02/23/2026
Kanab, Utah—Amy and I rolled into town that afternoon, still shaking Zion’s sandstone out of our teeth. Kanab is one of those desert oddities that doesn’t know what it wants to be, so it just throws everything in the pot: mystics hawking alien trinkets, shops glowing with quartz and New Age snake oil, and then a sudden hard turn into “Little Hollywood,” where John Wayne ghosts still ride down the boulevard. You half expect a cowboy shootout at the gas station, or maybe a UFO landing in the Family Dollar lot. It’s that kind of place.
The streets were alive with drifters, climbers, adrenaline merchants, and every brand of fool with a GoPro strapped to their chest. Kanab isn’t really a town—it’s a launchpad. You can aim your vehicle in any direction and slam straight into some kind of legendary adventure. The brochure doesn’t lie. It’s the kind of base camp where you half expect to see Evel Knievel smoking a cigarette at the edge of town, plotting his next bad idea.
Our bad idea for the evening was the Coral Pink Sand Dunes. Thirty minutes outside of town but might as well have been the far side of Mars. The road out was pure isolation—sagebrush, barbed wire, sand creeping across the pavement. Civilization ends with the last gas station, and the rest is wide-open desert daring you to get lost.
At the entrance we met a park ranger who behaved like he hadn’t spoken to another human being in weeks. His face lit up like we were astronauts returning from space. He waved us through with manic enthusiasm and gave us detailed instructions on where to stand for sunset—as if the sand would collapse without his guidance.
The parking lot was a ghost town. A handful of cars, the occupants already scattered across the dunes, tiny ants crawling up great orange waves. Amy and I kicked off our shoes and plunged straight in, laughing like we’d stumbled into another planet.
The sand was alive with small dramas. An Asian couple with a sandboard were throwing themselves down the slope with stubborn futility, face-first wipeouts met with groans and applause from strangers. Finally, one clean run, and everyone on the ridge cheered like lunatics at a prizefight. The couple waved back, embarrassed but victorious. Meanwhile, off-road vehicles appeared like bandits—screaming engines, rooster tails of dust, then gone in a puff of exhaust and laughter.
We found our spot next to a lone photographer, the kind of desert pilgrim who looked like she’d been waiting there since last Tuesday. Tripod locked on the horizon, face glowing with anticipation for the sunset spectacle—the alchemy of iron oxide turning the sand into coral-pink fire. She introduced herself as “Rachel from Ogden.”
Ogden. The name rattled in my skull. Why do I know that place? Then it hit me—disc golf. That freakish moment in the sport’s history, the “Holy Shot.” The one time a Frisbee hurled through the air became legend. I blurted it out like a lunatic. Rachel looked at me blankly. Never heard of it.
It didn’t matter. She had my attention. The Milky Way had hers. She talked about the night before at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, her voice calm but carrying the weight of someone who’d stared too long into the void.
“Oh yeah! We’re catching sunset there tomorrow,” I said, too loudly, like a man trying to convince himself this was still a normal conversation.
“Oh boy,” she said, shaking her head. “That drive was horrifying. Animals everywhere. Eyes in the road.”
That did it. She echoed the same warnings I’d read online, the same late-night forum paranoia. We’d already had a few close calls in Zion and Bryce — sudden movements, shapes darting just beyond the headlights. The desert keeps receipts.
The sand around us began to glow, alive now, burning into impossible shades of coral and fire. The sky stacked itself in violent layers — oranges bleeding into purples, yellows dissolving into ash. It looked less like a sunset and more like a cosmic chemical spill. A live-action watercolor painted by something far older than us.
The last off-road vehicle of the evening came screaming up the face of the tallest dune, clawing its way to the summit like it had something to prove. It paused there, silhouetted against the dying sun, then pivoted and vanished — launched into the darkness below, headlights bouncing wildly across the dune crests before being swallowed whole.
Then the world shut off.
Just the three of us. Silence so complete it rang in my ears. The stars punched through the sky with violent clarity, sharp enough to cut you. I could see them reflected in Amy’s eyes — tiny pinpricks of light — like the universe was staring back through her.
“Last night,” Rachel said slowly, her eyes never leaving the sky, “there were orange lights.”
She paused. Too long.
“They moved… wrong. Changed direction. Stopped completely.”
I didn’t answer. I wasn’t sure what the correct human response was.
“Maybe drones,” she added, unconvincingly. “But… could be aliens. UFOs.”
Her voice drifted off as she leaned into her camera, like she’d said this a thousand times and only now realized someone was listening.
I scanned the sky. The stars began to rearrange themselves. Or maybe that was my imagination gearing up for something terrible. The desert has a way of making you doubt the reliability of your own eyes.
I grabbed my camera and immediately looked like a fraud. Backpack half-open, gear spilling everywhere, trying to build a makeshift tripod out of panic and optimism. Rachel glanced over from her fortress of professional equipment.
“No tripod, huh?”
She had me dead to rights.
She walked me through night photography like a patient professor humoring a confused tourist — shutter speeds, foreground lighting, exposure tricks. Nerd talk. Sacred rites. I was locked in, absorbing everything like this knowledge might be useful in a survival situation.
Meanwhile, Amy was kneeling in the sand, her phone balanced on a jacket, calmly capturing the stars like she belonged there. She smiled so wide the starlight bounced off her teeth — she looked like she was wrapped in fairy dust. And for a moment I wondered: with all this heavy, expensive gear around us… were we the ones doing it right?
I checked the time. The park was closing. Civilization was reclaiming its borders.
Amy and I packed up and said our goodbyes. Rachel said she’d stay a bit longer. Of course she would. That tracked.
We walked back across the cooling sand toward the car. Before reaching the lot, I turned around.
Nothing.
No figures. No lights. No movement. Just a black void where the dunes had been moments earlier. A blank canvas. Like the desert had erased itself.
We pulled onto the road, tires humming against isolation. I glanced into the rearview mirror.
That’s when it hit me.
I hadn’t noticed a single other vehicle in the lot.
Where was Rachel’s car?
My stomach dropped. Hard.
What if she wasn’t real?
What if she was something Kanab produced — a desert mirage with a camera and a backstory? A ghost of Little Hollywood? An extraterrestrial field researcher testing human reactions? Maybe she mentioned Ogden and the Holy Shot because she knew it would hook me. The North Rim horror story? Fear calibration. The orange lights? A stress test.
My palms went slick.
“Babe,” I said, voice cracking, “I don’t think Rachel is real.”
Amy stared straight ahead. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t think she’s real,” I said, spiraling now. “Ghost. Alien. Something. She’s not real.”
“That sounds crazy,” Amy said, brushing it off, eyes glued to the road.
“Look her up on Facebook,” I said. “Please.”
“I don’t have service.”
“Try again,” I snapped. “There’s no way she’s just—”
“STOP!”
Amy slammed her foot down as eyes exploded across the road — reflections everywhere. I hit the brakes and the car skidded to a halt.
Mule deer.
They filled the road, frozen, staring at us like we were the anomaly. Like we didn’t belong.
I sat there shaking, heart pounding, the universe laughing quietly to itself.
I looked at Amy.
“Look her up,” I whispered, “when we get back to Kanab.”
