Catching a rainbow touching the Earth

It was my first – I haven’t seen another like it yet - sighting of a rainbow touching the earth, with both ends of its arc grazing the land. May be many have seen such a sight. Especially if you lived in a great plain where the land rolled away to the four horizons and brushed the sky. But in hilly or wooded terrain or cities we never catch this sight because the horizons are cut by buildings, trees and hills. In such places we also don’t get to see the sun rising from where the horizon touches the earth or setting into it, which is as dramatic as a sunrise or sunset over the sea or above the mountains.

I recently read that all rainbows are full circles. We see only the half-arc because the other half is below the horizon. But, if you’re in an airplane or on a mountain you may see the full circle. That makes pilots and mountaineers lucky people indeed. A circular rainbow must be a magical sight – something like a rollercoaster in seven colours. I read in the National Geographic that the rainbow is an optical illusion. It does not actually exist in a specific spot in the sky. And no one sees the rainbow another sees because it is centred on an imaginary line from the sun to the observer’s eye. In a way it’s you who make the rainbow. Whatever the science is, the fact is that a rainbow is one of the most beautiful things in nature and people love it. Poet William Wordsworth put it simply: ‘My heart leaps up when I behold/A rainbow in the sky.’

Travellers get to see rainbows wherever they are, if the sun is shining and there are waterdrops in the air. Rainbows flee winter and snow. Even a desert can have a rainbow if there’s enough moisture in the air.

My land-touching rainbow appeared in the middle of a long journey through central United States, a lot of it through the Great Plains – which covers nearly all of the states of Kansas, Nebraska and North and South Dakota, parts of six other states and of Western Canada. It's an immensity of rolling grass-and-shrub plains 3200 kms in length and 800 kms in width. Most of it is prairie, steppe and grasslands and the playground of tornados and twisters – and rainbows. All around you spreads an eternity of land and sky till where the eyes can see.

We had set out from Peoria, which is 267 kilometers southwest of Chicago. Peoria is the town of the famous Caterpillar engineering company. The town and Caterpillar sustain each other. ‘We’ were Thomas Palakeel, Professor of English at Bradley University, Peoria, and his two children and Iype Joseph, senior pharmacist in Peoria. Bradley university has an interesting story. It was founded by Lydia Moss Bradley, widow of the distillery millionaire, Tobias S Bradley, whose distilleries earned Peoria the nickname “Whiskey Capital of the World.’ After his death Lydia invested part of their huge fortune into founding several educational institutions which developed into the Bradley University. As you enter the campus her statue welcomes you. It’s of course a cheerful sight for whiskey drinkers. And the hundreds of thousands of students who have passed through the portals of Bradley in its 128 years of existence remember her with gratitude.

We were headed for Denver, capital of Colorado state, around 900 kilometers away, to drop the children in Thomas’s brother-in-law’s house and move on. A beautiful experience on the way was crossing the river Mississippi, the iconic American river. We diverted, drove down to the shore and I was thrilled to put my hands in the water of a great river, immortalised by Mark Twain in his classic novels ‘The Adventures of Tom Sawyer’ and ‘The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.’ Soon we were speeding through Iowa state (Iowa University runs the famous Writers’ Workshop), passed Des Moines and crossed into Nebraska state. Now we were in the world of the Great Plains.

As we crossed into Colorado state the sun was about to set. An endless expanse of grass surrounded us on all sides, swaying and bending in the wind. By 9.30 pm the sun sank into the grass, burning red like a coin just pulled out of fire. Darkness set in. We spent the night in Denver; next day we saw many interesting sights in the country around Denver and the following morning started for Yellowstone National Park, 856 kilometers away, in Wyoming. Yellowstone is a marvellous experience which I need to sidestep here.

But the mamma bear of Yellowstone demands telling. As we were cruising through the little township-cum-reception centre at the park, there came a big hooting and uproar of sirens, as if ambulances or police vehicles were rushing towards us. We pulled the car to one side thinking some terrible calamity had happened. What we saw was a convoy of vehicles, lights flashing and sirens screaming, crawling towards us. This didn’t make sense. Then we saw the cause of it all. A bear mother and her two babies were taking a relaxed stroll on the road. The sirens were directed at them as well as the tourists. The authorities wanted to persuade the bears to leave the road on the one hand, and on the other to block visitors from taking liberties with the bears. Because any temptation to go close to a mother bear with babies could result in instant death. The mother and co., continued their perambulation for some more time, totally unmindful of the hoo-ha going on, with the police and forest vehicles in attendance and then decided to take leave. I think they were making it clear that the road belonged to them as well.

From Yellowstone we crossed a corner of the Rocky Mountains into Montana, just for the feel of the mountains, and returned to Jackson, Wyoming, for the night. The mountains, bathed in the spooky light of a lunar eclipse, looked unreal and other-worldly as we drove back. Jackson is the approach-point for the Teton Ranges, one of the most spectacular portions of the Rocky Mountains. Next day we drove across the Teton Range into a small village in Idaho state, had breakfast, and crossed the Range again back to Wyoming.

Then a miracle happened. Suddenly I was seeing in front of me something I knew I had seen before – something wondrous, enchanting. A river flowed like a silver ribbon and on its one side rose into the sky black mountain ranges, their peaks capped with white snow. I stood transfixed. There was no way I could’ve seen it before. This was unbelievable. I took photos. I didn’t even want to tell my friends about my experience because it was so absurd. It was at the Jackson Visitors’ Centre that I saw something that took my breath away. There hung a photo of the mountain and the river that had beckoned me! I had the exact photo on my wall at home in Kerala for many years. It was the celebrated picture of the Teton Range by the legendary photographer Ansel Adams - renowned especially for his pictures of the Yosemite National Park. That picture had bewitched me all these years, making me dream of going to see that river and the mountain one day. Today I had been, without planning to or knowing, standing perhaps where Adams actually stood and seeing the river and the mountains! My head swam. It was like re-entering a dream.

Then we were driving to Mount Rushmore in South Dakota. It was snowing and the road became a black strip placed upon a sea of white. Slowly the snow vanished and we found ourselves rushing through an amazing world of flatness, of endlessness, where even a small tree did not show its head. We seemed to be wandering in a lost desert planet – something like a Dune landscape. It was 8.30 pm and the sun was low over the western horizon. There was a light drizzle.

Suddenly the light outside changed. An unreal, eerie, moonlight-like glow covered the land. It coated the world with an orange tint. It was a timeless moment. Because it was neither night nor day nor twilight. It was just indescribable. Then, far away where the horizon ended, we saw a double rainbow with the two ends of its arc creating two shimmering pillars rising from the earth.

I stared, not able to believe my eyes. My friends were equally excited. Our car kept rushing towards the rainbow and it kept moving away. Of course there was no way we could stop the car to take photos. We changed lanes and slowed down and I kept taking pictures. My amateur camera couldn’t take in the whole rainbow in its frame. So I made separate shots. Under the seven-coloured arc of the bow cows were grazing, bathed in the mysterious light. We saw a long train passing slowly beneath the arc. I then noticed that the sky inside the arc had one colour and outside another. Natural laws seemed to be breaking up. We felt like first creatures upon the earth. Slowly the left leg of the bow started to grow faint and then disintegrated. Soon the right leg too became shadowy and melted away. The sky that had been lit up by the bow faded into the night. And the world around us grew dark, impersonal and detached. It was as if the rainbow never existed.

(To complete the story, next day we visited the Crazy Horse Monument and Mount Rushmore and drove the 1500 kilometers back to Peoria.)

Paul Zacharia is a well-known Indian writer and columnist.