The other night I left a meeting in haste as the promise of more rain loomed in the distance. The train of storms had already unleashed some heavy showers that had drenched the parking lot with deep puddles and streams of water in the bordering gullies. Dark clouds hovered above and all around. Hues of deep gray and purple were sprinkled with lighter gray wisps that moved rapidly across the sky. Jagged lightening strikes were visible in the distance and low rumbles followed like angry beasts threatening to attack.
To my left was the large golden orb of the late evening sun
hanging low on the horizon. As I drove
out of the parking lot it occurred to me that the sun's rays were in perfect
alignment with the rain shower to my right.
I strained to look past the buildings and trees that obstructed my
view. All at once, I could see it
shining high above -- a double rainbow! The two splendid arcs attracted not
only my attention but the myriad drivers along my homeward route. I saw many who were paying little attention
to their driving which made me all-the-more attentive to the road. With eyes straight ahead, I grappled with the
contents of my handbag until I was able to extract my phone and access the
camera. Using an extended arm I shot photo upon photo hoping
to capture what my eyes were briefly glimpsing in between traffic lights,
oncoming traffic and other pressing items requiring my attention. Whenever there was a vista there was no place
to pull over and when there was a place to pull over there was not a good
view. Alas, I resorted to the haphazard
'point and click' approach that netted uncentered, unfocused, and out-of-frame
photos of clouds, sky and sometimes a bit of color in the right hand corner of
the shot. When I came home I sadly
erased the photos from my phone as I recounted to my husband just how
magnificent the double rainbow had been.
I often miss photographing the most spectacular moments in
nature, having to relegate the images to my memory. So it was with the double rainbows that
stretched across the sky with vivid hues of pinks, purples, violet blues, yellow greens, and orange reds. Oh how glorious
to see the birth of the multi-hued refracted water droplets as their colors grew and merged, blended and
dipped. At one point I came to the top of a hill.
The full spectrum of colors and arcs emerged from the road to the sky
and down to the horizon on the other side.
I literally gasped with a sense of awe and wonder.
I consider this today as I look at the gathering clouds with
nowhere to go, no meetings to attend, and my full attention on the sky. Perhaps today I will experience that exact
moment when the sun bursts forth from stormy clouds just in time to create the
magnificence of the perfect rainbow.
More likely I will have to satisfy myself with memories and words on a
page. How sad then that I lack the
command of flowery descriptions that paint the perfect image in a reader's
mind. Might it be easier to find photo of a rainbow on the internet and
pretend that it was mine? This I shall
do, providing nothing more than a hasty apology and a guilty grin.
