INTRODUCTION

We recently received the following email from a person who, for reasons that will become apparent, wishes to remain anonymous:

Dear Magellan,
To celebrate the purchase of our new Pontiac Aztek, my wife and I, both of us being retired ;-))), have been exploring our lovely, patriotic system of national parks.

We recently came back from Big Bend National Park in Texas, one of the most remote and under-attended of the parks in the Lower 48. As you will notice on the map below, Big Bend is a long way from everywhere and close to nowhere.

The park is mostly high desert punctured here and there by massive rock uplifts and mountains created by very old volcanic activity. On the westernmost edge of the park is a 1500-foot-high escarpment that extends for miles. At one point in this massive cliff, the Rio Grande somehow broke through in a narrow, deep rift, called the Santa Elena Canyon.

Here is a shot of just a part of the escarpment. Keep in mind that you are looking at a solid wall of rock that is 1/3 of a mile high and that extends for many miles:

We parked the Aztek at an overlook which the Park Service has conveniently provided. Using my $69.95 Wal-Mart 1.3 megapixel Argus digital camera, I set about photographing this inspiring sight. After the first shot (above), I turned slightly to my left to take another picture. After taking it, I previewed it in my monochrome LED viewer and this is what I saw:

"Hmmm," I thought. Had I just photographed some of the famous "energy globules" that all listeners to Art Bell know about that mysteriously turn up in some digital pictures? Or was it just some kind of optical inference from the sun?

Whatever. I just wanted a clear picture of the magnificent cliff so I said to my wife, "Honey, let me borrow your sunglasses." My wife, a person of on the whole modest tastes, is picky about sunglasses and wears a pair of hard-to-find gray-lensed polaroids. I took the glasses and held one lens over the camera lens. The idea was that the polarizing filter, I hoped, would eliminate the energy globules and give me a nice shot of the escarpment.

I took the picture, checked the result in the LED viewer... and my life changed forever.

CLICK HERE to see what our anonymous correspondent saw >>

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