Driving home from work yesterday I decided to cut through the high school parking lot. The high school is located behind where we live, so taking this short cut saves time on not having to sit through 2 or 3 traffic lights. Almost adjacent to the softball field is the Police station, an ideal location for the cops to keep a watchful eye on the teens. It also means that if you go over the 15 MPH speed limit you’re an easy target.
As I made my way through the parking lot I noticed a rainbow peaking out of one corner of the sky. Most of the time, especially during the end of rainy weather, I’ll see a partial rainbow. In my lifetime I have never seen a whole rainbow, from beginning to end. Yesterday, however, the rainbow wasn’t partially covered by drifting clouds, it was in full view. I was in awe of its beauty, so much in fact that when I finally got home I took a few pictures with my digital camera.
Looking through the viewfinder of my camera I was reminded of a lyric in ‘The Rainbow Connection‘, as sung by Kermit the Frog;
“Rainbows are visions,
but only illusions,
and rainbows have nothing to hide.
What’s so amazing that keeps us stargazing?
And what do we think we might see?
Someday we’ll find it, the rainbow connection; the lovers, the dreamers and me.”
Our offices are in a buiilding facing a wide open area from where you can see the country’s main freeway on the distance and a big, 5-star hotel facing east - it is also a gorgeous place to see whole rainbows when they occur. I wish I had my camera in handy on those times.
Show pics! :)
I’ll post some pictures later this evening. It really was an awesome sight to behold.
The rainbow was so huge I couldn’t capture it entirely, so I had to take two or three pictures since the tree in the front yard was obscuring the whole view.
Not sure if it’s fact or rumor, but I once heard that if you could see an entire rainbow, it would be circular. However, because of angles of defelction and the position of the sun and the fact that there always seems to be a horizon in the way, there is really no way to see it all.
Either way, I’d still like to see that pot o’ gold.
I stood at the end of a rainbow when I was 7 or 8 years old.
The rainbow intersected the ground 30 or 40 feet out from the front door. As I approached it, it naturally disappeared. I backed up until it was visible again and then walked to that spot and turned. I asked my parents “Am I there?”. From the doorway, they replied, “Yes”. Looking “up the rainbow” was like looking at a million little “suns”.
Years later at a restaurant table, my father was animatedly discussing “something” with friends; my girl friend at the time, interjected a question about the rainbow and me; he froze in mid sentence, became very still and said “I’d never have believed it, if I hadn’t seen it. Yes!”
I too stood at the end of the rainbow! Thank you georgepwebster for sharing your story. My family in SE Indiana often talk about the day in 1970 when we saw a rainbow end in our front yard. We each took turns dancing its its light while others stood back to observe and tell us where to dance to make it visible from about 40 feet away. Others have told us this is not possible, as there is no such thing as the end of the rainbow, but our mother witnessed it as well. It was something we will never forget even though few believe our story.
I did as well. It was in the spring of 1980, I lived in a mountainous area of No. California. It was raining lightly and I looked out the patio doors of my bedroom and saw a rainbow hitting the ground nearby. While I knew it was supposed to be impossible, it looked like I could stand in it, it was so close. So I went outside and tried and sure enough, I was surrounded by, literally, all the colors of the rainbow in brilliant prismatic light. It was the single most gloriously amazing moment of my life. Don’t say it can’t be done. It can.