It's Clouds Illusions, I Recall

June 2013

Rows and flows of angel hair
And ice cream castles in the air
And feather canyons everywhere

I've looked at clouds that way.

My sisters and I sang a Joni Mitchell song, "Both Sides Now," for a 4-H Club Day long, long ago. That song often rolls around in my head, much like the clouds that shift on a summer day in Kansas:

I've looked at clouds from both sides now

From up and down and still somehow

It's clouds' illusions, I recall

I really don't know clouds at all.

I belong to a Facebook group called Snapshot Kansas, and, each Tuesday, the site administrator offers a challenge. Sometimes, I just look at what others post. But this week, "clouds" was the theme, and I shared some of my favorite photos of Kansas skies. 

April 2010

I've always liked clouds, but I think I became even more aware when Brent was little. Some people have backseat drivers. I had a backseat cloud watcher.

June 2013

Brent was always discovering some shape in the marshmallow fluff of clouds floating by.

When the kids were little, I "retired" from working full-time as a writer-editor at The Hutchinson News, but I wrote a column for them, "At Home with Kim," for several years. Here an excerpt of what I wrote when Brent was in kindergarten: 

It was one of those days when it looks like the angels are using the clouds for tumbling mats. Brent and I were driving home, and he started cloud-watching.

"Oh, look, Mommy! That one looks like a dinosaur. And that one looks like a puppy."

We found an eagle and a dragon and a cat among the whipped-cream clouds. I was thinking that even though our world changes, some things - like cloud watching - have been children's pastimes for years and years.

And then he said, "Oh, there a roller blade."

As a child, I saw dragons and rabbits, but not a single roller blade was suspended in my cotton-candy skies. 

Change is part of us - even daydreaming cloud watchers confirm that.

A very unusual rope cloud. Taken in August 2008 as we left to move Jill to Nashville, TN, for her dietetics internship at Vanderbilt University

Though I no longer have cloud watchers in the backseat, I still love watching the clouds. Perhaps it is their ability to change quickly, shifting the scenery in an instant.

September 2013

I personally struggle with change, so I guess I admire it in other things. 

July 2012

Maybe it's OK to have your head in the clouds on occasion, like these sunflowers.

July 2013

With thousands of photos on file, I could be looking for cloud photos all day long.

July 2013

Who am I kidding? I could spend a week.

July 2011

But there are worse things to look at, don't you think? Today, a new assignment will appear on Snapshot Kansas. But I know I'll always be looking for clouds. And this song will tumble around in my head while I do it.