Cumulus cloud is like a boiling turmoil frozen, but when it is as vast as those round piled shapes looming against the clear blue skies of early winter, monumentality replaces any sense of movement, arrested or otherwise. There is one gigantic cumulus above my backyard now and others further away. Above it are cirrus, stretched out and combed by a freezing wind too high to be felt down here: 15,000 feet in fact. These clouds are made of ice crystals. Some have a frolicsome flair against the blue, and this is why they are also called mares’ tails I would imagine. I’m sure actually. They are also like a woman’s snow white hair just after a brush or comb has lifted it and then released it to float in air.
It is cold as ice water and the air is phenomenally clear. My umbrella tree rises toward the glaring whiteness of the clouds, supplying a particular green in the trio of colours above me – blue, white, green – so solid and clear and seemingly close I could surely touch them.
Look, now I imagine a plane flying beneath the clouds, so low I can see the smile on the pilot’s face. ‘Hello John,’ he says without raising his voice, though he lifts his gauntleted hand. I can hear him clearly. I don’t say ‘Hi’. I can hear him, but he would not hear me. He is wearing one of those leather balaclava things, it’s so long now I can’t remember what they are called. And goggles, yes. So long ago. He could be Biggles. The rich brown leather in the sun supplies the missing element. John! Yes, I’m still here.
There is a story on this blog called Cloud Wall. That cloud is cumulonimbus.
Comments are closed