Rainbow Season

There have been rainbows everywhere lately.

As the weather turns toward fall, rain finds some part of the island almost every day. We drive through a shower and back into sunshine, or watch rain moving across the water while the light holds where we are. Almost daily, there’s a rainbow. Sometimes several.

My friend Lisa told me October is known here as rainbow season.

I love that. A whole season of color and possibility.

The other afternoon, Carlos came home from work an hour early. His office had been given a “sunshine holiday,” one of those rare occasions when work closes up early so everyone can get outside and enjoy the sun. Sometimes, a fully sunny day deserves a little rearranging here.

He got home at 4:00 p.m. By about 4:15, we were ready to go.

We headed for English Bay, or Ebay, as it’s called here. It’s one of our favorite places on the island, but we hadn’t walked the beach since May.

Many of the island’s beaches close through the summer to give northern fur seals room to breed and raise their pups. St. Paul is part of the Pribilof Islands, where females return in early summer and give birth soon after arriving. Over the following months, mothers travel out to sea to feed, then return to nurse their young. The beaches are busy places, even when we aren’t there to see them.

By October, the seals gradually begin leaving. There are fewer here, fewer there, until one day you notice they’re gone. There were still some gathered near the rocky ends of the beach when we arrived. We said hello from a distance and gave them plenty of room.

We’d come hoping for sand dollars. We’ve found plenty at Ebay before, and after a summer away, we were curious to see what the tide had left.

We also had a destination in mind. When we first moved here, we found an orca washed ashore farther along this beach. On later visits, we watched time and tide slowly carry it away. We wanted to see what still remained.

Along the way, shell pieces curved across the dark sand in a pale, winding ribbon. A little road made of broken shells.

We followed it.

At first, there weren’t any sand dollars. We wondered whether someone else had already beaten us to the punch. There were plenty of shell fragments to look through, though, and we kept walking.

A little rain caught us along the way. Enough to get us wet, but not enough to send us back.

Afterward, another rainbow appeared.

And somewhere around then, Carlos found our first sand dollar.

Then a second.

Farther along, we reached a stretch where they kept appearing. We’d stop for one and spot another, then another beyond it. Carlos carried them in the black mesh collecting bag we usually take to the beach, and our walk became a slow procession of looking, stopping, and bending down.

We never made it to the whale.

Eventually, the bag was heavy enough that we turned toward home.

Rainbow season.

You never know when you’ll find your treasure.

Enjoy some more images of the rainbows that I’ve been lucky enough to recently see.