Why I'm Cloud Gazer #65,774
I'm seven or eight years old. Jan Libby and I are lying in the field behind our houses in Lincoln, Maine, surrounded by walls of yellow hay we've carved into rooms by rolling and crawling through the untended grass. Our palace is complete, and though the freshly broken stalks tickle and scratch our bare skin, the ground beneath is surprisingly soft.
We settle in and look up.
The sky.
Oh, the sky!
The sky. Oh, the sky! Clouds move past, through my eyes morphing from heavy-bellied beast to spinning beach ball. Then I spot it. "The Statue of Liberty!" I scream, knowing it's now or never to share the view. "The torch . . . " I start to add, but the words are too late; the cumulus cloud is already transforming into a galloping, if lopsided, horse.
These moments take our breath away. Jan and I understand without words—the quiet knowing that children at play so easily access.
Wayne Shorter said it best: "Clouds float in the same pattern only once." Each formation is unrepeatable
I recently joined the Cloud Appreciation Society. As member #65,774, I am not alone in marveling at these everyday mysteries drifting overhead. Founder Gavin Pretor-Pinney's TED Talk reminds us to "live in the ephemeral beauty."
Sixty years later, I'm still living in that beauty, and still struck by how clouds link us: same sky, same atmosphere, same water cycling endlessly between us. As a child who'd never left the cocoon of rural Maine, I felt oddly connected to children in Mumbai and Tokyo, also watching clouds pass overhead. That sense of unity is still there when I look up.
Nelson Mandela understood this from his cell on Robben Island: "Even behind prison walls I can see the heavy clouds and the blue sky over the horizon." Imprisoned and stripped of everything, the clouds remained proof that some things cannot be contained or taken away.
These moments take your breath away.
And it's true. This gift is free for each of us. When I glance skyward, I still feel a catch in my breath—an instant return to seven-year-old me in that hayfield. Thick clouds, storm clouds, clouds that streak the sky with a palette from white/blue to black, can stop me in my tracks.
Sixty years later, I'm still struck by how clouds link us: same sky, same atmosphere, same water cycling endlessly between us.
So here is my invitation: Look up. Find your own hayfield, your own Jan to imagine with. Let the clouds remind you that you are here, now, present to this beautiful, broken, mended, still-spinning life.
Clouds from our former home in Wyoming.
SONG: Clouds by Zach Sobiech Click here to listen
