Later, at the seashore, two blue herons waded deep into an inlet near where Beston wrote The Outermost House. We walked through the grasses to the beach and behind us the sun came out of the clouds on its way down.
Deep blue sky opened to the north and came toward us, drenched with light. The froth on the waves turned white, and the seals who had been playing just beyond where the waves broke turned their faces toward us. Behind them, a rainbow rose out of the ocean and began to grow, blurry and bright, arcing across the low purple horizontal clouds, then soaring up into the dome of the sky until it encompassed all of us--waves, seals, humans, grasses, light, sand, and clouds—before it landed, pouring its colors into the water far to the south.
There it was, a whole rainbow as big as the ocean. We stood in its presence with the wind in our faces and began to know how much room there is within us also, so that how we have thought, and how we have imagined, has no hold on how we are able to think and imagine now.
--September 5, 2013