Back in the days when I listened to AM radio while driving, a phenomenon called radio skip would occasionally deliver strange radio stations to me. Under just the right conditions, the ionosphere, a layer of electrically charged particles 60 to 250 miles overhead, becomes an invisible mirror that bends certain radio signals back toward Earth instead of letting them drift into space. A signal can leap hundreds or even thousands of miles in a single hop, allowing someone in Montana to suddenly hear a station from Texas or even Europe. No satellites. No relay towers. Just the Earth and its atmosphere briefly pulling off a long shot.
I
sometimes found myself listening to radio stations from the far northern
prairies of Canada while driving alone in the middle of the night.
We
became friends.
—Mitchell
Hegman
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