Land of the Rainbows

Ottawa weather is cool.

And it’s hot.

And then it’s everything in between.

But what I love most about living in a valley are the quickly changing weather patterns. I can be driving home from my brother’s and sister-in law’s house towards a brightly lit blue sky, rain will be bouncing off of my car in small explosions of sunlight (making is almost impossible to see), and behind me it’s pitch black, dark angry clouds conquering the skyline.

I’m not sure if I’m under the dark clouds or the sunny skies, but the usually dreary rain is filled with bursts of light, so I don’t care what I’m under, because it’s beautiful all around me, whether light or dark. (There’s a moral in there somewhere, I’m sure, but I’m not that great with morals. They make me existential.)

The best part about living in the Ottawa Valley are its rainbows. Even now, driving on that rainy and dizzyingly sunny wet road, I can see a rainbow shining against the darkness in my rearview mirror. It’s a perfect rainbow, too – Ottawa rarely makes them half-assed.

It’s all or nothing.

From one end to the next, all seven colours (or six, some may argue, or four, if you’re a My Little Pony collector like my roommate) are present, bleeding into one another to show off the captive prism of light. (My brother may correct my science here). Its arch is smooth, proud and high against the darkness, and it’s so beautiful it makes me want to weep.

But I’m driving in rainy, shiny, impossible to see conditions (good luck to anyone who’s planning on using pixie dust to fly to their next destination – that’s shiny too, most books insist). So I stop looking around me and focus on not smashing into the beat-up Jetta in front of me.

I get home five minutes later. There is no more rain, no more black clouds, only endless sunshine and blue skies which, this year, might last for about ten minutes before the next rainfall.

But that’s ok, because more rainfalls in Ottawa mean a rainbow will appear, and I personally think that’s just cool. Unless I’m caught in torrential downpours without an umbrella. Then it’s a bit less cool. But still cool.