The secret world from the airplane window

I was flying over vast stretches of the American West recently.

Nashville to Dallas. Dallas to San Jose. San Jose back to Houston.

So I had the opportunity to look out the window.

“For all the urban clutter, we sure have a lot of wide open spaces,” I said to my son sitting beside me.

“Huh?” he said looking up from another free downloadable app that drains mental acuity in a teenager.

The point is; America is full of people who all congregate into geographic clusters. Outside these bustling urban centers, there is a lot of dirt and rock and wild grass.

As I look out my window, I see concentric crop circles. I see paths whittled into the Earth by Indian scouts through mountains accessible only by goats.

And I notice roads in the middle of deserts that begin and end for no reason.

Where do these roads go?

Is there a secret door in the ground? Is there a parking garage under a cactus?

It made me think about Area 51.

For 60 years it has been the stuff of legends.

It is America’s X files.

It’s secret experiments and UFO’s and aliens kept in big vats of liquid goo.

Area 51 is the Mother of all conspiracy theories.

For most of modern times, the U.S. Government has said Area 51 didn’t exist.

It didn’t exist like leprauchans don’t live in pots of gold below rainbows. It doesn’t exist like unicorns flying through kingdoms of cotton candy. It doesn’t exist like the Easter Bunny hauling a basket big enough to hold millions of eggs.

Mulder and Scully knew it was there, and now it appears they were right.

Recently the CIA declassified a map that shows a section of Nevada Dessert that is the long imagined, seldom confirmed Area 51.

Area 51 is the holy grail for geeks, and conspiracy theorists alike.

Area 51 has launched a thousand conspiracy theories. It is books and movies and boutiques full of tourist trinkets.

While the map has been declassified, the government will not comment on the real meat of the matter.

Was the moon landing staged here?

Are UFO’s real?

Did aliens build the pyramids?

For the government to “not redact” Area 51 on maps is a big deal. It means that there really is a place in the middle of nowhere.

Maybe 60 years from now, they will tell us what really happened on this chunk of dirt, behind the fence with the big Keep Out signs.

Will we one day learn that the iPhone is a direct result of alien technology?

Is Robin Williams the end result of an alien – human hybrid?

Local media calls Area 51 the world’s best-known secret military base.

According to published reports; Area 51 wasn’t supposed to be a permanent base. It was built in 1955 for the U-2 spy plane. But when that work was finished, other so-called black projects were sent there. The people who’ve worked there over the years are justifiably proud about their work in protecting our national security. But they’ve never been able to talk about it, not to their spouses, not even to each other.

Locals talk about Area 51 with an enigmatic flavor. They speak of the buses with blacked out windows and cameras that sense motion and ominous armed choppers ready to go ballistic.

So now we know it exists. But what exists? People who work there won’t say. People who worked there with each other still don’t know what each other did.

Secrets of the desert live on today.

It’s the mother of all conspiracies and now we have a map to a fence that dead ends with a question mark that might never be answered.

As I look out my port hole, I sense the desert giving way to an urban center. I see more roads that make sense on the grid. I see back yard swimming pools. I see cars on highways that come and go with uniformity.

Still I wonder. What is about the rock that opens and allows a space craft to enter, then closes and looks like time has forgotten to tick.

Area 51.

Life’s Crazy™