It was a warm spring day. I was wandering alone in the mountains, near the limit between pines and rocks. I lifted my eyes, and one at the time, I saw them. They had arrived.

UFOs were circling the peak. More and more of them. And now I stood there, looking at them, mesmerized. Some of them were of small form. A series of five, barely a dozen in all. Others of mass. Staggering, implausibly enormous shapes—large, pale, shiny, full of whirling metal. No sound, except the occasional wind blast. I thought: “This is how they are.”

I wasn’t sure that the vessels had in some way been alerted by my presence. But suddenly, they rose sharply above my head, lighting up the sky and brightening my view. I was so tiny between the bushes. But I was prepared. I was ready. Right at that thought one UFO had begun to descend.