I swear it happened just like this: In 1998, I was driving my beater over the Pacheco Pass between Santa Nella and Watsonville about 1 in the morning.

I had promised my significant other that I would drive down from Sacramento to meet her at my in-laws as soon as the workday had ended.

There didn't seem to be another car on the road and I was getting pretty sleepy when, without warning, everything around me was engulfed in a brilliant light.

It was as though the sun had decided to make a surprise appearance and I was able to see the surrounding landscape perfectly for at least a mile or so.

The whole episode lasted about 10 seconds and then night reasserted itself, making everything dark again. I was shaking. I had to pull over and get my bearings. What the heck had just happened?

I wanted to call someone, but everyone I knew would be asleep and I wasn't totally convinced that my eyes had not somehow deceived me.

So when I got a call from Nevada County artist Gloria Beth Edwards wanting to go public about a similar experience she had more than 40 years ago, I was more than a little interested.

Edwards has lived and worked in Nevada County since the early 1970s, having carved out a reputation as a wilderness artist. She has had her work admired by late president Ronald Reagan, funny woman Phyllis Diller and Yosemite photographer Ansel Adams.

When I arrived at her place to conduct our interview, the first thing I noticed was the photos, drawings and paintings. They hung everywhere. Unadorned wall space was nearly nonexistent.

Gloria told me she was in her 80s, but seems much younger than that. She is still incredibly vibrant and continues painting regularly. We sat down and she launched into a story that she says she has been holding onto for decades.

“Back in 1965, I got off work at Harvey's Wagon Wheel (in South Lake Tahoe) and a chum who rode to work with me and I went up Kingsbury to go home after midnight and all of a sudden the sky lit up,” Edwards said.

“I thought that maybe there had been an explosion or a fire. We kept going for about a block and then saw this thing come over the mountains. It lit everything up like one of those torches used for welding. It came right at us and I thought it was going to hit us.”

Edwards was not able to see much more than an outline of the object because the light emanating from it was nearly blinding.

“It was huge, not quite as long as my house and it was round,” Edwards said. “It came right over us and then stopped like it was looking at us for a second. There was no sound. Then it was gone.

“My friend and I looked at each other and we said, ‘That was a UFO.' It had gotten so close to us that I swear with a ladder I could have reached up and poked it.”

Edwards then did what any artist would do.

“I was so shook up that I went home and decided that I had better write down what I had seen,” Edwards said. “I sketched a picture with the shape of it, showing how big it was.”

Edwards pushed the notion of talking about what she had witnessed out of her mind.

“We decided we couldn't tell our bosses, because this was back in the '60s and we had heard that people could lose their jobs if they started talking about stuff like flying saucers,” Edwards said.

“In those days, you would be considered nutty if people heard you talk about that kind of thing. I had my mother living with me at the time and the last thing I could afford was to be out of work.”

Just a few days later something happened to Edwards that was almost as startling as seeing a UFO. She heard an airman discussing a strange occurrence he had recently witnessed over the Pacific Ocean.

“He said that he had seen a UFO while coming in from the Pacific,” Edwards said. “He said this thing came out of the blue and followed the plane he was in. The pilot told him to take pictures, but by the time he had gotten his camera ready, the bright light had disappeared. The way he described it, made it sound exactly like the UFO I had seen, and I had not said anything to him about my experience.”

Edwards is not smitten by the idea of little green men navigating saucers over the American landscape, however. She believes that whatever she saw was more likely man-made.

“After thinking about it over the years, I think it was something our government was doing,” she said.

Edwards then reminded me again of my own experience on Highway 152.

“When it happens, your mind almost stops, because it's such a shock,” Edwards said. “It's hard to explain — really hard to explain.”

Tom Kellar is a freelance writer living in Cedar Ridge. He can be reached at thomaskellar@hotmail.com.