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Stirring the Embers - Great Balls of Fire
EXTRAORDINARY EVENTS HAPPEN TO ALL OF US. IT’S JUST A MATTER OF KEEPING OUR EYES OPEN AND SAVORING THE PASSING PARADE.
By Jesse Mullins Jr.
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"Each one of us sees or senses more than we give ourselves credit for." |
Scientists now call it “the
Great Daylight Fireball of 1972.”
Until I sat down to write this editorial
(and did some research on
the Web), I didn’t know it had a
name. I just knew I’d seen the
thing with my own eyes and never
forgot it.
I wouldn’t have recalled that it
came on Aug. 10, either. But I did
recall that it was midday because
it was at that time that another
cowboy and I were walking from
the bunkhouse to the main
house for lunch when one of the
most extraordinary meteoric
events of recent times passed
before our eyes.
I was still a teenager and was
working for the summer as a
horse wrangler on the Heart Six
Guest Ranch near Wyoming’s
Grand Tetons when I watched
that space rock streak across
Jackson Hole, headed north.
In the illustration above, I’m
the cowboy on the left. Those
mountains behind me are the
Tetons. It was through that patch
of sky over my shoulder, coming
left to right, that the meteor
burned its path.
One report estimated
the object’s “entry mass” at
4,000 metric tons, and its diameter
at about 20 meters.
Never in my wildest imaginations
would I have thought that
that incident could have been captured
anywhere on film. But with
some Web surfing the thing
turned up. To see it for yourself,
just search www.youtube.com
for “Great Daylight Fireball.”
The short clip you’ll see was
from a different angle than our
actual viewing, and not as close.
The film shows the object mostly
moving away. For us, it was mostly
approaching, though at an
angle. Nor does that film give
much sense of the thing as a solid
object. But we could see the face
of the rock.
It did not look like something
real. It looked instead like a bad
display of special effects, like
something out of an old Flash
Gordon movie. Flames were
erupting across the face of the
rock, stripping away, re-erupting.
We guessed it went down in the Teton Wilderness that was to our
backs—we knew there was more than
a hundred square miles of it. Then
later we heard the thing was sighted
over Montana. But the most amazing
part is that the bolide never touched
earth at all. Apparently it entered the
atmosphere and exited back into
space somewhere over Canada, continuing
on its way through the void.
My point to this tale is not that
extraordinary things have happened
to me—quite the opposite.
I’ve always been of the opinion
that a multitude of extraordinary
events present themselves to each of
us, but we do not always recognize
them as such. As a journalist, I have
found that fascinating tales exist
within each person. And while I have
not kept a thorough record of my own
encounters, I share the following as
just a sampling. Not as proof that I’ve
encountered more than my share, but
as proof that each one of us sees or
senses a lot more of life than we give
ourselves credit for seeing.
There was the nighttime lightning
strike that was no more than 100 feet
directly in front of me as I drove
down Northwest Highway in
Oklahoma City. As I passed through
the spot where it had struck, my
windshield was touched by some of
the burning ash that was fluttering
down, glowing red.
The time canoeing on the Buffalo
National River in Arkansas, when a
fully mature oak tree unexpectedly
cracked, popped, and just toppled
over, spanning the river, its topmost
leafy branches reaching the far side
and capsizing one of our two canoes,
though injuring no one.
In Colorado, a neighbor’s teensy
Shetland stallion interloped and
drove off a horse herd into the national
forest.
A bat giving birth to a litter on the
sidewalk. A road kill beaver. The tarantula
my dad casually pulled out of his
shirt collar, not knowing what had
dropped there from the tree limb
above. The giant, oblong, jagged hailstones
in Wichita, Kan., on June 19th,
1992, in one of “the worst hailstorms
in recorded history.”
The bald eagle just outside
Sheridan, Wyo., that stood in the highway
median and stared at vehicles as
they cruised by on both sides. The
man on our road construction crew
who was struck and killed by the tack
truck. The Great American Cattle
Drive of 1995 entering into Miles City,
Mont., after starting six months earlier
in Fort Worth, Texas.
The heavy feeling in my chest when
I first breathed in air at 40 below. The
numerous funnel clouds observed
before age 8—and none since.
The surprise and pleasure that was
the initial broadcast of Lonesome
Dove. In sports—the Immaculate
Reception; Big E over Big Lew; Kirk
Gibson’s 1988 World Series home
run. All unexpected; all caught live on
television. The Oklahoma-Nebraska
“Game of the Century” for which my
buddy Kim Carter won two 45-yardline
seats just hours before kickoff.
The way that my Angus bull
Barney would do a standing broad
jump that cleared the cattle guard
and took him from the pasture to the
lusher grass in the yard, but would
do it only if I were looking off in
some other direction, not directly at
him. (So maybe that doesn’t count as
an observation?)
The time at the National Cowboy
Museum when I heard sculptor Allan
Houser play an Apache pipe tune
that his mother played for him. I
reflected at the time that his mother
dated to Old West days, that his
father was Geronimo’s translator,
and that this haunting melody I was
hearing was precisely some ancient
tribal music, removed from the Old
West by only one degree of separation.
That was magical.
Life is like that—so full of
unexpected marvels. Nor does life
require any special kind of living for it
to reach out and confront us.
I daresay that a comparable record
of wonders, anomalies, and surprises
has confronted anyone else who
has lived well into adulthood, and
that for many the happenings must
have been much more impressive
than these.
As Will Rogers said, “We can’t all be
heroes. Somebody has to sit on the
sidewalk and applaud as they go by.”
But there’s a lot to be said for the richness
of watching the parade.
It was Solomon who said it best: “I
returned, and saw under the sun, that
the race is not to the swift, nor the battle
to the strong, neither yet bread to
the wise, nor yet riches to men of
understanding, nor yet favour to men
of skill; but time and chance happeneth
to them all.”
Enjoy our latest paradings in this
issue, neighbor, and thanks for sitting
on the sidewalk with us, too. Here’s to
more years of it to come. |
