Perpetual rainbow

I am back at the falls – parked at the Canadian side, and running on a fine winter’s day, crisp sunshine and clear blue sky imported from a California summer’s day, preserved in cold storage for me, lifting this traveler’s worn spirits.

The thundering cascade pours dramatically into a bowl of snow and ice, immediately subdued by the frozen river; a magician’s sleight of hand soothes that torrent below the icy surface, and the image looks like a still, a painting of dramatic snowscapes surrounding the falls.

I run through the spray, and then in the clear, stopping on a pathway to wipe my glasses. Intrigued by the sign for a Tropical Forest, I find myself surrounded by fern and money plant in a hot house. I gawk at the Banana Tree, lonely here in this winter wasteland, and offer to carry a letter in a bottle to its distant brethren.

The sun is low in the horizon, and I see a perfect rainbow in the spray above the falls. It is symmetric, complete, and so very close at hand, I could reach out for that pot - but more important than fool’s gold, today, is the sustenance I can suck from that rainbow. Much needed strength to find the way forward, to navigate life, love and impossible choices.