Joy from Colorado Clouds

I’m not sure when it happened, but at some point in my childhood I developed a fondness for laying on my back and gazing up at clouds as they floated by. There was something mystical and serene about the whole experience. Although I made 27 moves before graduating from high school, many of my childhood years were spent in Colorado, which, in my opinion, has some of the best cloud formations I’ve ever seen.

When I was about six or seven years old, I remember laying on my back in the afternoon sun during spring and summer, and gazing up into the sky for maybe a half hour at a time. I wasn’t doing anything but staring at the clouds as they moved past me. It was mesmerizing and almost a zen type experience for me. It wasn’t until years later that I discovered people actually made a practice of cloud gazing. However, unlike me, others were trying to find shapes in clouds–to discover some hidden creature or thing living in the cloud. For me, it was more like a lava lamp experience of just watching the changing shapes and being easily entertained by the experience.

Besides the awesome weather and four real seasons, I think a big factor in my moving back to Colorado was that I missed the clouds and my cloud gazing. Since moving here, I’ve had a few moments where I’ve taken the time to lay on my back and look up into the afternoon sky, watching the clouds go by. Every time I do so, I’m transported in a time machine back to my youth and those wonderful afternoons where I become memorized and lost in the endless wondering shapes of fluffy clouds as they rolled past.