The North American Catawba Indians of the Southeast and the Tlingit of the Pacific Northwest both regard a rainbow as the bridge between the living and the dead. I regard it as a remarkable natural phenomenon that is a sign of hope and life renewed. None of us hesitates to stop what we are doing when this wonderful refraction of light appears in front of us on a rainy day.

And there in lies the trick. Regardless of where we move it will always stay.

These spectacular light shows only occur with the sun at our backs and are specific to our eyes alone. That is to say, each one of us sees a different rainbow. It is a special trick of nature that I remember Hayley Mills observing in the 1960 movie Pollyanna when sunlight was streaming through the prisms of her Aunt Polly’s lamp. The world of the spectrum of white light was revealed to her just as the rainbow does to us with each and every sun rain meeting. Seven colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet in a glorious band that arcs the sky in a perfect semicircle.

In Greek mythology, the rainbow is considered to be a path made by a messenger (Iris) between Earth and Heaven. The Spanish word for rainbow is arco iris. In the Hebrew Bible, the rainbow is a symbol of the covenant between God and man, and God's promise to Noah that He would never again flood the entire Earth.

Arco iris has presented itself to me many times but a few years back I witnessed the rarer phenomenon of a double rainbow up close. Well, as close as a rainbow will let you get that is. It was in the Upper Elk Valley and appeared to the east of me as I was driving south from work at the Line Creek Mine. Not having studied rainbow technology I became frustrated trying to position myself for the best overall shot. It was only luck that allowed me to get a ground-to-ground arc in my viewer that day.

As I stood in awe of this picture of light split apart I noticed the contrast between the sky inside and outside it. The explanation of this phenomenon gets a little tricky and has to do with rainbow rays, internal reflection angles smaller than them and so on and so on. Suffice to say there is a lot more light inside the bow that outside it. The light inside the bow is a mix of all the rainbow colors and appears white.

My next observation was that the band between the two rainbows was quite dark. This band is referred to as Alexander’s Dark Band and is named after Alexander of Aphrodisias who described the effect in 200 BC. Apparently raindrops along lines of sight between the two bows cannot send light to your eye and so the sky is darker there.

So then we come to the second rainbow and hold on a minute. There is something different there also. You will observe that the color sequence is reversed and the red from the primary bow is facing the red from the secondary bow. Don’t be disappointed that you don’t get double rainbows of the same intensity as that just isn’t going to happen. That is because its surface brightness is lower because its light is spread over its greater angular extent. Too much math for me.

Other rainbow phenomena to watch for are reflected rainbows (quite spectacular) and the rare but fainter lunar rainbow or moonbow. Reflected rainbows appear directly on the surface of a water body. Light passes through water droplets and is then reflected by the water surface. Moonbows or lunar bows need quite a combination of things to happen. A bright full moon low in the sky, which has to be dark and of course it has to be raining opposite the moon. Yosemite is famous for its moonbows from the mist of the Lower Yosemite Falls.

And then there is the Bifrost (pronounced roughly BIF-roast) which is found in Norse mythology and is a rainbow bridge connecting Asgard (a world of Gods) with Midgard, the world of us. Pet lovers, like myself, are very familiar with the pet Rainbow Bridge which serves as a connection between the worlds of the living and the dead. I expect that when I eventually travel the rainbow bridge I will be greeted by no less than 21 different animals that have passed over. They will all be standing there at Lorraine’s side, waiting for me.

You may have seen a picture at some point in time of another phenomenon known as fire rainbows. They in fact have nothing to do with real rainbows, or fire for that matter. Their technical name is circumhorizontal arcs. Unlike arcing rainbows, they are horizontal and are a result of high-altitude ice crystals refracting light. I witnessed another type of reflected crystal phenomenon some years ago, known as light pillars. I was driving west of Coleman in the very early morning headed to work. It was -35 centigrade, clear and cold and light pillars appeared around all the big outside street lights at the sulphur plant. It was a spectacular sight and I was ill-equipped to capture this magical moment photographically. They are actually not beams, just an illusion created by ice crystals.

There are even more fascinating ice crystal atmospheric dandies that can occur, like halos around the sun or moon, sun dogs that appear on the left, right or both sides of the sun and sun pillars. Sun pillars are usually seen at sunrise or sunset and extend vertically above the sun.

We humans like to organize things to make sense of them so we tend to refer to rainbows as striped. They are in fact not striped but actually a continuous gradation of color. Our brain divides the bow’s spectrum into distinct bands. I don’t think the experts even understand why our brains do this and it gives me pause to ask the question. What else is our brain capable of doing, rearrangement wise, that of which we are not aware? Kind of spooky actually, isn’t it?

There is lots of information out there about the technical explanations of rainbow effects but I prefer to just be amazed by them and thankful that they come to us especially in spring and make our souls soar. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t light up when they see white light split apart into a kaleidoscope of hues. I usually find myself running to position for a photographic view that is picture-worthy. One of my most interesting encounters was in 2016 when I came across a flat rainbow at the base of Mount Tecumseh. I’ve never seen one quite like it.

I found a profound poem by William Wordsworth written in 1802 entitled, "My Heart Leaps Up When I Behold The Rainbow." It sort of says it all for me. It reads:

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