Of particular pleasure
to most naturalists are the moments they see something they've never seen
before, along with the thoughtful realization that they might never see such a
thing again in their life. Now, interestingly, these 'seeings' are not particularly
rare, as there is so incredibly much to observe on, under and above land, sea
and sky, especially if one is a generalist like me. Such delights are the compensation
or remuneration of what is called 'paying attention.' And it's the 'paying'
part of that phrase that I like, because their return in value, if you will, are
commensurate with the investment of the attention one pays.
The seeings range
from the curious to the cute, from the nearly unbelievable to the believable
but still spectacular.
The curious. It
rained buckets after dark the night before last, nearly three and a half inches
in four hours. At one point, as I stood at our bedroom window for a few moments
staring at the awesome sight of the downpour amid intermittent lightning
flashes, I noticed several tiny glow worms on what had to be absolutely sopped
turf, lighting up and dimming back. It left me inquiring as to the purpose. Who
knows? Perhaps they were just sending SOS's. (See one of my earlier posts, "Holy Buckets in the World is That?" for a similar curiosity.)
The cute. Over
the last couple weeks, Gail and I have picked wild apples several places,
making a little jelly and applesauce along the way, but more to fill a couple
five-gallon buckets and set some out overnight for the deer. This week as we
began doing so, the apples were gone every morning, and we sat at the window eating
breakfast, smugly satisfied to have provided a little treat. (Sometimes we're
rewarded with them coming in at dusk while we can watch them, always a
pleasure.) But no. One morning upon an earlier rising than usual, I watched
with both displeasure and amusement as a diminutive red squirrel climbed the
stumps upon which the apples lay and carried each, one at a time, into the
woods, burying them under fallen leaves. Some of these apples were over half
its size and surely close to its body weight, a comical sight.
The nearly
unbelievable. I'll warn you now, people think I'm pulling their leg when I tell
them of this experience. Years ago, Gail and I celebrated our 25th wedding
anniversary with a trip to the Canadian Maritime Provinces. While hiking in a
remote area of New Brunswick near the Hopewell Rocks, we stopped dead in our
tracks when we heard a crow in a tall tree above us seeming to sing "It's a Small World After All."
Now, we had known that crows are smart enough to mimic, but it still challenged
our limits of believability. So we stood under the tree for a few minutes and
listened to it over and over; quite soon, other hikers came down the trail, a
young couple, and we thought we'd put it to the test. Stopping them, we asked
if they'd mind pausing to listen to this crow and tell us what they thought
they heard; we must have seemed like crazy old people. After the crow called,
the woman replied, "Uhh, it's... a small world after all...?" Bingo.
Something else crazier than us. We all laughed with incredulity, and I
commented, knowing also that some crows can migrate south for the winter,
"I guess there's no question where this guy spends his winters!" It
must have been one of those that perch nearby and snag French fries and other
treats out of people's hands while they're waiting in line at Disney World,
listening to that infernal ditty! Who (or what) EVER can get THAT brain worm
out of their head, having once stood in that line?
Finally, the
believable but still spectacular. I was not even familiar with these two things
before seeing them, and though I've only 'seen' the latter through my sister,
they arrest me just the same. Many of us have seen sundogs or glorioles. Sundogs are small arcs of rainbow color, 22 degrees either or both sides of the
sun when low in the sky, refracting and separating the colors of the sun's rays
as a prism does, through suspended ice crystals. Glorioles are rings around the
sun or moon (or partial rings) that are also a refraction of light through high
altitude ice crystals. But the thing about both sundogs and glorioles is that
their arc bends toward the light
source, whether sun or moon; in other words, they appear as circles, or partial
circles, surrounding the light.
One day
as I walked on a sunny afternoon, a small patch of color near the zenith somehow
caught my eye, and I found a small, single arc floating among the clouds almost
directly overhead. I thought it odd to see a sundog in that spot, as they
usually present themselves nearer the horizon earlier or later in the day. But
then I realized its arc was bending away
from the sun. What in the world? Well, that was called, I found as I researched
later, a circumzenithal arc, but I
also read, Cheshire Cat notwithstanding, that it was also called 'the smile in
the sky,' which brought the same to my own countenance. That’s also a much more
fun title, I’d say. (It’s also called Bravais’ arc, or an upside-down rainbow.)
Circumzenithal means ‘surrounding the zenith,’ zenith being the point straight
up. These arcs are also formed through high altitude ice crystals, appear 46
degrees above the sun (about a quarter of the sky), and, I was surprised to
find, are not that rare; it’s just that few of us ever look straight over the
tops of our heads. In this photo, I blocked the sun by the tree in order to see
‘the smile’ more clearly.
Then
just last month my sister Carolyn sent me this photo pair of crepuscular and
anticrepuscular rays, taken one evening from the roof of her Chicago condo
building. I had often seen the former but never the latter. Crepuscular means
‘relating to twilight,’ which is when these rays tend to show themselves best. These
rays can often be seen while the sun is low in the sky, especially as the
sunlight shines through thick cumulus clouds. (They’re also called splintered
light, or god rays. Hmmm…) But I have always thought that the coolest effect is
when crepuscular rays show when the sun is below the horizon. Soon before the
sun rises or soon after it sets, our star occasionally throws its shadows and
light-rays across the sky as it shines through clouds, or even landforms like
mountains or hills, that are below
our own horizon, which we, of course, cannot see. All those rays and shadows
seem to be emanating from the same point below the horizon, like spokes on one
half of a wheel, which, of course, they are, coming as they are from our sun's
single point of light. Most spectacular is when it happens when our own sky is fairly
cloudless. But I’ve also particularly enjoyed it while flying at high altitude into
the sunset, when I have been able to see rays opposite the sunset and behind me
forming a single, large, arced, purplish shadow, which is actually the shadow
of our earth itself, including its curvature, another cool expression of
crepuscular light. What I had never seen before is when those rays reach all
the way across the sky and exit the opposite horizon, again, as like spokes in another
half wheel opposite the sun. Along the way, they appear to expand widely over
one's head and converge again on the horizon opposite. But this is only how
it appears; the rays are actually nearly parallel, perspective from a single
point being what it is, in the same way that parallel railroad tracks seem to
come to a point in the distance). These rays opposite the sun are called
anticrepuscular, 'anti' of course a prefix from the Greek designating
opposition. Sometimes a ray reaches all the way overhead from west to east (or
east to west), as some did at the time of these two photos. You can look at
both photos and picture the full sky's connecting rays, keeping in mind that
one photo faces west to the sunset and the other east (note the Chicago
skyline), thus, why the rays are flipped from right to left.
I wax. It's a
hazard for us naturalists, as I've said many times. But all of this is to affirm,
as I began, what a treat it is to be feted with new and wonderful things one
has never observed or experienced before, irrespective of a lifetime of
observation.
I've walked with
God now for well over a half century. Though much about this walk has become
familiar, God also often teaches or shows me new things, or new ways to
understand old things. It's why I write. But such was familiar to the Biblical
writers as well, with Jeremiah celebrating God's tender mercies of old which
seemed to him absolutely 'new every
morning' (Lamentations 3:22-23);
or James reveling in God's '...good and
perfect gifts from above... coming down
from the Father of lights, with whom can be no variation nor turning shadow'
(James 1:17). Beautiful image, that
one, eh? Or perhaps this from 1Corinthians 2:9 -- 'Eye has not seen,
nor ear heard, nor the mind of humans conceive what God has in store for those
who love him.'
Yes.
~~ RGM, September 23, 2018
I’m not sure what it is about a clear night sky that
can draw one to contemplation of the Creator. It almost seems that E.T. had it
partly right, though, when he assured Elliott “I’ll be right here.” The Lord is present in his sanctuary. 
