Running in the Nevada desert, where night is black as ink, I saw a pair of eyes glow white. A mouse, I hoped, or something else small. This was the Extraterrestrial Highway, after all.

Early Sunday morning in the rural town of Rachel, I joined the Extraterrestrial Full Moon Midnight Half-Marathon – with some 400 other earthlings running 5K-to-51K races. Headlamps were required, as were reflective vests. Neon bracelets shone from wrists. People arrived at the start in silver shorts and bobbling antennas, near the roadside bar and lodging called the Little A’Le’Inn. 

When safe to do so, look up, founder Joyce Forier had told me in an email. Runners here, she wrote, “report seeing lots of shooting stars.”

We ran near Area 51 – a hush-hush military site, two hours north of Las Vegas, long linked to claims of UFO activity. Those early “sightings” seemed to coincide with secret test flights of American aircraft during the Cold War, reports Time, but that hasn’t stopped the lore. I would’ve welcomed an abduction right around Mile 9.

I’m not too interested in what Americans think about aliens, though. More so, what aliens might think about us.

What would they make of Americans’ distrust of one another? I wondered on the run. Our “cancel culture” and red/blue divide? (Notwithstanding last month’s congressional hearing on UFOs, of all things. There’s bipartisan interest in government transparency.)

Then again, what if otherworldly watchers saw us differently, as the Monitor strives to do? Americans as agents of respect and trust and hope?

Maybe, seen from above on Sunday, we looked like glow-in-the-dark invaders. Yet maybe our cheers of encouragement, shared by strangers in the dark, reached the heavens, too.

“Good job!” we called out to each other.

“Nice work!”

“You, too!”