End of the Rainbow

May 28, 2004

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.” 

7 comments

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! :)

by beto on May 28, 2004 at 11:14 am. Reply #

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.

by kartooner on May 28, 2004 at 11:41 am. Reply #

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.

by Scott on May 29, 2004 at 1:31 am. Reply #

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!”

by georgepwebster on August 10, 2005 at 7:19 pm. Reply #

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.

by ckpointchickie on October 7, 2006 at 2:38 pm. Reply #

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.

by Dennis on July 16, 2007 at 2:25 am. Reply #

It hap­pened to me just today!!! June 24, 2008! I was email­ing some­one about the col­ors I’d like on my new web­site and I said, “I’d like all the col­ors of the rain­bow.” The phone rang right after that, and as I was return­ing to my com­puter next to an over­sized win­dow, I saw the foot of the rain­bow on the grass just out­side, at the edge of the woods. The rain­bow was an actual bow of col­ors that went up through the trees and ended on the other side of the road on the lawn of another home. I couldn’t believe my eyes even though it had been rain­ing on and off all after­noon.
So I ran out­side, around the back of my condo, and walked into it (because I was deter­mined to find that pot of gold!!!). It was glo­ri­ous!
As I looked up through it, I real­ized the intense sun shin­ing through, and had to stop look­ing directly up. But I KNOW there is a pot of gold com­ing to me— AND, the shear priv­i­lege of stand­ing in some­thing that I often won­dered about, whether or not it’s just an illu­sion as to where a rain­bow ends, is some­thing I will never for­get. Thank you God!

by Nancy Cooper on June 24, 2008 at 8:39 pm. Reply #

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