Panterdjuret's Cosy Corner

Today when I went out for a walk in the grey, cold haze of really small snow crystals, I came down the hill and met this sight:

A rainbow.  It was so beautiful that I just had to stop and take a photo.  It was magical.  Then I decided to walk on, happy about the beauty that nature sometimes just throw at me.  I was not at all prepared for this when I came around the corner:

It was not an ordinary rainbow, it was a halo around the setting sun.  It literally robbed me of breath for a moment and I stopped dead just staring at it.  It was so beautiful I almost started crying.

And not only that; it was a double halo:

During this entire time, no one else had stopped.  I had seen no one look up at this magnificent sight.  I almost wanted to point at it and jump up and down in sad ecstasy and say; “Look!  Look!  Just look at that!”  It was not until several minutes later a mother came from the train with her child someone noticed.  But it was me it noticed at first; stopping, looking at me, noticing that I was looking up at something and then;

it grabbed its mother’s sleeve and said, in surprise; “Look mommy, the sun!  The sun!”

Its mother looked up in awe for a moment and then she hurried on.  To my knowledge, we were the only three that saw it until I met a person I know slightly and showed it to her through a window.

This makes me feel a bit sad.

The colours did not come out well in the photos, and they are a bit blurry.  But this was an awesome sight AFK.

This is one of the reasons I never get bored at watching nature; it always has something beautiful and ephemeral to throw at me and to others at well.  Just stop and have a look, and try to find it.

You can spare a minute a day, I promise.  And it will be worth it.

/pao – 10 jan 2012 – 00.23