While walking across that rocky piece of ground formerly known as the Truckee River above the Lake Tahoe dam, I saw the impossibly bright red-orange-yellow-green-purple colors of a rainbow touch the heads of a couple in the distance. Like all rainbows, it was a brief moment of bliss, a reminder of the wonder of nature. Fortunately, it was not a unique sighting during this wonderful fall of the rainbows.
This fall rainbows have appeared and reappeared above the lake on a regular basis, reminding us what we already know, that Lake Tahoe really is the pot of gold at the end of our rainbow. Or I’ve seen the rainbows fly through the sky to briefly explode in color above the white firs and Jeffrey pines of the ridge above the Truckee River. Wherever we see them, that harmless blaze of color always brings a smile. A moment of quiet jubilation.
Perhaps the joy of a rainbow comes from the fact that they are a bridge between nature’s two most important elements. The rainbows display of colors come just at the moment when the precious moisture which brings us life passes the torch to the lovely sunshine that keeps us warm and growing. Rainbows are a celebration of the power of water and sun.
What also make rainbow’s a joy is that they are not something you can put off until you’re song is finished or you have sent the email. Like a shooting star, a lunar eclipse, or the brief splash of purples and oranges that is our reward for getting up and looking outside in the morning, it is a bit of natural wonder that is here, then gone. Rainbows remind us that we regularly need to stop what we are doing, and appreciate what a marvelous little miracle it is that we get to live and breath on this amazing planet. They are another knock on the head to enjoy the show while it lasts.
While writing this story I saw my Truckee friend Sara Zimmerman’s cartoon. It hit the nail on the head so hard I felt for sure she was inside my brain somewhere. Go check out her other cartoons and books while you are at it. Good stuff.