We went in search of the mysterious Brown Mountain Lights of North Carolina.

I say “we” because I convinced my friend and trusty sidekick, Shaylah, to go on this adventure with me. She even drove. It’s good to have a friend who will do whacky things with you when your husband won’t go.

I read about the Brown Mountain Lights several years ago and, since then, I’ve wanted to go see what all the excitement was about.

This past weekend we made the trek up to the North Carolina high country, turned onto Hwy. 181 and soon found Jonas Ridge and the Brown Mountain overlook. There, we also found the Brown Mountain Lights research and reconnaissance team (not their official name). The group had planned the outing, posted FB announcements and videos of reported sightings, and we responded to the call.

People were there with anemometers,  cameras with night vision and instruments that looked to me Geiger counters. They were also wrapped up in big quilts and heavy coats. All of us should have our heads examined for being up on top of a mountain ridge in the night, with cold wind gusts strong enough to blow you over the mountain. But we’re always up for a good mystery so there we were, right in the midst of the excitement.

Shaylah and I decided to do our investigative watching from inside the car.

In the spirit of the event, I made some investigative notes during our stakeout:

• 7:04pm – the mountain remains dark
• 40 mph wind gusts are blowing against our car, almost sending us over the mountainside – are we crazy?
• Still we wait – the lights are elusive
• Others are gathered outside, wrapped in blankets, braving the cold and wind – they must be crazy too
• We see one light appear and disappear over the mountain that we can’t explain – who knows what it really was..
• Hunger overtakes our curiosity about the lights – time to head down to find food – our mission is over

We never saw what we thought was really a Brown Mountain Light. The one lone, unexplained light we saw seemed to come from nowhere and  disappeared about as quickly as it appeared.

All in all, it was a fun time and we got to see a view that I never get tired of – the Blue Ridge Mountain range.