Rocks and Rainbows and an Autumn Dawn

The sun hung just below the horizon, buried beneath a thin layer of mist that politely shrunk before the deepening blue of an Alabama dawn sky. It was a cool morning, announcing that even though the leaves hadn't yet got the message, Autumn was at hand. I wound my way up Stoneway Trail Road, rising above the neighborhoods and strip malls that spread between the two buzzing arteries of East-West travel, Interstate 565 and State Highway 72. My destination, Rainbow Mountain, is located roughly three miles north of downtown Madison Alabama, and about a mile south of the busy commercial thoroughfare of Highway 72.

A few blades of golden light were slashing through the trees, challenging the pale chalky blue palette of early morning, as I parked and set off in search of my target: Rainbow Mountain's "Balance Rock." The terrain atop Rainbow Mountain is checkered with formations of lichen-covered stone, weathered and split by time into a maze of crevices and sudden promontories. After about forty-five minutes of looping around the top of the mountain I spotted it. A giant wedge of fragmented stone standing precariously tiptoe atop a brittle footing of crumbling stone segments—Balance Rock!

"Balance Rock," Rainbow Mountain, Madison, Alabama.