In my life I’ve had some rare opportunities to hunt for pictures in the cloud formations, and last September while vacationing in Florida, I learned that it doesn’t require a lot of skill or knowledge, but it does require plenty of relaxation and something we often take for granted, time. There is much to be said for showing something for all the hard that you do as the weeks and months float by. It is difficult, however, to say describe in so many words those things you do that take up your time but produce othing except lovely memories and wonderful pictures.
We are lucky in this world, some of us. We have the ability to reward ourselves with the fruits of our labor most of the time. You may not, at first glance, see a reason to view the clouds for pictures. It may be that you can close your eyes and create your own clouds or pictures. I admit that this was my take on cloud pictures for many years. I would look up sometimes and say to myself "Wow, that cloud kinda looks like an elephant". If I ever said that out loud with someone standing near me, there would usually be disagreement on what the clouds picture actually was. I often felt that it was helpless to argue because by the time the next sentence would roll out of your mouth the elephant had turned into an ostrich. So, most of my life I had much more important things to worry about than clouds.
While I was planning my vacation I wasn't really thinking of clouds or anything else besides finding a nice beach to shrug off all the built up overtime I had put in at work the past year, all the bad drivers who came close to killing me, all the late nights I spent wondering how to pay for this or that, all the stresses of politics, economics, and everything else that might have caused my shoulders to tighten, or my teeth to grind or my head to scratch. All these things were what a good 3 week vacation were going to cure, I was hoping anyway.
It was the second day of my vacation in South Beach, Florida when I walked out onto the sand and could see nothing except the great deep blue sky splitting the lower half of the world with the brilliant aquamarine ocean. Breaking up these were clouds in the sky and tourists and sand in the ocean. I didn't realize how beautiful it would be, really one of the most breathtaking moments I've had in my life. I had to take a picture immediately. I wasn't sure if the landscape was to blame for all the love I was feeling. I think it also had much to do with knowing that I wouldn't have to sit in traffic or stand in line for three weeks. Through all of this emotion I was feeling as I walked toward the water, I kept feeling the need to look up. I looked at all the sky, with hotel rooftops behind me and only the Atlantic's horizon in front of me. I plopped my towel down about 20 feet from the shore, laid back with my dark sunglasses on and began to focus on the clouds.
Clouds are constantly shifting water vapors in the sky. They are whispy and light sometimes, and dark and heavy other times. Florida is interesting because you can have 5 different types of clouds in the same view. I started playing the old cloud/animal picture imaging using my imagination. I fell asleep in approximately 10 minutes, and slept right there for about an hour, woke up with a slight headache and medium sunburn that I knew would cause some peeling. Everytime I laid back and looked up at the clouds while I was on vacation at that beach those three weeks I would try different imaging like people I knew, or machines, or make up new things alltogether.
All of this cloud studying had one very important aspect to it. It relaxed me to the point of restfulness I had been unable to attain for about a year. When I awoke there was no alarm clock or cell phone ringing, only the lapping of the waves and the light breezes tickling my nose. I highly recommend that you try your own cloud study, it doesn't take much skill.
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