Transmitting from the Mojave Wilderness in Joshua Tree, California, now is the time for Desert Oracle Radio, the voice of the desert.

Night has fallen on the American desert and if you sit around a desert campfire often enough,

the subject will eventually turn to mysterious shapes and lights in the sky.

No matter if you're enjoying the company of wildfire crews or seasonal park rangers, rock climbers, or retired

aerospace engineers.

Those fortunate enough to spend a lot of time beneath a clear desert sky will always have

stories.

Stories about meteor showers, of course, are the occasional delight of watching the

International Space Station travel from one horizon to the other, or those rare places where

on a moonless night, the Milky Way is so bright, you can see your shadow on the ground.

You get familiar with the astronomical and you get familiar with the earthly war machinery.

Those lines of military flares bobbing down on little parachutes dropped by aircraft above the base.

The dark choppers rumbling overhead and the test flights of the various drones.

Themselves, Delta or Chevron shaped, but by design not covered in flashing neon lights and by our current technical limitations unable to pop in

and out of our reality at will. But if you have seen one of the black triangles, one of those

eerie V-shaped things hovering silently are with a barely audible hum.

Alongside a two-lane highway as a piercing white spotlight scans the ground and perhaps comes right at you or your car.

And time itself feels charged and changed, altered.

Well, then you tend to put that in the mystery category.

And even if you've told the story before,

you feel compelled to tell it again,

less to hear yourself than in hopes of hearing somebody else's version,

...