Sky Watch: Vol. 2, No. 6
Cumulus congestus, framed in grey
Wynford and Gervais Drives, looking east | Thursday, June 21, 2007, 12:17 p.m. Through my camera lens I watched the cloud grow as if through time-lapse photography, heat and moisture churning the lily-white hummocks upwards and outwards. Though beautiful, this was not a benign cumulus drifting leisurely across a canvas of summer blue; this was a roiling mass thrusting itself into every available inch of sky. Perhaps I interpreted the movement as violent because Michael was flying this day. I imagined a plane moving through the core of the congestus formation, bucked along as pockets of air expanded and swirled and tumbled over one another, making a flight path about as smooth and predictable as a metal sphere’s trip through the landscape of a pinball machine.
On the ground, the whipping wind moulded my long chartreuse skirt around my legs while my head remained tilted towards the sky. A tiny speck of green disappearing from sight as the topmost mounds of cumulus pushed higher, leaving the earth behind.
