A dear friend had passed away, someone who was said to possess the rare sense of seeing beyond the horizon.

 

For days, that “beyond the horizon” worked its way through my thoughts, as if it were something I could only conceive of, but never truly experience.

 

Then one day I went fishing. That late afternoon, on June 20, 2024, settled on the shoreline near my home, far from the town, there was a silence I had never heard before. Unreal. It felt as if everything had come to a halt. I could hear the voices from a sailing lesson on a boat offshore. Fishing leaves long stretches of time for observing the horizon, and something was off. The eastern coastline appeared distorted, as did the oil platform to the southwest. I sent a photo to my friend Marcella. I couldn’t explain what I was seeing, because I couldn’t make sense of its contours or provide reference points. I couldn’t find the words. It was the same place as always, yet completely different. Passing catamarans raised waves along the shore, giving me the excuse to reel in the lines and change focus. Within minutes, I was there, observing with my camera.

 

The shots I sent to Marcella convinced her to join me. These were superior mirages, exactly the kind of phenomena she has been chasing for a long time, but this time everything was unfolding at dusk and into the night, under a nearly full moon. For a couple of hours we enjoyed, with cameras and monoculars, that strange distortion of the horizon and that sense of unreal peace.

 

And between silences and stories, we noticed lights on the horizon, in a direction that could only be Malta, yet could not be Malta because of the Earth’s curvature. A few seconds, two quick mental calculations, and together we exclaimed: “Malta! We can see Malta from sea level!” It was the extremely rare phenomenon known as “looming,” a form of atmospheric refraction. Marcella explained to me, scientifically, how it is possible to see beyond the physical horizon. Temperature, refraction, pressure, thermal inversion: she was precise in every detail. But I was thinking of all those sailors who never found the words to explain certain visions, and how mirages thus became legends.

 

From that day on, I live with the joy of having experienced, with my own eyes, an “beyond-the-horizon” moment.

 

PS. The following day, thanks to the Moon’s position, we confirmed that the lights did not correspond to Malta, but to Hurd’s Bank, an anchorage area for oil tankers and commercial ships, located immediately east of Malta.

 

All scientific insights can be found on Marcella Giula Pace’s website greenflash.photo