Learning to read the clouds can be pugnaciously hard. At least it was for me. I’d look at a complex sky with two or three or even four cloud types at once, and it would be hard to tell which cloud was in front of which, what was larger and what was smaller. I couldn’t visualize the underlying […]
I’ve been thinking about this concept for a while but never tried to articulate it, so here goes nothing. It’s the edges of things, not the things themselves, that are that are the most interesting. If I could draw this idea as a map, maybe it would look like this. If you’re sitting inside the upper circle […]
The story goes something like this: The acolyte, sitting in meditation in front of the master, breaks the long silence with a question: “What is the sound of the void, Master?” To which the master replies, “What is the sound of the void, Master?” The young monk, perhaps thinking the master is absent-mindedly repeating his […]
Struck by Fire I was in the garden, I remember, pulling weeds and looking for aphids, when I happened to look up from my work to see this — apparition — hanging over the treetops like an impromptu party decoration, curly clouds lit up in a vibrant crimson. I’d never seen a cloud like this, […]
What if you wanted to know what the weather was going to be like in the near future, but didn’t have a cell phone? Or the internet? Or a television or a radio or newspaper? I’ll show you how to turn yourself into a working portable weather station! Your body is equipped to gather all the data to […]
Clouds are great fun to watch. Sitting under a tree, high on a hill, you gaze up to the sky for a few moments and you daydream. The rest of your life falls away as you watch the clouds slowly, imperceptibly roll across the heavens . Then you sigh again, take a sip of lemonade, and pick up […]
We were driving across the scrubby and barren central valley on the way to Fresno, me and some of my California family. We’d been talking about the weather. My family all knew I liked the weather, and the sky, and the combination of those two things. I talked about it all the time. Just as I’d been doing for […]
The “blood moon”, they call it. Stumbling out of bed in the wee hours of the morning, I remembered why I had set the alarm and ran to the porch, searching for the bloody moon. Patchy clouds were drifting hurriedly across the sky, but there was no sign of the moon. My sleepy brain wondered for just […]
Emotions Above The sky has its moods, just as we do, and it displays those moods with a range that is infinite in its variety. It moves through hot and cold, dry and wet, wild and calm, bland and dazzling, expansive and close, soothing and scary, and everything in between, creating a whole new world […]