Yesterday, my parents, my uncle, my sister’s best friend, my parents' black lab Riley, my shiba inu Margot, and I all hiked up Windy Hill together. It takes about ninety minutes of steep climbing to get to the top and as expected it’s very windy up there.

But the view! The view! It’s so glorious. Worth every step and every whip of hair in your face!

We hiked in memory of my sister. And as I looked west out towards the Pacific, I asked myself, "Aren’t those streams of light coming down from the clouds called stairways to heaven?"

In fact, the scientific term is crepuscular rays coming from the Latin word crepusculum meaning twilight. They are the countless hovering particles reflecting, shattering, and diffracting the light before it reaches the ocean's surface or earth's surface, depending on the circumstances.

In a way, it's a phenomenon of making the invisible visible. And this somehow made me feel better.