Picture This: Sky Aflame in Moray

Early May in northern Scotland is a tryst of light and dark. Their progeny, a spectrum of warm colors, flit among the cloud bellies, through my lonely windows. I kicked back from the table and burst out the front door of my private lodge south of Forres to capture this sight, burned now into my mind as it was on the sky that night. A small pond that, earlier in the day, had been decorated with ducklings now reflected back this mystic sky fire. From where I stood it was symmetry, a harmony beyond our frail attempts to mimic.

Was it the threat of impending change? A fireball shrieking from the heavens? Maybe it was a flare, the natural equivalent of a white flag writ in a panoply of colors. Or just elemental beauty. How common these sights must be, but how rare for us to truly see them. I can’t help myself from escalating up and thinking bigger than is appropriate for my small mind. But I remember leaning over the rail and seeing my own reflection in that water, too.