Chasing Rainbows

I actually do chase rainbows. The weather patterns where we live are very conducive to their creation and we’ve become practiced at knowing beforehand that the odds of a rainbow occurring are high. Usually a stormy east sky and the sun setting clear in the west. We must see over a dozen rainbows a year and about half of those will be double rainbows. We love them, and when they show their stripes we will go on a chase to find the best vantage for a photograph or to just enjoy them.

Of course, rainbows are ephemeral. They’ll shine, they glow, they’ll wax and wane and finally their gone. Something that grows from almost nothing, becomes amazing and beautiful and then disappears. They are something to be enjoyed while they’re between the wax and the wane.

Not everyone gets to see rainbows, but everyone should have rainbows to chase. An impossible dream, a goal, something that’s in reach, if not quite within grasp, but worth striving for. It’s best if that rainbow cannot be grasped, but only chased, for it’s the pursuit of rainbows that makes each of us what we are.

Rainbows are worthy of being chased and I’m still chasing!

— By Jim Harlan