I found the team working in the mountains near Broken Bow Lake, operating from a makeshift heliport owned and managed by the Weyerhaeuser Company.

It was a miserable afternoon to be flying. Low clouds and a steady drizzle were closing down visibility when I pulled into the remote camp.

In spite of this nasty weather the crew was slogging through mud – intent on putting in a full day spreading thousands of pounds of fertilizer on carefully marked sections of pine plantation.

The fertilizer spreader was a sleek multimillion-dollar Bell Jet Ranger helicopter.

Earlier a radio call from the crew’s headquarters at De Queen, Ark., let the team know I was coming with some photographs to look at and some questions to ask. If there was a sensible explanation for the unusual images stored in the computer, I felt these men would have it.

Weyerhaeuser flight crews are regularly in the air over the corporation’s 500,000-acre Oklahoma investment. Surely this experienced group could explain away the apparent evidence that a so-called UFO had been operating in a remote section of McCurtain County. After all, everyone knows there’s no such thing as alien spaceships.

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