The beauty and magic of a rainbow fascinates many people. They look for them, going out of their way to point one out. To some, rainbows promise that the worst is over. To others, the vibrant colors are enchanting. There is even the allure of gold at their end. I can attest that I once found treasure at the end of a rainbow.

Rainbows can be found everywhere, but seem to thrive in the The West. The dry air and its minerals contribute to their brilliance and colors. The arid High Plains where our farm stood certainly fit that bill. At an altitude of 5100 feet, and receiving only 16 inches of rainfall annually, the air was dry with minerals ever in the air with breezes that ranged from 15 miles per hour and up. In the winters, the air was so dry that snow on the ground would swirl into the air like dust at the slightest touch of wind. During the summers, windows left open for a breeze to cool the house also invited an ever so slight coating of dust on tables. Just before and after a rain you could smell the distinct hint of those minerals and the earth in the air. Soon after, a rainbow might appear, dazzling and clear.

Where I saw my bonafide treasure-packed rainbow was in an unlikely place. Our farmhouse sat on an open stretch of land atop a slight luff overlooking the North Fork of the Arickaree River. Some years there was more rain and the vegetation grew to make up for years of drought. Most years the land was dry and dusty. Our bend in the river, the Bobtail of the Arickaree, was a wide and meandering ox-bow of a 50 foot wide dry riverbed at the bottom of the bluff below our farmhouse. Before the pioneers settled there, Native Americans drove buffalo or white-tail deer over the bluff to tribesmen below, waiting for the kill. From the bluff you could see for miles in every direction, surveying the far horizon in the distance. But there was just one thing. The river was always a large winding ribbon of dry sand.

As dry as the land and the air above it, most years the Arickaree rarely saw water. It was hardly the place you would expect to find the end of a rainbow, let alone a treasure sighting. The empty river was edged on each side by a small cluster of ancient cottonwood trees. They held witness to the comings and goings of time and witnessed, once every five years or so, the transformation of that sandy bed into a raging river that boiled and surged with the flash flood of a sudden and huge storm. The trees and sand were certainly not leprechauns and there certainly was no treasure. Shortly after such a storm, the sandy riverbed would appear again, dry, as if nothing had happened. A secret revealed, but only if you know when to look.

After one of those rare storms when the river comes alive, it leaves behind, protruding from the sand, tokens of the past. Most obvious to the eye are dark brown Clorox bottles or deep blue Milk of Magnesia bottles, disguarded from farms along the riverbed, decades and decades ago. With close and watchful inspection you could find Native American arrows heads and small stone hide scrapers, lending proof that what often appeared to be an untouched land held secrets.

In a land where you were alone on a vast and open plain with nothing but the dry wind as a companion, or the sound of mourning doves that you heard but often didn’t see, there were secrets and surprises yearning to be noticed. Sometimes when tilling fields in the spring and summer to prepare them for fall wheat planting, the equipment pulled behind the tractor unearthed long strands of barbed wire. On closer inspection, you discover an entire fence buried in the slight rise of the land along its property line with a neighbor’s field. It is a fence from the Great Depression of the 1930s, the Dust Bowl Days, that was swallowed and buried when the great dust storms of that time blotted out the sky. A routine pasture fence fixing chore reveals barbed wire, not containing the periodic wire twist to form a barb, but woven through a much older style of barb that is a thin diamond shape of metal from an early 1900s style. When you think that you are safe from the hidden past by burning tumbleweeds that the wind has driven and packed along fence lines, you remember to not harm the old wooden wagon located in the heart of the tumbleweeds. The wagon, heavily weathered and still standing where it was placed by the farm’s original homesteaders, lost its ability to move due to over a century of blizzards, hot summers, and violent rain storms. Secrets. The land has lots of secrets.

Walking along the dry riverbed below the farm as a child, exploring the countryside and wondering what the world was like there at different points of the past was magical. Finding remnants protruding from its sands only fueled questions about those lost times. Previous generations often used natural gullies to dump unwanted or worn out items and with flash floods the riverbed claimed many of them. Sometimes, glass jars would be held by the riverbed’s sands for so long that their clear glass turned with time to another shade, typically a light green. Other times, the exciting find of an ancient coal bucket extending from the sand resulted in unearthing only one third of the bucket. The hope was that a casual conversation with a stranger some day might reveal that they once found two thirds of a coal bucket in a sandy riverbed.

But as dry as the riverbed became, not all of the water escaped into thin air after a large storm was over. At the bottom of our bluff, in a small and protected spot of the rough and barren road from the top of the bluff to the riverbed, was a wet area. At first glance, most people would assume it was at best a muddy spot where grass grew that would eventually dry up. But the grass would actually be the reeds that surround small ponds. And as they grew, the reeds would become tall and in the fall produce cattails. The pond itself was oblong and no more than 10 feet wide and only a foot deep. But it was a pond.

One late spring day, I was examining my options for play on the farm, with scant results. On an industrial wheat farm in the middle of nowhere, the closest friend to play with was in my case at least two miles away. The pastures and fields surrounding us were flat and featureless, and perhaps dangerous with testy cattle or diamondback rattle snakes peeved from having their sunny snooze interrupted. And my father gave explicit instructions to NOT play near any of the farm equipment. And to ruin the day, rain was coming!

A brief rain shower that was the bane of 10 year olds like me marooned me inside the farm house, bleakly looking out a window and hoping the rain would stop. As the cold and dark rain ended, replaced by a sunny and warm sky, I saw a beautiful rainbow. In areas where wind blows minerals into the sky, rainbows in the right light can be especially bright and their colors vibrant. Today was that day. The rainbow was close to the farmhouse, arching its colors across the farm yard and past our old white barn and corrals just 300 feet away. It was close. Really close. I had to try and find its end and the pot of gold people say is at the end of one!

As I reached the other side of the barn, to my amazement the end of the rainbow appeared to be at the bottom of our bluff, just along the dirt road down the hill and at the dry riverbed! I knew that I had to have a plan if I was to find the gold before the rainbow and the pot of gold at the end of it would vanish. I walked along the road and down the bluff slowly as I did not want to startle the leprechaun who would then grab his gold and run. Getting closer and closer, I kept my eye fixed on the approaching pond and rainbow. If I fixed my eyes on it and didn’t blink, the rainbow might become stuck in my gaze.

At the base of the road where it intersected the dry riverbed, I realized that the end of the rainbow was at the tiny little pond. What was once a broad banded rainbow high in the sky had become a bright and colorful tail that ended just above the pond with now narrow bands of color. Stepping within about 15 feet of the rainbow and it evaporated. Withdrawing back to the 15 foot limit, and the magical colors appeared again. The boundary had been set. Once I spotted the treasure, it would be a mad dash for it before the rainbow could disappear and take the gold with it.

I circled the edge of the pond and the invisible boundary, looking for a pot of gold, coins, anything shiny. I also kept a wary eye as I expected to meet an angry leprechaun wanting to protect his treasure. And then I saw it. A flicker of light. Then the flicker moved to another location, but above the pond. I moved past the boundary and the rainbow vanished, but the bright flicker in the sunlight remained. Stepping into the pond to get closer, I saw that the flash of light was a metallic blue dragonfly that was darting from place to place. I had never seen a real dragonfly before. I had never seen such incredible colors or magic in its ability to stop and fly in another direction at a moments notice. I had found treasure, but not what I expected. I watched in stunned silence as it darted and bobbed as the sunlight played on its various shades of blue.

The dragonfly is considered a magical creature and holds mystery and meaning for many cultures all over the world. To the Native Americans of the Great Plains and Southwest it is a symbol of purity, happiness, transformation, and invincibility. Dragonfly travels between the worlds of reality and dream. Because it is always found near water, Dragonfly is sacred in dry areas as a symbol of water and life itself.

That day as a child on our farm I did indeed find a treasure at the end of a rainbow. I found the gift of seeing the world as it is and yet as a place of endless beauty, wonder, and possibilities. Not long after my encounter, the small pond dried and the reeds vanished, never to return. I never again saw another dragonfly around that farm. But the experience forever changed how I viewed the world and has never left me to this day. There is wonder and mystery and a little magic in this world, if we have the desire to seek it out and believe in it.

~ Mason