Clouds

Arriving in Flagstaff I noticed something odd. I had missed something I did not know I had been missing for a long time. It hit me how much we can accept without knowing we accept. We only notice how much we missed it when it is suddely there again. Without looking for it or knowing having missed it. We arrived by over night train early morning. It was sort of cold. Still dark. Nothing yet to do but wait for the day to start. Three quarters of an hour before the sun would go up, the darkness of night slowly fading into the predawn grey of dawn, we set out to find some breakfast. We rode along a road facing east and with every hue of red entering the sky I noticed a quality in the sky I had not known I missed dearly. The sky had clouds along the horizon and with every ray of sunshine hitting the earth more clouds were rising . High almost vertical clouds were rising all around us. It was mesmerizing. The sky was gorgeous. I was overwhelmed by how much I had missed skies with intermittend clouds. The last few years living in or around Berlin the skies are either blue or covered. There is not a whole lot of clouds passing by, making paterns in the sky or being blown along by the winds, being torn up high up by the even stronger winds up there. The clouds along the coast of the pacific had also either been overcast or blue, and not these brilliant formation of clouds, ever building, becoming darker and more ominous every minute. The grey clouds of Berlin cast a veil around the sky that is obstruction. It does not rain, or it is not just raining. It is grey. Just grey. A sky of nothingnesss. The skies in the Netherlands, the skies of my youth, are not like that. Growing up there you learn to read the clouds. Fast rising clouds with large bases and high columns on a sunny day mean a possibility of storms in the afternoon, but it might just blow over. High passing clouds with darker clouds in a different direction flowing underneath mean lots of rain. Fanning high clouds in the evening is bad weather tomorrow. But the sky is always moving, making new patterns and new designs. You can read what is coming, where the wind is coming from and what the weather will be. That same sky, with differeent structures of clouds and different behaviours are in and around Flagstaff Arizona. The high fast rising clouds mean rain and thundersorms. Maybe not today, but the next day for sure. It was magnificent. It moved something in me I did not know I had missed so much. It was like hearing a scream you did not know you were shouting.

I know something new about myself. I like clouds that move. I need a sky that is ever changing. A sky that is alive and has character. A sky that can tell a story. A sky that feels like home.