I am standing in the parking lot looking south about 50 feet onto the highway with a “T” intersection to my left.  A stop sign warns the eastbound traffic to stop for the through traffic.

All of a sudden, a car flashes past me going east into the “T” intersection at a speed clearly exceeding the available stopping distance.  The driver is an older man frozen in concentration on the road ahead, apparently realizing that there is no possibility of stopping in time to avoid going through the intersection and into the ditch on the far side.  As I turn to watch the upcoming wreck, I notice a pickup truck entering the intersection heading south.  It is apparent that they were on a collision course, both traveling at approximately 60 MPH and now unable to swerve or stop. 

The driver of the automobile finally applies his brakes, but not in time to have much of an effect.  I clearly see the car crash into the side of the pickup, T-boning it right in the middle of the truck.  There is a great crashing noise with billows of dust and things flying in the air.  I expect to see the car and pickup in the air and a terrible wreck with serious injuries to the occupants of both vehicles.

However, what I actually see leaves me in total amazement.  The pickup continues down the road, up over a little rise in the road, and disappears as if nothing has happened.  Then I look to see what sort of crumpled up car is left behind only to see the car driving out in the field to the east, slowly turning around and heading back toward the road. 

Another guy, who also standing in the parking lot, and I run over to the scene of the “crash” to see what we can do to help the obviously seriously injured occupants of the car.  There is a typical wire and board ranch gate allowing a vehicle to drive into the field from the highway.  It lines up nicely with the road, but is mysteriously intact even though at that moment the car is calmly driving through the field on the other side of the gate. I wonder how the car could have gotten through a closed gate.  The other guy looks at me and shrugs, indicating that he has the same question.  He opens the gate so we can go through to assist the driver and passenger.  As he opens the gate, the driver slowly drives through the gate onto the road and drives south in the direction of the pickup.  The driver doesn’t acknowledge us or say anything, not even a “thank you” for opening the gate for him.  He just drives off down the road with a woman passenger. 

All I can do is just stand there watching them disappear in the distance, dumbfounded, wondering what I had just seen.  I finally explore the ditch to see what I could find.  It is about five feet deep, running parallel to the N-S section of highway.  At the bottom of the ditch is a collection of plastic car parts, including a fender, parts of a bumper, and other odds and ends that got ripped or knocked off of the car.  At the bottom of the ditch is a rectangular, 6-inch deep depression the size of the car, clearly indicating where the bottom of the car impacted the ground with significant force before rebounding up out of the ditch, through the barbed wire fence and out into the field beyond. 

We pick up the car parts and take them back to where the garbage cans are located in the parking lot of the Park Service building; cleaning up the litter from the accident.  I go into the office to notify them that the wreck had torn a hole through the fence and that whoever owned the property to the south should be notified so that their animals, if any, would not get out onto the highway.  The park ranger is quite surprised to find out that there was a wreck.  She said that they have had a lot of problems with those neighbors and won’t be calling them.  After about 15 minutes, the car returns to the parking lot.  The older man gets out, picks up his car parts and then drives off without a word.  This event left me feeling somehow disconnected.  I felt positive that I had witnessed a terrible crash with a car traveling at high speed crashing squarely into the side of a pickup.  However, nothing happened – it felt as if the car passed cleanly through the pickup, much as physics says is possible because of quantum effects.  Obviously, that didn’t happen, but in some way it did happen like that for me.  What I “saw” was a terrible wreck.  The only explanation is that it was a “near miss” – so close in space and time that my mind just made up the difference.  While this easily explains the lack of a major outcome, what isn’t so easily explained is my unmistakable feeling that I had just witnessed a miracle and was somehow in an “alternate universe.”  It was actually quite surreal.  Lots of action and noise, car parts, noise and high speed action filling my world for a split second – but then “nothing.”  The pickup not changing direction or speed, and the car driving calmly off into the grassy field beyond and then just driving away as if nothing had happened.  The event was so rapid, violent and unexpected, that it felt like I was been catapulted into another dimension.  It was as if there was a discontinuity of some sort, and that I was temporarily watching from an unknown, new, vantage point.