"Nobody can go back

and start a new beginning,
but anyone can start today
and make a new ending."
-Maria Robinson

Majestic mountains, their peaks rising up from the river of thin white clouds circling around it. We drove onto Trail Ridge Road, a winding road that will take us up the tallest mountain in the Rocky Mountain National Park. 10,400 feet above sea level. We stopped, a short way onto Trail Ridge, climbing out of the car to take pictures of the mountains surrounding us and the ground so far below us. Already. Far in the distance, several mountains were blanketed in foreboding, gray clouds. Rain pouring down, sliding on their rocky terrains. Behind me was blue sky. So blue it looked unreal, dotted with puffy, pearl-white clouds. It was an enormous contrast- in front of me, pouring rain. Behind me, blue sky.

As we traveled further along the winding road, the gloom began to move towards us, pushing the sunlight and blue sky away. Soon, it began to pour, the road turning slick and slippery. The windshield was dotted with raindrops, big fat raindrops covering the glass. The windshield wiper steadily wiped, it's motion like the movement of a grandfather clock. Tic-tock, tic-tock. Turn after turn we drove until we finally reached the top. The temperature must have been twenty degrees below zero! It was winter in summer. Freezing.

After quickly snapping some pictures of the mountains towering all around us, surrounded in the angry dark clouds we were standing in, we piled back into the car and began the perilous drive down, hugging the cliff edge. And then I saw it. A big, bright, beautiful rainbow, as tall as we were. Each color was separate and vibrant. As I watched, a car passed through the bottom, the silver coat of the car turning into red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple. The rainbow stretched across the park, and at that moment, the storm clouds parted and sunlight poured through, lighting up the mountain like an enormous lamp. Gazing down at the green of the trees and bushes, with the magnificent mountains surrounding them, it looked like paradise. A passport to paradise.