I. First incident was in October during fall break. I was visiting my youngest child in Utah and driving back to my hotel after dropping her off on campus. It was just before dawn when it’s light enough to see everything but the sun has not risen from behind the Wasatch Mountains. Though the sun was just below the peak and therefore couldn’t be seen, the sun’s rays were in full force, coming out in strong, vibrant, striations. What made this sunrise different were not the vibrant colors which were by themselves beautiful but the hard lines cast into the sky by the jagged, mountain tops. I had I had to stop and pull over to take a picture. I wasn’t sure even with the good camera that I had that it would show up but it did. A photograph isn’t as good as the real thing but I’ve included the photograph below. Just imagine it a thousand times more beautiful.
II. Next came a sunset that was so colorful one evening that it looked fake but it was so beautiful that it couldn’t have been fake. But more impressive was that it was just one, very large cloud. It was thick and opaque on the west side, but thinned out as it went eastward, gradating so extreme from west to east that by the time it got to the eastern most edge it was thin & transparent. The color was also gradated from rose to pink to salmon. Just one cloud in the entire sky, but the contrast was breathtaking against the blue-gray sky.
III. I often see wildlife driving to and from work since I live in the country and near a lake and this morning was no exception as I set out to work. I passed a large, white duck on the side of the lake, one of many I had seen so many times before. What was unusual this morning was that it was a cold day and for the first time in my life I saw the breath of a duck as it exhaled into the cold, frosty air. I know animals breathe but I have never “noticed” one breathing before. The duck’s breath just sort of suspended itself in the air with the morning sun behind it.
IV. Another fall display was a morning shortly after the fall leaves had dropped from the trees. We had a cold, hard rain several nights before so most of the trees were void of leaves and after a couple of days of wind, they were dry. I’m used to seeing leaves on the road but this one day, I was on the main street of town driving to work and the wind was really brisk, anywhere between 10-15 mph. The wind was behind me so as I’m driving down a four-lane highway and the wind picked up the leaves on the road but instead of taking them up into the air, the leaves stayed on the road, in small packs if you will, bouncing about an inch off the road but moving with speed and staying just ahead of my car. I felt like the leaves were traveling with me to work, keeping pace with my car. The leaves seemed like it has a mind of its own.
V. As I’ve mentioned before I live near a lake, not on the lake but within view. This particular morning, also in the fall, the mist hung over the lake. What was odd was that you could see the tops of the trees clearly around the lake and you could see the water of the lake just as clearly. No mist covering either. The mist was suspended between the lake and the tree tops. I could see clearly below and overhead but not in-between. Again, the morning sun came up behind the scene before me and lit the scene for me with crystal clarity. This was one of those days I wish I had a camera. It would have made a stunning photograph.
VI. Lastly, one evening after work while driving home I see a bank of clouds covering the sky and it’s moving rapidly west to east. It’s a solid bank of clouds filling the entire sky. It’s also another windy fall day. This evening there is one cloud that didn’t want to go west to east with the rest of them but curved from north to south, cutting across the other clouds. I thought maybe it was a jet’s plume but it was too wide to have been the exhaust from a plane. I have no idea what caused the phenomenon but it was evident from the ground that it was flowing contrary to the laws of nature…as least as I understand them.
Personally I’m very happy to be surprised by nature from time to time.
1 comment:
How nice!
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