Nine Eleven two thousand and one

The night before the Twin Towers fell, I went for a walk on Vassar College campus. it had rained. It was warm and the clouds were moving overhead, breaking up and moving on...

There was a very noticeable stillness there that night that I had not experienced before. There were few students out and about. No noises coming from the dorm rooms. Of the few students I saw, none spoke as they passed on the walkways. Heads were tilted down. and the students just moved in silence... The sounds of doors opening and closing was muted ... but it wasn't eerie. In fact it was very very peaceful... It was as if the whole earth was in a hushed mode.

I had walked on the roadway there, from the North Gate, past the dimly lit Walker Field House, on the hill, to the rear of the campus,... past the dark hills of the golf course,... starting down the hill, nearing Sunset Lake... listening to the sound of water droplets falling and the soft sound of my sandals on the pavement.... and the silence... sencing something, like all nature was trying to tell me something...but what? To myself, in a loud whisper, I said "GOD WHAT IS IT?"

The passing clouds seemed to be almost at eye level, just above the trees in front of me... to the west ... Suddenly, I was stopped, frozen by what I saw.... There, in the clouds, was something I had never seen before...a, HUGE, burst of bright orange and gold, as if something had exploded and caught fire in the cloud... I stood, staring, for a moment, thinking maybe it was lightning... but there was no sound of distant thunder and no other flashes... I senced something... I had seen something ....

I went home and told of my experience ... wondering if there had been any news of a plane exploding over Newburgh ... No there was no news of anything like that... Discussing what it might have been and finding no sensible answer, I went to sleep...

In the morning, when I was awakened being told what was happening, it was as if I knew...There was no sence of shock, only that feeling that says I AM REALLY SEEING THIS ... IT'S HAPPENING...

For months after, as I sat by the river looking at how peaceful and unchanged it was, I thought abut what had happened and what it looked like just 80 miles to the south...

In my own home state... RIGHT HERE... IN AMERICA