I usually take my camera with me to work, but not today. And sure enough, we had this afternoon the most extraordinary display of Mother Nature’s incredible imagination.

It was late, the sun was low and the weather moody. Lots of multilayered clouds and a big rain storm headed our way. And yet, while the shower approached and surrounded the tower, the sun kept shining far in the distance and reflected on English Bay.

The rain intensified, the world turned a dull gray and curtains of water seemed to be flapping in the wind around us. People in the street even reported hail mixed in with the rain, which wouldn’t surprise me from the sweet cumulonimbus that was towering above us.

And then slowly, because nothing lasts forever, the rain moved pass us and headed towards the north shore, erasing the mountains from our view. The sun found its way through distant cloud layers and turned the Burrard Inlet into liquid gold.

That’s when it happened. A rainbow. No, two rainbows. Two FULL rainbows. I had never seen such a thing and didn’t think it was possible. Two complete circles, (or almost complete because a ten or fifteen degree arc was missing where the rainbows seemed to touch the ground below us, and the very upper part was hidden by the restaurant floor above us), the inner one brightly colored and perfectly defined, the outer slightly fainter. On a background of pure gold and clouds so dark they were like the night. And I didn’t have my camera.

When the rainbows faded, the sunlight played with the tormented clouds, highlighting rebel patches torn away from the core by the violence of an invisible fury. The mountains reappeared little by little, shyly, their slopes clinging to a blanket of fog. And then they lit up briefly, it was sunset. And I didn’t have my camera!

2006-03-14 22:41 • Posted in Schtroumpfissime: