Clouds

For two hours the other afternoon, during a Saturday drive on the rural Old Charleston Highway to Sumter, I found myself looking up at the sky out my windows at every opportunity. It was, amazingly, the kind of sky and cloud day you see only a few times in a year, or maybe not at all for years. There was every imaginable type and formation of clouds — cumulus, stratus, nimbus over lenticular, or so it appeared. I’m not an expert on their identification, but I can tell you I thought I was in some sort of dream where the vision is more beautiful than the reality. But it was very real.

It was a late summer, close-to-autumn day, there was change in the air, and the sun bathed the landscape with that translucently clear, golden light that made the pine trees seem greener and more distinct than ever and the woods and fields as finely etched and detailed as I have ever seen them. I was marveling at the sensory overload, the pleasurable and real kind. And those clouds: words cannot convey the special place in my memory and imagination those bright white, puffy, striated, airy and gossamer vapors hold. They make me dream of far off lands and times. They remind me of all the distant carefree summers of my childhood, and they call to mind the 19th century luminist landscape painters who so delighted in conveying on their canvases all the glories of sunrises through couds in the Adirondack Mountains and in the Hudson River Valley of New York. Their renderings of clouds and light are sublime, there is no other way to adequately describe it. Look at the paintings of Thomas Cole, George Inness, Albert Bierstadt, Asher Durand, and Frederck Edwin Church some time.

Or enjoy these photos of magnificent clouds:

http://www.gordonr.simplenet.com/clouds.htm

http://www.stormguy.com/cloud1.htm

Oswego, you give us such lovely gifts of your writing and your wonderous web sites you tell us about…like floating on a downy cloud. You are such a delight!! Love,

I don’t know how you do it, but somehow you always write exactly how I feel!

kind makes you want to get out a blanket &sit on the grass watching the clouds go by.

LOved yout discription of your day! And I love to look at clouds. We have a lot of them, because we have not that steady weather like you. Clouds, clouds, and especially lovely in the night with all the

the lovely colours when the evenings come. I have to stop and look. Often. Lovely clouds on the websites!

You have stirred in me a desire to paint. I wish I knew how….

Sounds really beautiful. A lot of us don’t take the time to enjoy the beauty around us but you always manage to make us remember. Hope you’re doing well.

Did you check out the lightning pics? They are so beautiful.

“Såret” – there is a double meaning in the title as well as in the text – it’s therefore very diff. to translate. I think it’s quite good. I have send it to a newspaper who publish poems on the web. karin

Clouds–beautiful!Had some youngsters in a poetry class with whom I spent afternoons, not too long ago. We’d lie on a knoll, watch and write what we saw. Each saw clouds in a special,personal way. Gypsy Song

I enjoyed the web sites. Thanks.

Thanks for your note. I agree completely.

I agree with my mother, freewind!! Thank you for your notes!! Blessed Be!

the message here falls upon the page as lightly and gracefully as a cloud…will check out the sites. FL has a wonderful sky–almost broke my neck, looking at it when I first moved here. cont.

thanks for the wonderful links… (new wallpaper for my computer!) wish i had seen your sky… wish you had seen my sky! such scenes fascinate me so

ooh… my note is not the one cont’d from the one above, that’s someone else sandwiching me

adrift

September 13, 2000

What fantasies spin in these cloudsThat swell with childhood dreamsA kaleidoscope of imaginingsMystery and magical schemes~

No better way to spend the dayA trip to lands so far awayUnhampered by reality’s wayI dream & decide to stay~ *smile*

Thank you my friend, for transporting me back to many afternoons laying in a field of grass envisioning myself among those magical clouds~ & Thank you always for your kind & supportive notes! 🙂

Wonderful websites, thank you so much! As you know, summers in Seattle see many days when layer upon layer of fluffy, cottony clouds come in off Puget Sound in the light of the setting sun. Magic!

love clouds, too–very gentle, light on the mind but rich in content entry…sorry to hear Folly beach is suffering as you noted on my entry. I like to think of it as a gentle Victorian beach with rickety steps and dunes mags

Thanks for the web sites. Checked them out; they were great!!!!

Thanks for the images your writing brings to my mind and for the websites…Cait..

Bramble

September 20, 2000

I wish I could remember the author but he said that ‘the sky was the daily bread for the eyes’. It is so true. Skyscapes are different and changing by the moment and always fascinating.

Amanda Cayhill

September 25, 2000

The incredible beauty of clouds (and sunsets) are so hard to capture on film. Thank you for these exceptions. Motion and neon are often lost to print. Luckily, we can enjoy them as gifted moments.

Edelweis

April 23, 2002

Thank you so much dear friend for your beautiful entry! And thank you very very much for the magnificent website. The first site wasn’t there, but the second one is wonderful!!! I visited there for a long time…and will look again! So beautiful! Well then…this is the coda of my day! Great photos that will make my dreams for this night! Take care, have a peaceful evening,