Most of the year, Horsetail Falls is one of Yosemite’s less-remarkable waterfalls. Although it drops an impressive 2,130 feet (650 m), the small stream at the top of El Capitan doesn’t have the massive volume of some of the more well-known waterfalls like Yosemite Falls or Bridalveil Fall. Fed exclusively through snowmelt and run-off, it dries up in the summer months and disappears entirely. However, for a few weeks starting in February, everything comes together to make this humble waterfall into a natural Firefall – Yosemite’s own international celebrity. [1]

One of my favourite things is light. Specifically, the way that light interacts with space and place. It’s one of the most beautiful things we experience, I think, and one of the most important tools we have as humans to make something hospitable (or not). A favourite quote from Hegel goes, “God is more honoured by what the spirit makes than by the productions and formations of nature” [2]. The whole cliché of something taking one’s breath away is woefully inaccurate and inadequate, in my opinion. It’s more like a pang, an unbearable moment of ecstasy and wonder that’s too much for our puny little minds to comprehend. Some of these moments are quite grand, like seeing the exquisite purple of the Saint-Chapelle for the first time, or the Hagia Sophia’s ring of endless light. But many more of these moments are small little pin-pricks.

Anticrepuscular rays, or antisolar rays, are meteorological optical phenomena similar to crepuscular rays, but appear opposite the Sun in the sky. Anticrepuscular rays are essentially parallel, but appear to converge toward the antisolar point, the vanishing point, due to a visual illusion from linear perspective. [3]

It is nearly April here in Michigan, but the clouds remain a merciless shade of grey as they occasionally spit wind and rain. While it is easy to joke about how the sun disappears from November to March in this cursed mitten-shaped state, it’s far less easy to live with the reality as the days drag on and on. There’s only so much that vitamin D supplements and happy lamps can do for those of us who have SAD. And it’s not just a simple matter of sun good, clouds bad—for one, sunshine has me scurrying for cover until I can put some SPF on my face, and I can be eminently happy under grey skies if I’m walking English streets. There’s the kind of grey that sucks in light like a black hole, making everything around it matte and dull. But then there’s the kind of grey that emits light and lifts rather than suppresses.

While I have a straight-up hate relationship with William Faulkner, I have more of a love-hate relationship with Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway was a cornerstone of my highschool English education and I never knew what to make of him. I disliked his stories, but liked his writing, and was at least grateful that my AP English Literature class read A Farewell to Arms instead of The Old Man and the Sea. My opinion hasn’t changed much, admittedly, but I do appreciate A Clean, Well-Lighted Place much more now than I did back then. The little pin-pricks that take us by surprise, like the comforting glow of an Ingles aisle or the catching of light as you’re deliriously jet-lagged in a foreign airport.

Existence has been feeling heavy. Starvation and death in Palestine, unlivable wages with unlivable inflation, global warming and human disasters, endless grey skies and biting winds, the stupid plot alteration of keeping the German alive in Netflix’s adaptation of All the Light We Cannot See… Sometimes, I wish the fire went out. I know it won’t, and I’ll keep trying to capture the elusive light everywhere I go, but sometimes small pin-pricks don’t feel like enough.

Anna Jeffries

Anna Jeffries graduated in 2020 with a degree in mathematics and English literature. Originally from Asheville, NC, she now lives in Lansing, MI with her husband and three ferrets. Besides working as a data scientist, her other interests include Frasier, ethical technology, BBC murder mysteries, travel, and queer faith.