On the mend

“I’m going to try to put you somewhere between the scene and the sun.”

Maybe it was the cold medicine. Maybe it was the altitude. But that phrase seemed like poetry to me, despite the fact it was muttered by my helicopter pilot.

I spent the next few hours mulling that phrase as we dipped in and out of rain storms, slipping into sunlight long enough to get a good view of an ailing apple orchard, and maintaining enough altitude that a lost buzzard didn’t fly into our tail rotor.

Spending my life between the scene and the sun. That is a song lyric if I’ve ever heard one.

The Scene, if you were wondering, generally refers to the spot where the news is happening. Even when the news is too insignificant to merit the interest of Joe Blow, we’ll still call it the scene. “Otis is on scene, the live shot should be up in two minutes, get ready to go.”

My life is spent on or near the scene. More precisely, my life is spent between the scene and the sun.

On the return trip to the airport, we encountered another rain storm. And poking up from the ground, into the rain…a rainbow. I’ve never looked down on a rainbow. I would’ve called that the neatest thing I’ve seen in a long time. But two minutes later, the rainbow became full, stretching over us and hitting the ground on either side of us. We tried to fly underneath it, but the odd effects of rain and light kept pushing the rainbow farther away.

I spent my afternoon chasing rainbows between the scene and the sun.

It is time to get off this cold medicine.