, you start to complain about it.”

No response. Mary looked away.

My eyes traveled around the circle. They did not seem annoyed by my awkward comment, only… indifferent to it. I saw their faces looking directly into the fire, as serene as the dead. Even while sitting down, all four were taller than me. Feeling like a small child among elders, I shifted uncomfortably in my chair.

“So… It’s a lot different here in the winter…” I trailed off, my glib words sounding grotesque. But they seemed to have no effect on the others.

“Well it’s nice now…” I muttered, but the four bodies did not make eye contact with me. My anxiety rose up and beat against my heart. The urge to stand up suddenly came over me. I learned forward, feeling the pounding of blood in my temples.

What happened next was the first great mystery of that night. Sitting there, staring into the fire with the others, I felt a profound heaviness on me, on all my limbs. The weight grew and the flames, while burning feverishly, started to dim. A deep blackness slid across my vision. I lost all awareness of the space around me.

I don’t know exactly how long I sat there like that. But eventually, I saw the fire in front of me again and remembered where I was, but with no awareness of what had happened. There was a ravine in my immediate memory, empty and bottomless. I moved my extremities to make sure that I still could and looked around. The fire was starting to die down some. The sky above was totally dark. The others had not moved from their places and continued to look straight ahead.

The hour was very late. I needed to go home. Part of me wondered if I should just stand up and slip away, but that felt too jarring.

“I should find my car.” Breaking the silence that hung around us, which seemed so thorough and weighty, was like shattering glass. Yet the others did not react. They remained frozen. 

After a lengthy pause, Mary did speak.

“You do not know where your car is?”

“I do. It’s nearby. I just need to get back to the trail.”

“Would you like to borrow a flashlight?” Asked Elizabeth.

“No, I have a headlamp. I just need to get back on the main trail—it goes straight to my car.”

“The forest will be dark,” said Luke. “You should take the gravel road in front of the house.”

“The trail was close… where I parked… need to retrace my—”

I stood up.

The strangers stared at me. My eyes darted across their faces and in the flickering light their gazes pierced me. I felt exposed. It was futile to conceal anything from them.

“I’m pretty sure my car is really close,” I said, suddenly feeling the urge to explain myself. “If I don’t see it after ten minutes of hiking, I’ll come back this way and try the road.”

“Very good,” Mark said, and I felt relief at his words. 

Then I nodded, not knowing what else to say, and turned to the forest behind me.

Questions on what exactly had happened, on how a slice of time had disappeared from my memory, fought for my attention. But I pushed them aside, needing all my senses to navigate back.

A wall of black met my eyes, greatly dilated from staring into the campfire. I left the terrace and began to move forward carefully, feeling my shoes sink into soft grass. The light of the fire waned behind me as I walked into the dark embrace of the vast night.

Ahead and to the left, at the end of the yard, in the midst of all that blinding ink, there should have been an opening in the trees… I started to reach into my pocket for a headlamp when my eyes were suddenly filled with a golden flash, bursting from the right corner of my vision. I stopped and blinked, but in the same instant, there were only the dark cedars before me. My eyes were starting to make out the soft contours of the somber trees. I listened. Crickets and the distant thrum of a river were all I heard. 

Some sliver of awareness inside of me suggested that I lean back. And as I stepped to keep myself from stumbling, it happened again—my vision lit up and the air glowed like a stained glass window pierced by the sun. I stood dumbfounded with my mouth hanging open. I tried to understand what I was looking at. It was a patch of air, about twenty feet away from me and thirty feet to the right of the trail, in the corner of the yard where it ended at the trees. This glimmer shifted and waved with a yellow (or bright-orange?) glow, a blend of fire and iridescence. Yet the cedars behind it were dark. 

And suddenly it was gone again. Had I shifted forward too far in my excitement? I moved back. The air caught fire once more, rippling like a golden waterfall frozen in time. My wide eyes scanned the thing up and down, trying to discern a shape, a color, an explanation… But there was nothing in the shining air in front of me that my mind could grip.

I did feel fear, but it was eclipsed by a curiosity more powerful than all other impulses. I needed to know what this was. What was this supernatural thing out here in the middle of nowhere?

Having forgotten about everything else, I stumbled toward the light. The glow vanished as soon as I moved but I kept going. I had the hunch that there was something there. I pulled out my headlamp while walking forward, not taking my eyes off the patch of air in front of me, grown dark again.

“STOP.” The voice hit me like a shockwave. It was not loud or aggressive but so clear and sonorous and laced with power that I’ll never forget it. I stopped immediately and stumbled around.

Four figures watched me. They loomed tall from their chairs. The fire turned their faces jagged, like sculptures coarsely chiseled out of stone. They were the ominous giants I had first laid eyes on. I couldn’t read their firm expressions.

“The trail is that way,” said the one called Mary, lifting a long limb and pointing a slender finger at the trees. She was gesturing in the direction I had first emerged from earlier in the evening. I knew a dark cleft among the tree trunks there would take me back into the forest. But I turned my head to look in the direction that I really wanted to go, toward the glimmering anomaly. At that moment, I could see nothing, only empty space above the grass. But I felt the mystery was still there and I badly wanted to investigate it, to discover the source and meaning of the strange light…

Glancing back, I saw that the four hadn’t moved. But they kept their eyes on me. I strangely felt nothing from them, no tension or anxiety of any kind… nothing. They were only waiting. The next move was mine.

All I could do then was lift up a hand, wave at the strangers, and turn around. I walked in the direction of the trail while keeping my real desire in the periphery, hoping to see something else, anything that could explain the glimmering lights. But I saw no more flashes or anything else there, only the empty space before the trees. I found the gap among them after reaching the end of the grass and submerged myself inside the black forest.

The shaggy cedar branches above completely sealed the place off from any starlight. I pulled out and powered on my headlamp. Angling the dull beam at the ground, I made my way through the dark woods. It was impossible to recognize that this was the right way back to my car. I peered into the formless pitch gathered all around me and felt my mind grasping through the dark. An acute paranoia blotted out any meditations I might have on the four strangers, the missing time around the campfire, or the strange lights. 

What if, in the confusing dark, I somehow took a fork that led away, far away from the trailhead? What if I followed it and got myself really lost in the night? I might turn around then but could I find the right way back? I began to think about the batteries in my headlamp, unable to recall when they were last replaced. Was the beam rapidly dimming or was that just my imagination? And there were other fears, much more terrifying…

The trail came to a sudden rise, dipped back down, and dumped me out into an open clearing. I felt the sharp lumps of gravel under my shoes and the immense flush of relief. The dark outline of my car was there where I had left it, at the far end of the parking lot. No other vehicles remained there at that hour. Switching off my headlamp, I strolled across the empty space. I reached my car but didn’t get in.

Frozen in place, drawing in the cool, cedar-spiced air, I stared up. The night had no moon to ease it. But all the stars… Their speckled glow among galactic purple looked so striking and familiar. 

This is important, said a voice from deep inside my consciousness. This is it!

Why? My eyes scanned the white light that washed out all constellations with its splendor.

Why did it look so familiar? Of course I had seen the stars many times before, but this was different… This… This impulse…

I saw the campfire. The night sky above. The gap in my memory. And suddenly, what was missing rushed back to me. I saw the strangers, in a circle, faces fixed like stones around a midnight grave. And me, a link in their chain, uneasy and anxious and questioning the motivation of my cryptic hosts. Questioning their very nature.

But something kept me there, kept me from leaving the somber, quiet strangers. A pang or jag of… remorse. I looked at them and sensed nothing, only a heavy stillness. It felt like death—final, definitive, inexorable. It was the force they gave off like dark stars radiating gravity. I felt its tug and let myself fall in. Reclining back in my chair with a creak, I unfurled the tension from my limbs. My eyes rested on the fire in front of me. My arms and legs, tired from the day, relaxed. I remember a pleasant light-headedness and the great heaviness of my body, like the trunk and extremities of a giant that I suddenly embodied, amazed by his dimensions and power. Resting fully and deeply… sinking down and back into the chair and up, up into the dark sky.

It was black and barren of all light, barren of any kind of identity—no joy, no pain, no anxiety… Only equanimity—in the void. I felt myself pour out into it, disappear inside it, lose it all. Lost the man, tired from hiking, sitting in a chair at a fire. That reality didn’t matter, didn’t exist. It was true peace, the kind that didn’t need peace and discord to exist, to be, because it wasn’t.

And in a flash, a cloud of glittering stars burned the night. The whole canopy, horizon to horizon, casting a pall of silver across the quiet world below. But I didn’t just see it. I felt the void above me. I felt it reach beyond my tiny person, beyond my miniscule planet, exploding out to infinity, a silent wonder that had no end. And I felt the mind, the pulse, and the motion inside it. All those worlds and lights, billions of places that a person can see and stand on with their feet, feeling the solid ground beneath. And look up into the firmament, out across the celestial mass that bore them like a womb, and wonder about this immense thing, this unlikely, uncanny universe, replete with light and dark and everything…

It felt like I stayed in that memory for hours. Stood next to my car, unaware of the terrestrial space around me. But eventually, either the growing chill of the night or the magnitude of creation palpitating and glimmering above my head, plucked at me and broke my trance. I got into my car and drove home.