Clouds
During our writing workshop’s “marathon” last week, everyone put prompts on little slips of paper into a basket. “Expensive car problems,” “Leaving,” and “Who you have loved” were some of the choices. We’d set the timer and write vigorously and without stop for 10 minutes, read our pieces, then choose another slip from the basket.
One of the prompts that was selected was “clouds.” I didn’t pre-think what I was going to write. 10 minutes were set, and off went the pen across the page.
Clouds
I never noticed so much about clouds until I started farming. Of course, I was only 13, so that didn’t give me too much time before that for serious cloud study. I remember, during one of our first summers on the farm when Kara and I were still homeschooling, how we did a study on the science of weather, including clouds.
High wispy cirrus, puffy cumulus, dangerous cumulonimbus. Why they make the “anvil” shape and how an anvil with a puff on top are the most dangerous. How the rolls underneath (called mamma) denote strong downdrafts.
Clouds are the storytellers of the sky. They indicate what’s coming, what’s leaving, what season it is, what the wind’s up to, what the humidity is, and more. Their color is also telling. There’s nothing that will ever erase the memory of when, in the middle of butchering, the cloudy sky literally turned a pea green or that huge September storm when the oncoming cloudbank was as black as a sharpie marker’s ink.
Sometimes clouds are so high, they seem almost impossible—feathery, fragile. Other times they dip so low, their bellies touch the earth, shrouding all, damp and clinging. Mist and fog, to me, are ground clouds—creeping up out of the swamps on autumn evenings, right at chore time. As I pass through them, they lap at me like waves, thinning as I approach but looking denser all around. There and not there at the same time.
Clouds can be a godsend on an oppressively hot, windless day bent over weeding in the garden. Clouds can be a curse on a frigid day with biting winds when the warmth of a low-set sun is the only real comfort during a necessary outdoor task. Clouds bring much-needed rain and destructive flooding. They are like so many things in nature—healing and harmful, depending on the dose.
Clouds are a continual fascination as we watch the radar like hawks during storm season.
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Yesterday, as the cloud bank crept in and the evening was brushed with light snow, I’m reminded how different winter clouds are in the Northwoods from summer clouds. The morning had started sunny, then gradually, oh-so-softly, the sunlight dimmer, the gray encroached, and eventually tiny snowflakes were drifting by. If you weren’t paying attention to the subtle changes, seeing the north wind blowing the snow past the window might creep up as a surprise!
How distinctly different from a summer sky, when an oncoming bank is first heralded by the wispy cirrus, then the distinctive storm-front line, with its dark underbelly and rolling, leading edge. The rumble of thunder announcing the inevitable and the gray sheets of rain viewable across the length of the field before you’re even close to being wet.
Most of our clouds come generally from the west, though I’ve watched storms marching straight up from the South (powered by the Gulf), straight down from the North (cold-driven off Lake Superior), and even back-building from the East (just when you thought the storm had passed over). Clouds can be quirky and humorous—building odd or fantastical shapes—and clouds can be ominous and even terrifying. I remember watching a funnel cloud forming from the underbelly of storm clouds right over the farm, twisting downwards, then changing its mind, and retracting back up again. Talk about a close call!
You’ll know when spring really is coming by the changing of the clouds. Still winter clouds at this point, which matches up with the ground being frozen again and the powdery snow blowing off the roof. What are some of your cloud memories? Take 10 minutes to capture a few this week. See you down on the farm sometime.
