Common Talk

IT’S FORTUNATE that I heard Ken Squier talking about sundogs last Saturday on his Music to Go the Dump By radio show or I might have thought the vision in front of me was my personal invitation to The Other Side. Mr. Squier asked listeners to phone in their experiences or knowledge of the lore of sundogs. He didn’t want a scientific explanation, only personal experience. No one called. He seemed disappointed.

Personally, I thought he was confused when he reported seeing sundogs streaking out of the sky right onto his yard. He raved how fortunate we are to live in Vermont amid such beauty and wonder. I figured he meant snow rollers but they don’t fall from the sky. (Snow rollers are formed in frigid, windy weather into shapes like doughnuts, which roll down an incline or across a field.) Then Farmer Dave arrived on the show to talk about his upcoming bid for governor as the Cow Party candidate and I forgot all about sundogs.

Later, 3:45 pm to be exact (because like a good writer checked my watch), driving gassaving 55 mph southbound on I-89 near Northfield, my eyes were drawn to a bright light, tall as an old pine, exactly centered above the middle of the road.

I pulled over to study it. It was on the left hand side of the sun. On its side nearest the sun, pink, yellow and orange colors blurred into a sherbet-colored pillar. It was wide as any rainbow, slightly bent, and nearly as bright as the sun. White light that burned the eyes radiated from the backside of it. It seemed to be an aura of the sun but there was only one pillar; it didn’t encircle the sun.

Thanks be to Music to go the Dump By or I might have missed it and never would have known to research it. It was a sundog!

The proper name is parhelion (from Greek: para--along side of, and helios--the sun). Poets write about sundogs. Novels, taverns, ball clubs use the name. The Bible mentions heavenly signs. Shakespeare may have been referring to parhelion when he mentioned “three suns” because frequently the lights appear on two sides of the sun.

Parhelion are produced in cold weather, near sunrise or sunset when the sun is near the horizon, by refraction of light through ice crystals. Because they appear when there are so many ice crystals in the clouds, sundogs may forecast wetter weather. This week’s forecast (cold, little snow) doesn’t prove that true. This time.

I lost the vision behind a hill at the Northfield exit and found it again hovering beside Mill Hill. In the valley of Route 12A, I saw it again and, once in the house, watched from the front window. As the sun sank, the sundog glowed in more rosy shades. It stood like a lamp, its beams pointed to white clouds tipped at an odd slant. By 4:30, the bright ball of sun was below the horizon, the sundog along with it, the sky full of light. It was a beauty and a wonder.

What have you been looking at? Please let us know. commontalk@ trans-video.net