“A blessing is a circle of light drawn around a person to protect, heal and strengthen.” – John O'Donohue

“Light is a thing that cannot be reproduced, but must be represented by something else – by color.” – Paul Cezanne

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Here in Lake County we can witness a seemingly infinite variety of ways that our star, the sun – our light source shines down upon us.

The blue hues on Clear Lake, for instance, supply us with a beauty – fix any time of the year. It gleams with a brilliance provided by the angles of light and continually dazzles us.

Light, or electromagnetic radiation, comes in wavelengths with frequencies of 430 to 750 terahertz.

Without the light from the sun, of course we would not have life as we know it!

We are conveniently provided with sun's energy for plants to photosynthesize. The plants “know” how to collect energy from light which is soaked up by proteins that hold within them chlorophyll – green pigments.

In March, April and May during our spring season – the season of new beginnings, we are privy to the tilt of Earth's axis becoming more pronounced, relative to the sun, when the length of our daylight increases.

When all of this annual magic occurs and our part of the world warms, all forms of plant-life "spring forth" – hence the term for our season of spring.

Another wonder of the effects of light is our human need to wake to the light and sleep during dark hours.

This circadian rhythm, as it is known, or our internal clock established itself during each of our infancies.

Chemicals in our brains tell us to sleep at night, then awake at dawn, when a dance of biological patterns occurs involving our blood pressure and body temperature.

An amazing light effect we have seen in our county and beyond is a circular halo or sun halo. This stunning sun effect comes into play when sunlight beams through ice crystals in clouds in the upper atmosphere when the ice causes a refraction. It is also called the 22-degree halo.

If you traverse any one of our many abundantly flowing creeks now, you will be rewarded with Claude Monet-like visual impressions.

Monet once said, while painting, "I have to work very hard to reproduce what I seek: the instantaneous."

The light and shadows on the coursing waters as they ramble around rocks produce a transient beauty each and every moment.

The annular solar eclipse of several years ago, when the moon progressed in front of the sun but didn't block the sun completely, was another stunning example of light-play in Lake County.

It caused repeated disc-shaped patterns on the ground, bringing with it an other-worldly effect. Things looked the same, but they didn't!

Kathleen Scavone, M.A., is an educator, potter, writer and author of “Anderson Marsh State Historic Park: A Walking History, Prehistory, Flora, and Fauna Tour of a California State Park” and “Native Americans of Lake County.” She also writes for NASA and JPL as one of their “Solar System Ambassadors.” She was selected “Lake County Teacher of the Year, 1998-99” by the Lake County Office of Education, and chosen as one of 10 state finalists the same year by the California Department of Education.