A few weeks ago, I joined the Cloud Appreciation Society. For $46.39—or thirty-five pounds. The Society is headquartered in the UK, with participants from around the globe. I became member number 66,998. And soon received a letter, a nice membership folder, a cloud selector/identifier wheel, and a pin. Plus a daily email featuring cloud photos or paintings accompanied by explanations and inspiring words. A kind of Ranger Rick approach to cloud-caretaking!
Yes, I most certainly appreciated the clouds that define my view even before joining the Cloud Appreciation Society. But in this season of unrelenting political and humanitarian horror, I find solace and hope in the ordinary gifts of the universe: cats with whom to cuddle, Zoom calls with close friends, frosted bakery cookies, a compelling read, Amanda’s hugs, and this incredible gateway to the universe—this huge sky and its endless panoply of clouds. Why not, I said to myself, attend to clouds with a bit more knowledge. As my dad did with his World War II Navy weatherman training. He reveled in identifying the clouds that appeared in our cozier Kansas skies—offering them the recognition and meaning that comes with naming and knowing. The difference between saying, “Hey, isn’t that big cloud frightening” and saying, “Hmm, that cumulonimbus capillatus might be full of hail. We better get off the golf course.”
And I find it delightful to join a community of 67,000 other folks who celebrate clouds—who are looking up and away from the tragedies that humans create and concentrating on clouds. And at the weather—coming their way in the ephemeral bodies of water and ice and dust that comprise clouds.
Besides, the Cloud Appreciation Society’s website offers fifty-four pages of cloud poetry and seventy-some pages of cloud art. Clouds obviously inspire creativity. And the Society’s “manifesto” offers some intriguing justifications for paying attention to the skies: “We think that they [clouds] are Nature’s poetry and the most egalitarian of her displays, since everyone can have a fantastic view of them. . . . We seek to remind people that clouds are the expressions of the atmosphere’s moods and can be read like those of a person’s countenance. . . .”
For over a century now, we’ve been able to understand clouds’ moods not just by looking at them, but by joining them in the heavens. I flew for the first time in the mid-1960s. In planes that—with pressurized cabins—could soar above the clouds. And through them—and then over them—arriving in a sunlit or starlit world no matter the weather below. In other words, my introduction to their substance—or lack there of. Which didn’t mean that they were harmless. Sometimes, in all the flying that followed, I welcomed the roller coaster drops of storm clouds, laced with lightning. I’d smile while my seatmates clutched an arm rest; the county fair for free.
Not long ago, I learned (what I should have already known) from my friend Chris and his son Gabe that the amount of water on and surrounding our earth never changes. But is endlessly transforming: rain, rivers, the ocean, humidity, faucets, our beverages, our bodies—and clouds. It’s never a question of water increasing or disappearing. It’s only a question of who is getting to use it—to draw life from it—play with it—build with it—grow with it—celebrate it. For me, that means that when clouds grab my attention—they pull me into remembering the entire world. And its inhabitants—many of whom are desperate for those clouds to form over their homes—and make rain.
Ironically, “cloudy” can be a pejorative word. Think about muddied, gloomy, distorted, obscured: Her judgment was clouded. The water had grown cloudy with algae. And now, in our 21st century world, “the cloud” has become an enormous, unseeable phenomenon in which the world’s data is stored. Needless to say, the Cloud Appreciation Society excludes those “clouds” from their attention.
Here in Helena, I live in an enormous bowl of sky—mountains near and far at the edge of every horizon and then an infinity of blue arching up and up. A breathtaking immensity. Often with a panorama of enormous clouds billowing up, being brewed up, it seems, by the mountains. Giving certain dimension to the big sky that defines Montana.
In the evening, my view to the east often showcases clouds that reflect the colors of the setting sun in the west. Or, if a storm has passed through, a rainbow anchored by the disappearing band of altocumulus clouds. I almost always stop to savor the sky’s artistry. And find the world magic—as all of us—cats and clouds and humans, go to bed. How could I not! ©
