The Mystery of Mirages

HEAVEN IN THE SKY AND OTHER SIGHTINGS

Text by PENNY PORTER

Illustration by MARTHA ANNE BOOTHE

EARLY ONE APRIL MORNING IN 1981, while driving my daughters to school on what is now U.S. Route 191 in southeastern Arizona, Jaymee, age 10, suddenly grabbed my arm. "Mommy!" she gasped, pointing toward the barren flatlands stretching northwest to the Dragoon Mountains. "What's that?"

A quick glance nearly stopped my heart. Looming from the desert was a city afloat on a vast blue ocean a city and a body of water that didn't belong. I pulled my pickup to a gravel-crunching halt on the shoulder of the road to watch the colossal image sharpen, reveal-ing buildings in alternate, exaggerated heights, with roofs outlined in the sky.

Finally it broke into sections. Huge fragments collapsed,

and in slow motion they sank one by one into the sea.

As the vision unfolded, details came into focus. We saw doorways on dwellings framed in timber and ladders stretching from the ground up to occasional arched windows of the upper levels - suggesting the architecture of the pueblo-builders of Arizona or Mexico. Garden plots on upper terraces blazed with fiery flowers. Chickens scuttled around courtyards. Two heavily laden burros tied to hitching posts were clearly visible, and people strolled down quiet, peaceful streets. We saw a man and a woman talking beneath a gnarled, rough-barked tree. And then, in a single crystal moment, a bell in the tower of a white stucco mission moved. I could almost hear it toll.

It was 7 A.M. We had just turned north onto this sparsely traveled road dubbed the "Devil's Highway" by early settlers of the area that became Cochise County. Legend prevails that from the time this highway was a dusty scar on the prairie, it served as a major corridor for escaping into and out of Mexico for gold smugglers, bandits and murderers. How many of these journeying vagabonds, I wondered, witnessed this phenomenon unfolding over the desert? If so, did they ask the question that came to me. Do I see heaven in the sky?

"It's got to be a mirage," I said to the girls. What else could it be?

That April morning sighting lasted for more than 20 minutes. Finally it broke into sections. Huge fragments collapsed, and in slow motion they sank one by one into the sea. Soon only scattered amber clouds remained, but the memory of that spellbinding vision would forever be imprinted on my mind. I'd seen something incredibly beautiful - something "out of this world." Yet it was real! But who would believe me, wife of rancher Bill Porter, mother of six, a writer, a person who needed a dream once in a while?

I knew little about mirages, except for those strips of shimmering puddles on asphalt highways that vanish just before you get to them. But this spectacular display aroused a lot of curiosity in me. We've all seen illusions of water filling dry rivers and lakes on blazing Arizona days. But I would soon discover that when major mirages do strike, their magical effects remain matchless.

Despite Bill's relentless kidding about my "wild imagination," after that spring morning sighting, I began chasing mirages, and asking others, "Have you ever seen one?" It wasn't long before stories bounced back from everywhere. Some viewers told of seeing herds of wild horses and buffalo, trees, mountains and clouds mirrored on the surface of cool blue waters that weren't really there. Others claimed ship sightings, people sunbathing on beaches and white cities shimmering on opposite shores. Arizonans rate as great storytellers, but we all shared one thing. We'd seen one of nature's most awe-some wonders, and we felt a little foolish talking about it.

Then luck stepped in. One afternoon, four years after the children and I saw what we now called "Heaven in the Sky," Bill returned from the Willcox cattle auction. He came into the kitchen and sat down for a cup of coffee, looking a little sheepish. "I saw your mirage this morning," he said. "Really something." I could tell it was hard for him to admit it. Bill's a practical man. I smiled at him in his red-plaid shirt, sweatstained Stetson, and for the first time noticed the silver racing through his sideburns. A man of few words, he was now a believer, whether he liked it or not. He saw it! My mirage-chasing began in earnest.

Later that year, fate intervened again. While driving to Douglas on the Devil's Highway, I saw a man some distance ahead walking toward me. He wore baggy jeans, a gray shirt and a beat-up hat. Poor guy, I thought. His car must have run out of gas and he's heading north to get some in our small town of McNeal. Since country folk always help each other out on the road, I decided to stop and give him a lift. But when I was about 50 yards from him, he disappeared. Another mirage? Yes. There is no other explanation; there was no place else for him to go.

Then in 1999, I came across a mirage phenomenon study by meteorologist James H. Gordon of Yuma, published in 1960 by the Smithsonian Institution. Gordon spent a lifetime studying mirages. "They are not at all what most people think they are," he wrote. "A mirage is a displaced and sometimes distorted image of a very real object... such as a man walking along the side of a road, a mountain, a city, a ship, an airplane or building, anything that actually exists somewhere - that can travel from just a few feet up to thousands of miles via the mirage phenomenon."

These sightings happen thanks to refraction, a temperature-inversion process that is brought about by hot air rising and cold air coming down bending a path of light between the object and the observer. Gordon explained, "The bending takes place inside a slab of air within which there is a progressive and abnormal change in density from top to bottom. Slab size can vary from a few square feet to many square miles. Its depth can range from one inch to hundreds of feet, and it can rest on the ground, hover or float in the sky thousands of feet up."

The first recorded mirage appeared in Cotton Mather's book Magnalia Christi Americana, in which he quoted a 1648 letter from the Reverend John Pierpont telling of the "vision" of a "Greate Shippe" seen in the sky over New Haven Harbor, and witnessed by hundreds. So close did the sailing vessel come, that watchers saw a figure pacing the deck. Two hundred years later, Longfellow used this historic sighting as a basis for his poem "Phantom Ship."

In his study, Gordon described 27 mirages including "a Mexican City" seen over the Palomas Plain northeast of Yuma by sternwheelers bringing supplies up the Colorado River for shipment across the Territory by wagon train. "The city was so close," he said, "they could see people on the streets and horses at the hitching racks."

He cited a letter from a woman who was traveling west by bus on U.S. Route 60-70 through typical Arizona desert land, when an "oasis" rose from the south revealing 50year-old shade trees hiding white houses beneath their umbrellalike branches. Only the steeple of an old-fashioned church pierced the dense foliage and soared above the trees. Another passenger stated, “You could practically hear the birds singing.” Puzzled by what she had seen, the writer returned several months later to the same spot. The trees, church and houses were gone.

A Californian who was visiting Arizona saw San Francisco set up against the base of the Castle Dome Mountains north of Yuma. Gordon quoted him: “The reflection was so vivid, the hills and street pattern of the city were unmistakable.” Yet, San Francisco lies 600 miles northwest of Yuma.

What about mirages high in the sky? Down through the years, many have seen ships, full-rigged schooners like Longfellow's Greate Shippe. Others report luxury liners of today. One summer an Air Force pilot flying over Yuma at about 3,000 feet suddenly found himself on a collision course with a Navy battleship in the sky. He could see the bow wave and identified the vessel. Later the sighting was proved to be an exact ship sailing off San Diego from where its image had been projected.

On April 4, 1933, a Yuma doctor saw the mirage of a 600to 700-foot dirigible break into two parts and fall to Earth. Germany, England, Russia and the United States all manufactured dirigibles at that time, but the source for the mirage could not be found.

Mirages can even be seen after dark. Gordon cited a story of a fireman from the Southern Pacific Railroad who told of his Yuma-to-Tucson run. It was near midnight. The train was due shortly to meet and pass the westbound that traveled 25 to 50 miles ahead. A sudden yell from the engineer made him look. There in front, less than half a mile away, came the onrushing headlight of the other train. They were on the same track. For four or five agonizing seconds the light blazed toward them - then vanished. In due time they came to the real train, its headlight quietly waiting for them on the siding.

As for that man I saw on the side of the road? He walks by day and night - baggy jeans, gray shirt and beat-up hat. He has been spotted all over the country. One hapless driver had the scare of a lifetime when the man didn't get out of the way. He swerved left and slammed on his brakes. The man had vanished. Shaken, the driver proceeded down the road for perhaps 10 minutes, and there again, walking toward him was the same man. Real this time, he stepped aside to let the driver by. Gordon claimed that in order to make this mirage possible, the man must have been approaching another headlight or streetlight up ahead. It was this original illumination that projected him so clearly, not the terrified driver's headlight.

I saw Heaven in the Sky again in the late '80s. So did Bill and a few other residents of Cochise County. From where it comes we will never know, but it was that first sighting, the absolute peaceful beauty of it, that left a mysterious dimension of magic on my soul an Arizona wonder I shall never forget.

Much about mirages has been explained during the four decades since Gordon's research. Optical scientists have developed telescopes and cameras that have proved the world is decorated with hundreds of mirages a day - “the distortions of which rival those seen in a carnival house of mirrors,” says Alistair Fraser, professor of meteorology at Pennsylvania State University. And Andrew Young of San Diego State warns, “It's best to use binoculars before jumping to conclusions, because mirages are often so distorted that it's really difficult to tell exactly what you are seeing.” Finally, Gordon wrote, “If you think you see a city floating on the desert sands, don't worry - it's only a mirage something to remember.” Ah, but these gentlemen are professors, scientists, meteorologists, and I, mere mortal that I am, don't own the pair of high-powered binoculars I'm supposed to need. But I “saw” that mirage, and I more than just “remember,” because a mirage is the stuff dreams are made of.

As a matter of fact, I often think if I ever see a man on the side of the road again, and he's wearing a red-plaid shirt, a sweat-stained Stetson and has a little silver whipping through his sideburns, I'll bring my pickup to a screeching halt and say, “Hi! Hop in!” And, if we're lucky, we'll hitch a ride together on the Greate Shippe and keep on sailing - toward that Heaven in the Sky. A