I didn’t get the shot. Better than that, I got the experience.
As we headed off for school this morning, three of us packed into my daughter’s car on a frigid January morning, nature put on a show that rivalled fireworks on the fourth of July (or Canada Day, for those of us who live north of the US border). The sky was clear: a brilliant blue struck through with a single, low hanging line of grey cloud. The sun hovered just over the horizon, a white-gold disk encircled, amazingly, by a muted almost-full rainbow. Not merely an arc of colour, but a complete, miraculous circle. On either side of the sun, hanging in the midst of the rainbow, two twin suns sat in reflection (or refraction?) It looked as though there were three suns rising, leaving me feeling as though I’d just driven into an episode of Star Trek.
And back on earth, it had snowed overnight, so the trees were covered in ice and a light dusting of snow. When I arrived home, I headed straight out of the driveway to walk in its glory, pausing only for a moment: Should I get the camera?
Forget the camera, enjoy the experience.
And I do, walking the whole block, noticing the tree branches glittering with ice. It begins to snow, a dusting of tiny diamonds hovering in the air. Everywhere I look, the world is shimmering. The whole experience last fifteen, maybe twenty minutes.
Later, I am trading email with my friend Jesse. We’re bemoaning the problem of hackers attacking my websites.
“It’s sad that in this day and age, a security package is almost essential,” he writes in an email.
“True enough,” I write back. “On the other hand, some days, like today, you wake up and there is a rainbow hanging in the blue sky with what looks like three suns, and you think, holy cow, life is just magical, even if only for five minutes.” And no hacker can touch that, and neither can a camera.