Tell us the most amazing thing you've seen in nature.

[MineralMan]

I'll start with two:

1. A full-circular rainbow, seen on a airline flight in 1987.

1. On a long drive to a California ski area one very early morning, I was driving across a flatland area. On one side of the car, the full moon was just setting. On the other, the sun was rising. It was freaking amazing, and gave me a rush at seeing double orbiting bodies.

[Soylent Brice]

1. ants vs bees fight.

i watched ants attack a beehive. it was a massacre. the bees didn't stand a chance.

[azmouse]

2. Snow in the desert.

[GCP]

3. I liked this

Urzig, Germany

[Ikonoklast]

4. Comet watching.

Hale-Bopp.

[AllenVanAllen]

15. I saw it from a country road in Tennessee

with no light pollution to obstruct the view is was absolutely amazing! The tail was so much longer than you could see from the outskirts of the city even.

[cwydro]

17. Forgot about that.

Saw it up in the mountains in NC.

[Broken_Hero]

5. A small pod of killer whales

going underneath our skiff while I was pulling up a shrimp pot...

At first it scared the white off my ass(I was thinking Jaws), but it was a beautiful sight.

[Fire Walk With Me]

6. A (barely) triple rainbow (just a hint of #3), the Perseid at altitude in a jet,

and once, the seaway I used to live near...before sunrise, in winter. The cloudy sky was the same color as the ice, for much of the horizon, and it looked like the edge of the world. The sun slowly formed a spot, then a crease along the horizon...amazing. I wanted to remember it forever, but the description is about all my memory retrieves.

[Arugula Latte]

55. We had a triple rainbow come out right before our wedding ceremony.

We got married outside (in the Denver area) and there was a hellacious storm. Then, just in time, sunshine and rainbows. :)

[Fire Walk With Me]

61. Extremely auspicious!

:hi:

[Arugula Latte]

65. 14 years, two kids, four cats later ...

I think you're right!

:hi:

[Sky Masterson]

7. I rode along side a herd of wild mustangs on the back of a motorcycle

back in 1986.

What I saw makes this picture look dull.
I've only seen one thing as beautiful since then.

[debbierlus]

37. what was the second beautiful thing you saw?

[Sky Masterson]

48. ..

It's a secret. :)

[KansDem]

8. I almost stepped on a baby deer one time...

I was working for a rural Kansas county ASCS office one summer back in the mid-1980s. I was inspecting fields and often had to traverse one field to get to another. The weather was warm and clear this one particular day and I was enjoying the peace and solitude as I carried out my duties.

I was alone and my thoughts were a million miles away when I was hiking through one field of tall grass. Suddenly I glimpsed something brown right in front of me and I froze (one more step and I would have stepped on it!). It was a baby deer lying motionless in the grass. I looked for a few moments then wondered if it was all right--it wasn't moving a muscle. I slowly bent over for a closer look and suddenly the baby deer jumped up and bounded away. It couldn't have been larger than a good-sized cat (legs excluded).

I'm sure the mother was nearby and probably left the area it hopes of luring me away, if necessary, like rabbits do (running away from the nest), in hopes of keeping it's baby safe.

I'll never forget that afternoon...

[Aristus]

9. Lightning storms on the Caribbean west of Jamaica.

Absolutely astonishing... :wow:

[cwydro]

10. Two hammerhead sharks on my first open water dive.

Thunder and lightning in a snowstorm.

A sea turtle face to face while snorkeling; felt something looking at me and there it was.

A huge waterspout in Key West.

The "green flash" at sunset.

[Kali]

11. so many

but the one that seems the most amazint to me right now thinking about it would be the Aurora Borealis. Awesome in the original meaning, not the more recent hip usage.

[cwydro]

16. I would love to see that.

It's on my list.

[backwoodsbob]

12. pic of fog crawling down east river mountain

[LynneSin]

13. Northern Lights, which is pretty rare where I live

But I was driving across Pennsylvania on Rt 80 at the wee hours of the morning. The guy who I was dating noticed the 'blurred rainbows' across the sky. Most amazing thing to see.

[Patiod]

53. I want to see the Northern Lights!

But I live in SE PA, and mostly just see the lights from the local car dealership.

Have they make I-80 a toll road yet?

[Moondog]

14. A flood in the Saudi Arabian desert.

Incredible rainfall, nonstop over nearly 24 hours, in an area where the sands were really hard packed. Standing water everywhere; took over a day to drain off, and another day or two (it was "winter") to dry out.

[Taitertots]

18. Lightning in the clouds over Mackinaw from the mainland

One bolt started over the horizon, went overhead, and to the other horizon. The thunder was insanely loud and uninterrupted for several minutes.

[AllenVanAllen]

19. For me it was an evening summer storm

moving across the the Mexican desert. I watched it in awe from the window of the family station wagon as it traveled parallel to us. My father told me it was about 100 miles from us. The shear power and beauty of it brought me to tears.
If I close my eyes, I can still see it in my mind. Beauty so profound I will never forget.

[XemaSab]

20. I can't even answer this

I have seen a lot of very cool things. :D

[cloudbase]

21. Seeing a major lightning storm

over the horizon from the bridge of a ship in the dark of night.

[livetohike]

22. A platypus in a National Park in Queensland, Australia

was the weirdest animal I ever saw in the wild.

Snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef was probably the most amazing nature experience of my life so far.

The first time I ever canoed in a swamp, early one summer morning is up there in the top five of amazing things - so much wildlife. It was awesome.

[theNotoriousP.I.G.]

23. Mount Saint Helens

I was a small child in an airplane when Mount Saint Helens blew and I watched it all from above. The pilot was doing a dialog about it as we flew over/bye it all.

[Posteritatis]

29. The initial collapse or afterwards?

I saw a stitched-together video of the mountainside going and got a headache just thinking about the energies and velocities involved.

[Deja Q]

24. Two fruit flies mating

:scared:

[denbot]

25. I don't know what it was, but amazing would be suitable..

I was standing surface radar watch on a Destroyer. It was mid-day in the Caribbean, and I had a huge contact that I wanted the lookouts to I.D. for me, so I could enter it in my log. The lookout could not describe what it was, so I had a "boot-camp" take over for me, and I went up to the signal bridge to see for myself.

What I saw was a shadow moving against the wind, in the opposite direction, and was about to pass port to port 4-5 miles from us.

It was traveling in a straight line, at around 4 knots, the size seem to be about 1/2 mile or so long, 1/4 mile wide, and several hundred feet high. The really freaky part was that it seemed to have little points of light suspended through out it. As we passed each other by I could see one of Puerto Rico's smaller Islands on the other side of it, so what ever it was, it was not solid, or it was at least opaque.

The best way I could describe it would be a small chunk of a starry night sky scudding across a glassy Caribbean Sea..

I enter an exhaustive description in my surface contact log, and that log entry sits unread in some archive.

I Believe.. (que X-files theme)

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

26. The nightly flight of over a million bats out of the entrance of Carlsbad Caverns

And the caverns themselves, with their enormous size, were pretty amazing too.

[LeftyMom]

27. I had a harbor seal surface next to me while I was swimming in Santa Cruz once.

The seal, which might have been a juvenile because it seemed pretty small, but they're not terribly big as seals go so maybe it was grown, popped out of the water not more than 6' from me, had a little look around, and looked right at me. I stopped and stared for what had to be the longest moment.

Then I remembered that I was in the water in Northern California, and that White Sharks think seals are delicious, and I was back on the beach faster than a person could blink. ;)

[Posteritatis]

28. Hurricane eyewall from a hilltop at dawn

Close enough to my house at the time that it didn't feel especially stupid to run out for five minutes for a look, and a small enough storm that the sun showed under it for a bit at dawn. Gold-tinted eyewall all around me, visibly tilted so you could see the direction of movement.

A close second was a thunderstorm I saw in southern Ontario last year that was so intense I could read at night from the lightning.

Honourable mention is any sunny day following a severe ice storm. (Bring sunglasses.)

[doc03]

30. A flash flood, a 35 foot wall of water

traveled through a narrow valley and wiped everything out killing 26 people.

[denbot]

31. holy crap!!

Where, and when did that happen?

[doc03]

33. Shadyside, Ohio June 14, 1990

We had 5.5 inches of rain on the hilltop. As the water washed down the valley the debris created a dam behind a bridge until the bridge failed, then the water and debris would dam up behind another bridge and it would fail and so on until they estimated the water was 35 feet high at the end of the valley. Eighty homes were washed away and many cars were washed out into the Ohio river and were never found. One young girl rode out the flood inside a bathtub and was found alive and well several miles down the river the next day. The story of the girl was in the Readers Digest I will see if I can find a link. http://www.ohiohistory.org/etcetera/exhibits/swio/pages/content/1990_shadysideFlood.htm

Here is the story of the girl that rode out the flood:http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20118116,00.html

[ElsewheresDaughter]

32. a phosphorescent algae orgy.one night while walking on a deserted beach is south Florida in the 60's

It was so beautiful....every fish and sea creature in water and sand glowed in the dark....I could see shrimp, fish, stingray, barracuda and sharks swimming in deep water as I stood on a bridge. A trail of my footprints glowed in the sand behind me as I walked the beach....we drew pictures with sticks that glowed and stayed glowing for 15/20 min.

It only happens for 1 night every year...breeding algae?

[debbierlus]

38. Wow.

[Frosty1]

41. I always wondered what that was

I saw that one time In Biloxi Mississippi Thanks for the explanation

[astral]

45. Oh yeah, that happened to me too

but it was on a sand beach at night. And I did **NOT** know what it was! I was TOTALLY FREAKING OUT. Of course it is some kind of phosphorescent stuff that happens sometimes, and I guess it left itself in the sand when the tide went out, but I did not know anything about that sort of thing til way after the fact.

[SoxFan]

34. A few

The Grand Canyon, as seen from an airliner thousands of feet overhead. You get a sense of the scale.

Lightning storms rolling across SE Louisiana

Mount Rainier

[JimGinPA]

35. A Huge School Of Bottle-Neck Dolphins Playing Around Our Boat 200 Miles Out To Sea...

Late in the day, the Gulf of Mexico was slick calm, "Bluebird" skies with no clouds so you could barely make out the horizon. The 100 or so dolphins just sort of appeared out of nowhere, doing aerial acrobatics around our drifting boat for about an hour and then disappeared as suddenly as they had appeared. Hard to put into words how amazing it was.

[debbierlus]

36. Albino Deer - Thought it was a unicorn!

For a minute, it seemed like something out of a fairy tale, and for a split second, I thought it was a unicorn.

Turns out is was a albino deer. I told my neighbors and they said there was one that lived in the region.

It was beautiful.

[VOX]

50. Awesome! Those moments are so great, especially when they catch you unaware...

You blink your eyes in disbelief, but the magic is really real!

:toast:

[madinmaryland]

39. Two turtles fucking in the river here.

:shrug:

[debbierlus]

40. That is the funniest thing I have read here all day.

[madinmaryland]

42. I thought I had seen it all, but wow!

The splashing of the water!

:evilgrin:

[mix]

43. the Sahara

[madamesilverspurs]

44. Camping high in the Rockies,

and waking up in the morning to discover that we were above the clouds. Mountain peaks looked like islands in a silent and dazzling white sea. And we were quietly visited by a doe with twin fawns.

[grace0418]

46. A blue whale breach the surface. Our guide had just finished telling us that he was

disappointed that there were only blue whales in the area. Because of their enormous size, they rarely breach the surface. You usually only see their plumes of water. Suddenly, just over his shoulder, a blue whale breached, then slapped his gigantic tail on the surface of the water. It was mind-boggling.

Alaska (thankfully BEFORE I had any idea who Sarah Palin was).

An orange harvest moon that looked easily 4 times it's normal size.

I know I'm forgetting some...

[Steerpike]

47. One time while diving in the Indian Ocean

I floated in the crater of an extinct undersea volcano...good times

[VOX]

49. Dolphins accompanying me when I was kayaking across Kealakekua Bay to Captain Cook's Monument...

The water was green and transparent, and these happy, sleek mammals were leaping and splashing along behind my kayak for most of the 45 minutes it takes to get across the bay to the Captain Cook Monument. What a rush, what a pure joy!

Snorkeling near the monument is an unadulterated pleasure -- nature's color palette is turned up to full gain. Everything was so beautiful, so transcendent, so perfect...it will resonate in my heart for the rest of my life.

[seemunkee]

51. The Northern lights or the Perseid meteor shower

We were doing an all night drive to go to the Gran Prix in Watkings Glen. During the long open stretch of Pennsylvania we were treated to a rare, for that longitude, display of the Northern lights for most of the night. I would love to see them again.

One summer at Boy Scout camp it was a cool and very clear night. We dragged our sleeping bags out of the tents and were just talking when the showere began. We shut up and just watched for meteors for most of the night.

[ElsewheresDaughter]

52. Here's one that the people who that present, would say was....The Battle at Kruger

A battle between a pride of lions, a herd of buffalo, and 2 crocodiles at a watering hole in South Africa's Kruger National Park while on safari.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU8DDYz68kM

[sixstrings75]

54. will-o-the-wisp. A glowing, flourescent green stump.

Scared the bejesus out of us. Glowed bright, bright green in the pitch dark. This was out in a very remote location. We were tracking this green light forever. Imagie our shock when we found out it was a stump.

Perfect conditions are the only way for this to happen. Never seen it again.

[Patiod]

56. A bolide

Driving home from work one winter at dusk, and my SO and I stopped at a light. Right in front of us came a huge blue-green comety-looking thing. We both looked at each other at the same time and said "did you see that?" Searched the papers, and some other folks saw it to. Wrote to Derek Pitts at the Franklin Institute in Philly, and received a very nice email back explaining what we had probably seen.

Also enjoyed sitting on the beach watching the Persiads, with a bottle of champagne and a beautiful ex-boyfriend, hearing how much he hated Real Life (he just left B school after modeling for years). We were watching the Persiads, and I kept saying "there's one!" and he was annoyed that I wasn't focused on his whining.

The Persiads and Shaudenfreude - what more could a girl want?

[Strong Atheist]

57. The human body, and

Yellowstone...

[TZ]

58. Tie: a fireball over Maryland on Holloween night 2 years ago

or flying into Denver at sunset while a lightning storm raged over the Rockies..I could see both the colors of the sun and lightning striking over the mountains..Spectacular.

[1gobluedem]

59. Northern Lights

Watching thunderstorms move in over the Rockies. Ice floes jostling each other under the Mackinac Bridge in January. Thunderstorms over the Great Lakes.

And my all time favorite: watching a huge colony of sea lions offshore at Shark Reef on Lopez Island in the San Juans. I could have watched for hours and nearly did.

[northzax]

60. St. Elmo's Fire in the rigging of a sailboat

the eye of a hurricane from said boat. oops.
green flash
the tides at the bay of Fundy


that's a start at least.

[elehhhhna]

62. in the caymans I saw an octopus change the SURFACE of its skin --

raised up these bumps...watched it in about 4 feet of water, snorkelling. Discovery channel did a special a few years later with video and announced that it had been proven that octos could change the texture -- not just the color-- of their skin. Already knew that, though.

Octopuses can use muscles in the skin to change the texture of their mantle in order to achieve a greater camouflage. In some species the mantle can take on the spiky appearance of seaweed, or the scraggly, bumpy texture of a rock, among other disguises.

http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:x0gPf3tnqdUJ:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octopus+octopus+texture+skin&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

[TrogL]

63. A comet that took up the entire sky - Hyakutake

http://cometography.com/lcomets/1996b2.html



I took the kids to a remote area outside of town down in a dip where the city lights wouldn't be as bad. The comet and tail took up the entire sky from horizon to horizon.

[pokerfan]

64. Hyakutake was most impressive

Through my telescope I could actually see jets and geysers on the nucleus.