Moisture, light and air — nothing substantial, and yet what they create when they combine can be magical and memorable.
The wind-teased clouds in this sky made a grand if fuzzy-headed bird, tail feathers trailing, gliding like an eagle overhead, intently watching the earth below.
A perfectly still, dewy early morning, when clouds hug the earth; the sun rises, finds a chink in the clouds and gives me misty sun rays that only last for seconds. Another ethereal moment on the mountain.
I like a painting where there’s a focus for the eye but also depths and secrets, possibilities that keep you looking and musing, even if it’s hanging on your wall for years.
My skyscape canvas is not as vast as out in plains country but the mountains create more varied layers of clouds.
This is especially so when storms are rolling around the ranges, but probably not so down in the wider lowlands beyond and below them.
A strip of blue sandwiched between a variety of cloud shapes and colours and directions, a glimpse of the backdrop colour while the action takes place… much more interesting than a plain blue sky!
Or a slit of fiery orange between heavy grey rainclouds, in an early morning sky only half-decided about shepherds’ warnings.
Variety, contrast, uncertainty– all part of the action in that ever-changing show above me. And it’s free.
You may have noticed that I am fascinated by what’s above me as much as by what’s down here on my lowly level.
Early morning curry-combed clean bright clouds greeted me the other day; I dare to think I have identified them as the mid-level clouds, Altocumulus stratiformis undulatus — nearly parallel lines of cloudlets (thanks to The Cloudspotter’s Guide).
I wasn’t the only one up and enjoying the skies. First one plane, and soon after another, flew south. Across the whole arch of sky each only left a contrail in the same one patch of blue; it seemed as if the second came to lend a hand to tow the cloud that they both then were attached to — in harness.
Closer to me than those silver dots were two wedge-tailed eagles, resident kings of the sky here. They were having fine floating fun up there, and as I watched they began to perform a slow yet daring dance — precision flying.
Closer, closer, and touch! In tandem for a second, united for a second or two, separate — and then together again. They did this four or five times; it was hard to see the two birds at their closest.
Whether they stopped because the air currents parted them, or because these delicate flying caresses for their lifelong partners were enough, I don’t know.
But it was beautiful.
A storm-bent early morning, when pewter clouds fill the western horizon and no scrap of blue to be seen.
The sun climbs over my eastern treeline and switches on the spotlight, and the contrast between the suddenly vivid green moptops of the gum trees and that heavy background sky sends me running for the camera.
Blue is not the only beauty a sky can offer.
But that’s in Nature’s own colour scheme. Let corporate Man at it, and brown enters the palette. Dirty brown, pollution brown, ‘don’t breathe-the-air’ brown, the cumulative emissions from too many open cut coal mines and coal-fired power stations. Accepted as hazardous to human health in the U.S., still unacknowledged here — that would mean they couldn’t approve any more.
Lucky we have different lungs from Americans.
Welcome to the mid-upper Hunter Valley, which I can remember once had clean country air, blue or grey skies, but no toxic stripes of brown.
I have always been a cloud-gazer, in awe of their beauty and variety, although mainly at times of sunset or sunrise illumination. But ever since my Tassie friend Fred gave me The Cloudspotter’s Guide by Gavin Pretor-Pinney I have taken even more notice of oddly shaped clouds — without even a tinge of pink.
Being on a mountain, I am in a good position for cloudspotting as the mountains catch some clouds and create others.
The first photo is one example of clouds shaped in the lee of mountains, orographic clouds where air is forced up by the obstacle of the mountain range. I think these ones could be the Altocumulus lenticularis, mid-level lens shaped clouds. I couldn’t see the other end of them to check if they tapered off similarly there. ‘Elongated lozenges, pancakes…’
It has been suggested that many flying saucer sightings were lenticularis.
In the same sky at the same time, but further west, this unconnected ‘elongated lozenge’ has been through the wringer and looks more like a Twistie floating about on its lonesome up there.
While browsing my cloud book I discovered that there is actually a name for cumulus clouds formed in the hot moist fumes from power station, like these I photographed at Hazelwood in the Latrobe Valley of Victoria. It’s not an official name, just a nickname — ‘fumulus’!
I am woken these days — early — by the whining of juvenile birds. The magpies and currawongs and rosellas and kookaburras all seem to have young.
None of them can talk properly yet but that doesn’t stop them making a lot of noise.
Each year, the magpie child is always the worst, following mum about and incessantly demanding food in a repetitive, tuneless whinge; big enough to fly but not to feed or fend for itself, still grey-brown instead of dapper black and white.
The other day, as we were deep inside a cloud here on the mountain, from my dry indoors I spotted the young currawong on top of the gate post. It was perched securely, but it looked nervous, checking over its shoulder at the forest behind it.
I didn’t blame it, as I am susceptible to the mystery of our mountain when it’s in cloudland too. What is out there, slipping between the trees?
What else could a young curra do but look over the other shoulder to check if Mum was still close by. He has to, because she’s too busy looking for food to shut him up. Which I can only hope are not the nestlings of smaller birds.
She took off, and with one squawk — ‘Curra-mum!?’ — he followed.
2010 has been a pretty rotten year for me and I’ll be glad to see the end of it but boy, is it ending in a blaze of glory!
Colour has new meaning with post-storm sunset skies like this. No wonder Turner was dotty about them.
While the south-west sky was grandly towering, the western aspect was elevated, flying free and roiling sideways.
As the storms continue, the soggy days more like north coast steamy than my mountain cool, and the leeches aggressive beyond belief — I need a sunset or two like this to remind me why I live where I do!
Each year the Lilliums in front of my verandah shoot up anew, aiming for the roof but not quite making it. Still, at about three metres, their height is impressive and their bells bloom well above the verandah railing, allowing their heavy perfume to reach me at my desk, despite the dense greenery between us.
I went outside and walked around below them to look up into their throats — and only then did I notice what was going on in the background.
High-flying beauty of a different sort was taking shape in the sky beyond.
Delicately tufted white Cirrus clouds, the highest-flying of all the main cloud types, were streaking and flipping their ice crystals across the blue. My Cloudspotters’ Guide tells me they typically form above 24,000 feet. These ethereal wisps won’t last long, unlike my fleshy Lilliums.
The skyscapes here are so varied that I could spend more time looking up than down — if I didn’t love the earthy minutiae like fungi so much.
The other night I caught this tail end of what must have been a stunning sunset, when I’d been on the phone!
Clouds make sunsets, and these were on fire.
But then, after the many late afternoon rain storms we’ve been having lately, I get some beautifully cool and complex layers of clouds — strips and stacks, ascending, descending, or going straight by.
What a world!
Living on a mountain, my eyes are directed as often to the skies as they are to ground level.
Clouds fascinate me — and I’m not alone — as the wonderful Cloud Appreciation Society website shows.
I especially love it when massive cloud banks like this one, snagged on the mountain range, are lit by a sunset still existing somewhere over the horizon, but gone from here.
My place is almost dark, yet up there in the skyworld the clouds see further, chase the glow and capture it as a very special solar lighting effect.
Yet I have to keep my eyes on the ground as well. The constant surpises in nature here range from the sublime to the minute.
This almost translucent little beauty emerged to stand, solitary, simple and fragile, in the midst of the whole ‘lawn’ beside the house.
Two days later it is still there and still solo. To me it seems brave and hopeful, but then I’m a romantic.
The view from the inside of a cloud does not extend very far.
Today, past the first dim line of trees, I see no mountain ridges or rainforest gullies or even eucalypt forest. They might no longer exist.
If the evidence of the eyes counts, the world might end 100 metres from my verandah.
I love this intimacy with clouds, this damply veiled weather; it has inspired a short story of that name, ‘Cloudland’.
But after all the rain we had, I really ought to be mowing. I can see that grass growing.
In areas like the orchard, soon the mower will have difficulty cutting through its density. Up here in summer, early morning grass can be too wet from dew to mow; it’s too hot by the time that’s dried off, so early evening is the only available time — if I’m not too tired by then, or have obeyed the beer o’clock call.
I did mow last evening, so my conscience is clear there.
Ah well, guess I’ll just have to stay indoors — and write!
The days veer between hot and dry with winds that would push a fire to an inferno, and cool and cloudy.
This particular day the clouds came so low they met the earth, and my mountain was transformed once again. These days of mystery and dripping moisture are probably my favourite weather here.
I love both the disappearance of distant views and the diamond delineations of the closer views.
Everything is given the most gentle soaking that does no damage, yet still refreshes and fosters growth. The plants benefit and so do I.