We had so many furry-gray rain-soaked days in a row that even an optimist would believe that the sun was but a happy dream. Finally it broke. A clear night cold enough to bring about the season’s first hard frost turned into a morning equally clear with warm sunlight burning moisture from every surface.
“Why is the air white?” asked the middle child as we drove her sibling to school. I rattled off a hasty explanation, still annoyed that nearly seven hundred mornings of getting out the door had not been enough to train us to depart in an orderly, non-shrieking manner. After everyone was safely deposited in their classrooms I sped off on a round of about-town errands with no other goal in mind but to get them done and move on to the next task as soon as possible.
I drove east past the rear of a residential neighborhood separated from the street by a line of weathered wood fencing, admiring the few leaves still hanging mulishly to the tress. I noticed what I first thought was dryer exhaust rising from a single backyard. But unlike the usual behavior of dryer exhaust, this exhaust seemed to be floating parallel to the fence-line. Upon closer examination I found that it was coming not from one backyard but from every one. This was most decidedly odd, I thought. Had everyone decided to do laundry on that particular morning? Could the fence-row somehow be directing the exhaust along its border and then straight up?
And then I understood. It wasn’t dryer exhaust. It was water vapor, locked for days in the wood, liberated by warmer temperatures and revealed by my position relative to the sun. I watched in awe until my route took me south; ten minutes later when I headed east again the sun was high enough that the vision was gone.
How can I have not seen such an amazing thing before? In forty years surely those conditions existed before, hadn’t they? Almost certainly they had — but my head was up and locked then and I missed it, concerned over various meaningless minutiae and blind to beauty right in front of my eyes.
What else do I miss in the daily hurry and rush? Half-way or more through this life I can’t expect to be given chance after chance at seeing amazing things. I need to pay more attention now.
——
Oh look. Someone caught a picture of this phenomena.
The combination of water, air and light is a never-ending source of pleasure for me, and even though I know they are more common than rainbows I often forget to look up and look for halos around the sun.
How cool is that? Down here in South Florida our air is far too humid for this to ever happen, but I would love to see it in person.
I think it takes a certain amount of maturity and experience to fully appreciate the world around us.
furry-gray rain soaked days….orderly, non-shrieking manner…you really know how to distill it all into few words! I’d say your powers of perception are right on.
Cool photo! Out here in the Rockies our weather is…bipolar. One of my favorite phenomena is when it’s been really warm, then it snows a little. The snow only sticks to the grass and trees and the streets steam due to the residual heat in the asphalt. Neato, plus easier to spot than your fences.
I have moments like these myself. Before I got glasses for far-seeing, I didn’t realize all that I was missing. I was about 30 when someone asked me to read a street sign and I realized that I couldn’t and went to the eye doctor. When I got my glasses two weeks later, I put them on while I sat at my office desk. I looked out the office window to a tree just outside that I had looked at for the past year and saw, for the FIRST time, the amazing intricacy of its leaves, each individual leaf, and the colors…so many greens it made my heart ache. Ever since then, when I am so wrapped up in the minutia of daily life that I feel it choking me, I remind myself of that moment, and strive to appreciate the small, wondrous things in the world around me. It’s wonderfully centering and humbling at the same time.
I have always live in the city… until now. I just recently move to a very rural setting where the dear and skunks and river otters roam. It is absolutely magical to me to be this close to the “real” world. It feels like the Land that time forgot. The dear can sense you from many yards away. The instant you look at them they snap right round to look you right in the eye.It not like they can hear me either. I just look up from my desk when I see them and the can tell.