On a late summer evening in 1975 I was driving country roads of southwestern Oklahoma and chanced upon an FM radio station broadcasting out of Denver that was coming in strong thanks to a layer of cloud cover which must have bounced the signal my way. They were playing a new tune written by Ritchie Blackmore and Ronnie James Dio, performed by their band Rainbow titled "Catch The Rainbow". It was a long, haunting tune running just shy of six and a half minutes, but it was still way too short for me, as any rainbow is by nature.
A nice double rainbow appeared this evening here and almost faded away before I could get back outside with the camera to snap a good shot of it at its peak. It took every bit of will I had that summer evening in 1975 to keep myself from riding the wind to the sun and heading back up into the Rocky Mountains that night to try to catch my own rainbow. I probably should have done just that, but had already tried and failed a couple of years earlier when I temporarily dropped out of high school, hitchhiked to Colorado and joined a jug band upon invitation from a fellow named Duffy Wilson after he spotted me playing banjo and guitar outside his sound shop in Breckenridge. Just as well. I'm where I want to be now without catching that rainbow in 1975. This one is as good as any imagined, and it's real.
This evening's storm is building up from the east. That usually means a big one is coming.
Looking up one last time, I can see a grinning imp riding the wind to the sun as night falls.
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