The air was thick—or, to borrow a word from previous generations, it was close. It was the kind of morning when you could see individual droplets of water floating through the air, caught in an intricate dance between the fog and the early morning sunlight. I had been out that morning searching the hills, hoping to catch a glimpse of a passing bull. I didn’t have to wait long. But almost as soon as he appeared, he was swallowed again by the mist.

A few minutes later, I was walking down an old dirt road when something ahead of me caught my attention. It was unlike anything I had ever seen before.

What is that?

The question made me stop and look more carefully. Most of all, it made me curious. I have come to believe that curiosity remains one of the great antidotes to cynicism. Cynicism assumes it already understands the world. It dismisses, explains away, and moves on. Curiosity lingers. It looks again. It leaves room for surprise.

I would eventually learn that what stood before me was called a fogbow.  A pale, almost colorless cousin of the rainbow, formed when sunlight passes through the tiny droplets suspended in fog. Until that morning, I didn’t even know these existed.

But one question remains:

What lies at the end of a fogbow?