Altocumulus Sketch Pad

This time of year—when summer’s long days rule—I repose in my evening outdoor tub and watch clouds float by, rather than gaze at winter’s black sky full of stars. The sun sets and dusk begins to creep over the land. I have a small window on the sky directly overhead, between two sycamore trees.

On many of these evenings puffy white altocumulus clouds float by, still lit up by the sun at their altitude of some four miles. These are not the big puffy cumulus clouds, but cloudlets that come in many shapes and forms, and are more scattered across the sky. These are the same clouds that make for a spectacular sunset, when you look off to the west and become awed by the color display.

When I lie back in the tub, empty my mind, and gaze into these altocumulus cotton puffs, shapes will suddenly leap out at me. I’ll see the face of an ogre here, a sweet kitten there, a bent old man over there. I find I can’t force these shapes. I can’t go looking for them. They come to me only when my mind is free. Children know this.

The Romans and Greeks enjoyed the pastime of watching cloud sketches. Renaissance painters sometimes hid whimsical figures in their creations. Shakespeare’s Hamlet plays a mind game with Polonius on the shapes of a cloud—calling it first a camel, then arbitrarily switching it to a weasel, and finally a whale. Sometimes my image of an ogre will slowly transform into a beautiful woman. My mind’s eye has so much fun.

Altocumulus clouds are formed when moist, warm air rises during the day. They almost never bring precipitation. They are just fair-weather, fanciful images in the sky. Because I’m watching them at sundown, long after the heat of the daytime sun formed them, they are often in the process of slowly evaporating. Very gradually, the fainter wisps fade away. That fading alters the sketches, as they float lazily by.

Sometimes it seems that Hamlet is quietly whispering in my ear—teasing me about what I’m seeing, causing me to change my mind about that image. It’s easy to be swayed while under the intoxicating influence of those ephemeral altocumulus clouds.