The Light Within

The Light Within

Rising early I prepared my boat to go fishing. A boat made of aluminum sixteen feet long and five feet wide. Pushed by a fifteen horse power Johnson motor and steered by tiller which sounds small, but it will push you faster than a normal person would care to go. Regardless it has gotten me out on the water of rivers or lakes and into the smallest or largest places I’ve thought of going. Even into Copano Bay on the gulf coast a couple of times.

 Since it rained the night before my prospects of catching anything were slim and none so my backup plan was exploring every creek and shoreline I could find. The banks of the Trinity River in particular, I wanted to visit again. It held many fossils still undiscovered. The rain had stopped by the time I finished breakfast and the clouds began clearing from the west. My hopes for a pretty day on the lake were promising. My normal day off was Tuesday and few people would be on the lake to take advantage of such a perfect day.

Arriving at the marina I parked in the lot. Other cars are parked too but only mine has a trailer. A sign that boat traffic would be minimal. There were two other launches on the lake but this one is always the busiest. I launched from the small cove near the marina. Here, only land around the marina can be seen with blue sky over trees hugging the last point of land beyond the launch and receding clouds in the distance. The flat lake spread out beyond me while only a few small ripples teased up by the breeze sparkled in the light. After clearing the no wake buoys I quickly gained speed. I headed for the point where the Trinity River poured into Benbrook Lake which was directly opposite the dam. There’s no feeling like speeding close to the surface of the water picking up the fresh smell it in the spray. The ride was smooth as the boat cleaved the water.

I wanted to revisit an interesting sight up the Trinity about a quarter of a mile.

One bank had a petrified sea floor complete with tiny fossils covering its surface. This sea floor petrified in waves of what once was sand six inches high. To see it I’d have to kick away a layer of sand and leaves but I always looked for interesting fossils petrified millions of years ago in the rock.

Looking up and to my right I noticed the end of a rainbow sticking out of storm clouds. I traced it over its arch and it became brighter all the way down to the lake about three hundred yards from the dam. I’d never had the opportunity to see a rainbow up close and turned my boat toward it. Concerning rainbows my luck had never been so good. It must have just formed or I’d noticed it earlier. My heart beat faster. Chances are excellent I’d catch it before it dissipated. All my life I’d heard about a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow but I left fairy tales behind with my childhood. Besides this pot of gold would be forty to sixty feet below water at the bottom of the lake. No, I was excited about seeing a rainbow up close. Letting it wash over me. How would it feel to be bathed in such bright colors? Would it feel warm, cool or have no effect at all? If I positioned myself just right could I hold it in my lap? Imagine holding a rainbow in your lap!

I expected it to vanish before arriving but the rainbow stayed as bright and seemingly still as the water below as though it were anchored. Ten yards away I slowed the boat to idle and used my momentum to drift inside it thinking the rainbow would be as thin as they always appeared from a distance, but it wasn’t thin at all. It swallowed my whole boat with room to spare. It didn’t matter how the boat was situated. I was shocked to see that it was large enough to cover the whole boat with plenty of room to spare.

           The colors bright from a distance faded instantly inside. Easy to discern but each spread out so much their substance seemed like a thin fog. Leaning way over the starboard side I stuck my arm out as far as possible with my fingers outstretched and could not penetrate the rainbow. Sliding over to port side I did the same thing with the same result. This meant the rainbow was over eleven feet thick. The colors also covered the boat from beyond the bow, down its length and beyond the stern with color to spare. I could only guess the rainbow as being a thirty foot circle. That’s how it looked from the inside. This rainbow was much bigger than it appeared from a distance. Sitting in the middle of my boat I tried to determine the width off each color although only three were actually inside the boat. In the space of about five to six feet there were three colors to try to measure. Having no device for accuracy I used my arms to get an idea of their thickness. Holding my arm in one color I found its middle to be about two-and-a-feet thick. When I raised or lowered my arm the color remained the same length as far up as I could reach. When I moved side to side the color became thinner until it changed into a different color.

Then I understood. Each color was tubular in shape! As I moved my boat in and out of the rainbow it also appeared to be a giant tube containing all the colors. The rainbow appeared to be twenty five to thirty feet thick. Up close and inside that was my perception. I could turn my boat inside the rainbow in a tight circle and none of it lost color. I couldn’t feel any temperature difference between the colors nor could I feel any from the rainbow sitting next to it.

Tempted to stay until the rainbow completely faded I pulled slowly away. It also moved away from me and had been following the storm clouds the whole time.

I noticed the rainbow was only one hundred yards from the dam. In my efforts to gain as much from this experience as possible I’d moved the boat along with it. If the technology (phone cameras) had been available I could have taken pictures, but this was years before such inventions. Since then I have photographed bright rainbows with my phone and it only records a bright light without any color. Phones I guess aren’t good enough because I have seen many pictures of them over the years but none from the inside. It was exciting to be so close to one that I could be inside and humbling that it would happen to me. Only me since there was no one else on the lake.

While returning to my original course I kept looking at it over my shoulder and watched it climb over the dam. Its colors remaining bright. Only when I was inside did they fade. Being inside robs a person of its true meaning unable to see the whole thing in all its glory. Light in this form needs to appear all over this country more often.

It felt like a dream. How many people get to experience a rainbow from the inside?

One of God’s promises is symbolized by the rainbow: He will never flood the world again. Genesis 8:21. I got to float around inside one of His promises and It…was…awesome!