Unusual Sundog

One nice thing about itinerant botanical exploration is the sights we take in along the way, and the telling of stories afterward. Four years ago I was in central LaPorte County, Indiana, looking northward as heavy lake-effect snow moved in from Lake Michigan. Sunshine bouncing through the myriad snowflakes produced wide bands of color in a striking variation of the classic "sundog."

"If the race had never lived through a winter, what would they think was coming?"

Henry David Thoreau journal, November 8,1850