Early
this morning I saw something I had never before seen, a rainbow in the snow.
The rising sun was very low, ascending through broken skies, and I had just found
myself coming into an alpine meadow in a sunny opening. The Twin Sisters loomed
on my left, Longs Peak behind. Fragile hoarfrost clung to the taller grasses
from an overnight fog, and the ground was covered with two inches of fresh
powder, interlaced with coyote tracks.
Then,
gently and slighter than a whisper, almost as an undertone, it began to snow. There
was no wind. Tiny, brilliantly flashing crystals flitted like falling leaves or
apple-blossom petals, dropping thinly from a wispy cloud, through which shown a
cerulean sky. Bright sunshine beamed and all was dazzling when just as gently,
just as whisper-like, the bow appeared. Was it something on my glasses? I wiped
them clean. No, it was a rainbow, small and pale but still distinct, actually a
bowed sundog, that hung before me as if I could reach out a hand and pierce the
spectrum with a finger.
I
actually tried, twice. Finally I held my palm open.
The
promise, touched... The covenant,
come to
rest upon my hand...
The
promise, touched… The covenant, come to rest upon my hand...
I set my rainbow in the cloud, and it will be
for a sign of a covenant between me and the earth… I will look at it, that I may remember the
everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is
on the earth. (Genesis 9:13, 16)
~~
RGM, from an old entry in my nature journal, written several
years ago while
attending a board meeting at Covenant
Heights Camp
and Conference Center, Estes Park CO
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