A couple of years ago, about this same time of year, my
wife and I drove out to Colorado to visit my son and his family who live about
an hour or so north of Denver. The trip
provided several experiences of being in clouds even though in our car we were
traveling only about 3 feet off the ground.
We decided to make the drive west in two days because
it’s about 16 hours and we were under no particular pressure. So, we stayed overnight just west of Lincoln,
Nebraska. It was 68 degrees when we left
Lincoln the next morning, although the temperature was supposed to fall during
the day to about 57. As we drove about
an hour west we noticed the ominous cloudbank that looked like a wall out ahead
of us, and we watched the temperature begin to drop as we headed toward it.
Thirty minutes further west and we entered into a thick
fog. Visibility dropped to less than a
half mile. The dashboard thermometer
seemed to change about every 15 minutes.
In less than an hour it fell all the way to 30 degrees. Even though we knew that we were on the Great
Plain where the horizon usually stretches beyond eyesight, the entire visible
world was suddenly smallness itself.
Soon we were driving through mist. The roadway was just damp rather than wet
because I don’t think the mist was as much falling as the air within the fog
was just that saturated with moisture.
It really did seem like we were inside a huge cloud. We drove through that cloud well into
Colorado, when suddenly, just a half hour from our destination, the sun melted
the fog away and the world opened once again to reveal miles and miles of
rolling hills and sagebrush.
A week later, we headed back eastward to our home in
Wisconsin. It was sunny, clear and dry
when we headed out and it stayed that way until we were almost to Iowa. It was interesting to see everything that was
shrouded and hidden the week before; the world seemed large again. Clouds though were thickening and descending
as we passed through Omaha. About 50
miles still west of Des Moines light snow began to streak across the
windshield. Between the wind and the
traffic and the lightness of the snowflakes the road stayed dry until we turned
north at Des Moines. Thirty minutes
later the road was wet; twenty minutes more and snow began to accumulate on the
road edges; thirty minutes more and the slush covered the entire road. The traffic slowed dramatically as everything
was now white and we were within the cloud again. Rather than push on home as intended, we
pulled off in Minnesota to rest nerves and bodies.
In the morning, we headed for the final push home in a
swirl of still-falling snowflakes. As we
neared La Crosse, the road descended and the surrounding bluffs and hills
ascended. New-fallen snow clung to the
tree limbs so that the rolling bluffs took on the look of billowing white
clouds.
At home the next day, the one to two inches of snow
that covered our yard inspired me to finally tune up the snowblower. Thinning clouds were moving quickly
overhead. As I worked out in the
driveway I heard them – what sounded like a large flock of swans. I listened as they came out of the west,
nearer and nearer, but they were not visible.
It was if the clouds themselves were calling as swans. Finally, though as they passed overhead the
flock of white swans materialized from the clouds several hundred strong, gracefully
and powerfully riding the westerly headwinds.
I guessed they were headed to nearby waters of Green Bay to rest and
feed for a day or two before continuing onward to Chesapeake Bay. They passed overhead and soon melded back
into the clouds. In the next 30 minutes two
more flocks of swans, each larger than the last, passed overhead. The snow-white swans slipping out of and into
the white clouds was a fitting conclusion to these experiences of being
earthbound and yet in clouds.
His Peace <><
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