I first heard about fireballs falling out of the sky when I was a student at Highlands University in Las Vegas, New Mexico back in the 60s. When fireballs rained down upon a house in a village, neighbors would surround it. They'd form a circle around the house holding lanterns until the fireballs, and often stones, stopped falling from the night sky.

At our writing workshop last week in Las Vegas, Joseph Baca contributed his own version of fireballs. With his kind permission, I repeat what he wrote:

"Darkness down this narrow alley, then, quite suddenly, three big round fireballs appeared to my left. They were about the same size as medicine balls and they hovered an inch off the ground among the weeds that did not catch fire. I froze, watching them. The red and yellow light pulsating only five feet away from where I stood.

"I was not dreaming. I was fully awake. I was afraid -- and yet I hesitated. I wanted to know what they were. Should I try to touch them? I wanted to communicate with them but the voices of the past said they were witches. This was what I was led to believe anyway. I ran home with a cold chill in my spine.

"Next day I told my mother what I had seen and she in turn told my father who said -- 'It's El Diablo . . . Joseph hasn't gone to church lately.' But I thought, neither has he. How come the fireballs didn't appear to him?

Today, as a grown man, I find myself going back to that strange night so long ago and wondering if I will ever see again the fireballs that old ones said were witches. Sometimes, late at night, I wonder about that."

Joseph, I too am wondering. Just the other night in Sapello Canyon we saw a fireball descend from the sky and hover in front of us. More on that later . . .