Yesterday, while driving a patient from Pocatello, Idaho, to Salt Lake City, Utah, in the ambulance, I saw something I have never witnessed before and had no idea was possible. A triple rainbow. I want to describe this scene as vividly as I know how, and admittedly I do not feel up to the task, so it may be a very humble attempt. Most anything would be humbled in comparison to the scene I saw yesterday.
First, I will attempt an explanation for what I saw, then attempt to describe it in all its glory and pray that if the glory of nature is attractive to you you might be able to envision the scene in the eye of your mind. I did some research this afternoon on rainbows, and it turns out that the phenomenon I observed was what is known as a "reflection rainbow." This makes sense, because it was explained as exactly what I had ascertained it to be: a second rainbow coming off the primary rainbow, but the second one being made from light that was reflected off a bay of the Great Salt Lake, to my right. A reflection rainbow, as opposed to a reflected rainbow, is made by the sun striking brightly off a body of water and thus hitting the rain drops that in conjunction with the sun form the rainbow. Because as you might have observed if you have studied rainbows as I have over the last ten or fifteen years you will have noticed that the farther down the sky the sun is when the rainbow appears the steeper the angle of the rainbow, the reflection rainbow is, at least in the case of the one I saw, almost exactly vertical, and is not a "bow," as such but a strip of rainbow heading straight up from the base of the primary rainbow. Okay, enough for technicality. Now let me get to the surreal beauty of the scene . . .
As I drove the ambulance south, lost in my own melancholy thoughts, wishing I could still be home with my family, the rain was dumping in buckets all over the four lane. At times I was plowing through, and hydroplaning OVER, an inch of standing water. I like rain, but driving in it at high speed is not my favorite pastime, and I was feeling pretty out of sorts. The feeling of melancholy was no doubt heightened by the gray and gloomy day and deep, dark clouds hanging low over the hills, sometimes just above the foothills, with the tops of the Wasatch Range breaking through above, but still within their own shrouding gray-blue mists.
Then, as beautiful coincidence would have it, the sun reached a point in its westward descent where the cloud bank was broken by brilliant patches of azure blue, and it was precisely at this point that I came to the northern end of what is known as Willard Bay, an arm of Great Salt Lake.
Fleeting images of rainbows began to appear to my left, to the east. At first, these were simply spears, only the southern leg of rainbows, and some of them pretty faded, since the sun was still struggling through clouds. But as the sun continued to drop far down the sky, these rainbows began to brighten and grow, sometimes forming all the way across the east in a full, brilliant bow, and often in a double rainbow, the secondary one being outside the first, less brilliant, and a mirror reflection of the first.
To set this full scene, I have to say that the Wasatch Range is in the full height of its autumn color. The close-up brilliant gold-yellow of cottonwoods was almost brighter than an artist could capture, and the gambel oaks that carpet the steep ridges of the mountains were in full and gleaming cloaks of scarlet. These are some of the most beautifully rugged mountains I have ever seen, pale tan to gray in color, and in some places can hardly support a blade of grass for their ruggedness. Deep canyons open up in them and chew their way back into the mountainsides, and in the gleaming, golden sunlight of late afternoon every crag and fastness and mountain valley was accentuated. Yet because the sky was so black and glowering, much of these mountains were in shadow, and so the clouds hanging like tattered sheep in the foreground stood out against them that much more brightly. It was against this backdrop that the rainbows appeared.
Suddenly, as if by magic, the two magnificent bows of color came at a steep angle out of the ground, seeming almost close enough to touch, and then, forming at the base of the inner, primary rainbow and shooting almost straight upward to meet the secondary rainbow as it started to make its northward bend, was a third band of gleaming light. At first, I thought it was a trick of my eyes, something to do with light coming off my window. So in spite of the still-falling rain I rolled down my window. But still, there it was, beautiful and plain as day.
I had no explanation for the phenomenon at the time. To be honest, I could hardly think. To things amazed me, truthfully. The first was the very beauty of the scene, and the second was how every driver who passed me in the next twenty minutes or so that this phenomenon remained visible were staring straight ahead, moving down the road as if this were just another day, as if the most incredible display of nature's beauty wasn't sprawled out right over their left shoulders. Unbelievable. I'm all for driving safe, but had I not been taking a transfer I would have pulled to the side of the road and gotten out. This scene was most likely a once in a lifetime occurrence. I'm guessing that's the case, since I'm 45 and after that many years of studying nature's beauty have never seen it before.
So now you have this incredible scene as I hope in some remote way I have managed to capture it: One of the most rugged and steep ranges of mountains I know of, its rocky tan crags turning orange-gold in the late afternoon sun, its deep canyons dark purple, black clouds hanging over them, with lighter clouds drifting before them, bright white and sometimes leaning toward yellow. A vast array of trees clothed in colors from dark to pale green to the most impossible yellow you can imagine, and the mountains clothed in red oak. And then, framing it all, this display of triple rainbows the like of which most people will probably never see.
It was just as I was nearing the end of the Great Salt Lake that I realized this third phenomenal rainbow was being created by the reflection off the lake itself. I had started noticing that if I looked that direction I was almost blinded by the light off the lake, and then it hit me why that stretch of rainbow was vertical. Shortly after this, the ambulance passed the lake, and the vertical spear of color was gone.
I was left pondering the wonder of nature and my gratefulness that I had taken this opportunity for overtime. Even though I was away from my family, I had witnessed something I would never have known about had I been home with them. And yes, I broke one of my cardinal laws of driving and got on the cell phone to share the wonderful moments with my wife.
Being an artist, besides a writer, I will one day attempt to recapture what I saw yesterday, but I pale at the very thought of the challenge. Perhaps some things are of such unspeakable glory that they were never meant to be put to canvas or even to the written page.
I guess that remains to be seen.
Disclaimer: The reflection rainbows shown in the photos at the top are NOT the one I saw. These are pale, drab version of what laid itself out over the Wasatch Valley yesterday afternoon. These, particularly the bottom one, judging from the almost vertical sides, are from probably just before the sun slipped from sight below the horizon.
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