#130 / 2010 Spring Marfa, Texas: The Marfa Lights

THE MYSTERIOUS MARFA LIGHTS

#130

I saw ‘em. We teamed up with a fellow tourist  named “Sparks” at the film expo the other night, he is staying at the Paisano Hotel with some other friends all from northern New Mexico, and they invited us to ride out to see the lights. They also invited us up to shower as well, which I found extraordinarily kind.

But first we all packed into Gary and Pat’s Lexus and took the nine mile ride out to the viewing stand. I never expected to see anything, but we no sooner got there when we definitely saw some lights off in the distance. They are so far off on the horizon that you really have to look hard. But we saw small lights flicker, move about randomly, come and go. It’s not a big show, but they were definitely there.

We spent all our time trying to rationalize what we were seeing. The lights flickered and faded, advanced and retreated to a degree. It isn’t so amazing now, but I wonder what someone would think of all that back in the 1880s when they were first reported. It’s not like there would have been electric lines run out there back in the old days.

We speculated that the one red light might have been something on a railroad track, we saw that off to our left for a mile or so as we drove back into Marfa. I didn’t go out to explore but anyone will tell you that there are no highways out there or homes. The line of lights were sometimes in twos and threes and did seem to slightly vary into other faint colors as we watched them.

I can say that the distance from the lights on the left all the way to the lights on the right had to be a range of four or five miles at least