I’ve often daydreamed about driving north until I run out of road to see the Northern Lights.
From the Highlands, the end of the road is a 20-hour drive to the terminus of James Bay Road in Radisson, Quebec, a charming village of 300 people near a hydroelectric station and the eastern shore of James Bay. Beyond that, the paved highway ends and you need a small plane or high-grade shocks to continue. Once my daydream involves a tire jack, I wake up.
So you can imagine my surprise when the aurora borealis showed up in my backyard a few weeks ago, fulfilling a lifelong dream to see it. Or, at least, it would have fulfilled a lifelong dream, because I was in New Jersey, where it was cloudy. I took photos anyway, but they were all of black clouds in a black sky over the black Manasquan River.
It was the second time in two months that clouds came between me and a generational celestial event (the other being last month in Rochester, when they blocked the total eclipse), prompting me to reconsider my membership in the Cloud Appreciation Society.
You think I’m joking, but I’ve been a member for a decade. It costs $35 a year. In addition to discounts on cloud-related merchandise, the society provides access to online cloud-spotting courses, identification guides and discussion forums in which members post photos of clouds and people comment, in dozens of languages, that the photos are very nice. No one advances any conspiracy theories, even about contrails. It is the last good place on the internet.
The society, which is based in the U.K., believes clouds are the most egalitarian of nature’s wonders. They exist everywhere. They are indifferent to status and wealth. You do not have to drive 20 hours, purchase equipment or fly on a specific day to see clouds. You likely can see clouds right now.
I’m sure those of you who saw the Northern Lights and/or the total eclipse will remember it forever. But I’m willing to go out on a limb, or a long, thin volutus cloud, and bet you also remember clouds. I will never forget that day atop Fishkill Ridge when I looked south and saw a thin strip of clouds running parallel to the wind, long and straight as if a child with chalk had run it across the sky. (I have since learned that these are officially known as cumulus radiatus, or “cloud streets.”)
I once spent an hour at the Spruceton Valley lookout in the Catskills watching a towering and stately cumulus congestus slowly float across the sky, becoming more golden as the sun sank. Everyone has equal access to clouds, but the cloud watching on Catskill high peaks during summer afternoons is spectacular, thanks to the warm, moist air rising throughout the day. The wind blows this air into the sides of mountains, forcing it upward until it begins to cool and the vapor becomes visible, like your breath on a cold morning.
All of this makes it hard for me to stay mad at clouds, although in the last two months they’ve blown through the goodwill it’s taken a lifetime to accumulate. Thanks to their convenience and ubiquitous nature, it won’t take long to rebuild the stockpile. Here’s to a long, hot summer of clouds along the banks of the Hudson, the tops of the Highlands and my back porch.
