i’ve been trying to identify clouds. By the time i found a book that would help, i had made it to Wyoming, where the massive sky hosts such an assortment as to feel like a master class for a novice like me.

Stratus clouds have no real shape or discernible structure. They are easily found: spread thin between earth and sky. The Eeyore among clouds, listless. Stratus clouds’ accompanying barometric pressure helps a lot of living bodies agree with low energy. Tut tut, it looks like rain.

The storms here come on slowly then pelt down water in big, fat drops the way only the most massive of summer clouds can deliver. This rain moves around the gigantic sky to let go distant downpours, each miles from the next like so many massive jellyfish. From a dry perch beneath bright blue, you might easily spy wet weather overshadowing elsewhere. One can’t help but marvel at the breadth of sky which allows such visibility.

In a break from the storms under hot, clear skies yesterday i embarked on a three mile hike at 4,000+ feet. i could see the pouring rain, far far away, reaching toward the ground as if those storm clouds were Michelangelo’s God, the earth Adam. So much of the heavens are visible from heights like these. i heard the thunder about halfway in. Perhaps i quickened my pace then, or not. Presently, a few drops fell—gratefully smaller harbingers than thunder, which seemed itself to have subsided somewhere over the valley. For sure i tried to speed up then; i knew the rain would come strong. Those warning droplets proved especially cute compared to the torrent that soon followed. As the rain fell, thick air gave way to the fresh aromas of a grateful earth. Through the water between us, a white-tailed deer noticed me only enough to bound a few yards further for her snacking, unperturbed and intent. i kept walking, not quite hurried, but determined. The only way out of this storm was through.

It wasn’t long before the heavy clouds passed again, a wake of fluff and blue left behind them. It was there i changed my soaking clothes, envied the deer’s coat, and smiled at the sky again. Hello, cumulus, old friend.