BIG SKY COUNTRY – A DAY LIKE NO OTHER

                                        

It’s hard to quantify.  There’s magic in the air, especially over my head and all the way to the horizon.  It’s up there with anything you might see in any gallery of note, only it’s not a still canvas, it’s a moving work of art, 360 degrees of it, a rival for the Sistine Chapel.  It’s a symphony in cloud major and minor.

The varying layers of cloud are beyond my knowledge, and there’s many of them.  Thin streaks of white, to bulbous masses of threatening grey cumuli nimbus, exist side by side and seemingly encourage everything in between.  It doesn’t matter what I’m trying to photograph outdoors on the range, the sky intervenes.  It’s not a distraction; it’s the main event, as it constantly reminds you.

Towering wind turbines might catch your eye as they twirl, ripping through the air with a low roar, but your gaze will ultimately drift sideways or upwards, because there’s something else out there moving in different directions and constantly changing colour.  It absorbs your mind with a subtlety you’re not really aware of but cannot ignore.

The tortured remnants of once proud trees in their myriad abstract formations, branches askew in a wondrous array of designs, twisting and turning while they had sought to escape some natural threat or other are laid upon this vivid blue and white canvas.

And the wind, you can’t ignore the wind, it’s a constant.  Towards the horizon there are grey lines of cloud slanted at 45 degrees, threatening, seemingly dispensing moisture.

Constable is known for his portrayal of clouds, but the English version has nothing on this.  The white puffy mass so common in his canvases are but an opener to the array I’m looking at.  The shapes, the angles, the random masses taunt your eyes, where to look next.  I know naught but delight at the options on offer.