Category Archives: clouds

A matter of perspective

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Two clouds

One afternoon I looked up to see two very different clouds. One was brilliant in the sunshine, each layer clearly marked with almost luminous attention. I reveled in its beauty. The second, almost directly overhead was dark, threatening, ominous.

And then I stopped for a moment to reconsider. If I were under that bright cloud, perhaps it would be the threatening one, while the one I’m standing under now would be the bright one.

What view we take of life depends on our perspective!

It is not what you look at that matters.
It’s what you see.
~Henry David Thoreau~

 

Always present

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Contrails in the sky

They crisscross the sky like a gigantic tic-tac-toe game, the contrails of the jets that are too high to see, but there just the same. Because the Verde Valley is right on the fly way, we get traffic from Phoenix’s Sky Harbor to points west such as Los Angeles and points east such as Chicago. That’s a lot of planes!

Although their absence was striking during the once-in-a-lifetime shutdown of all air traffic after the 9-11 tragedy, we don’t often look up and notice contrails. They are just there, visible proof of our busyness as individuals and our affluence as a nation.

Do we take the same approach with the loved ones in our life? Accepted in their continual presence, only noticed and missed when they are absent. Perhaps we need to appreciate more and take for granted less!

Mi taku oyasin
[translation: We are all related.]
~Lakota Sioux saying~

 

 

Floating, floating, floating

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Baby cloud

I’ve always been a cloud fan, and my photo gallery is full of cloud pictures. This one is a favorite, because it reminds me of how fast time flies. It was about ten o’clock in the morning when this baby cloud popped up. One moment there was all blue sky and the next, there it was.

But that was just the beginning. The little cloud blossomed exponentially over the next two hours. A little after noon, it turned heavy and dark, and drenched us with rain. And a half-hour later, it vanished, and the sky was blue again. Magic, right in front of me.

Life is like that for us, too. One minute we’re a baby cloud and the next, we’ve disappeared and all is blue sky again. In the grand scheme of things, we are very temporary!

I owned the world that hour as I rode over it,
free of the earth, free of the mountains,
free of the clouds, but how inseparately bound to it.
~Charles Lindbergh, aviator~

 

Cloud signals

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picture of cloud signals

Sometimes I trip over my own feet, because I am staring at the sky.

This day, the clouds were giving some very clear signals. The background white ones were fair-weather clouds saying don’t worry, everything is fine. The lower, darker clouds, rapidly moving in, were saying, don’t believe those guys. You are in for some baaad weather ahead!

I’ve learned to pay attention the clouds. The weatherman may sometimes be wrong, but the weather never is. You just have to know where to look.

You can’t be
what you can’t see
~Gloria Steinem~