The clouds lately — huge, like freshly frothed whipped cream, pile after frothy pile. At first the tableau is modernist — a solid blue hue of a sky with cartoon-like puffs and whisps. As the hour draws closer to three, we rewind a couple hundred years to the romantic period. With dramatic gold and rose beams slanting through foggy gaps, in between towering, gathered condensation that look as majestic as thrones for the gods. All grey and dense and full of electric energy, claps of thunder.
It’s something else — driving 20 miles up and over the pass and watching how dramatically the mountains dictate the weather. One mile it’s pouring rain and I’m hunched over my steering wheel trying to see through the flood, and the next it’s sunny skies — all petrachor and dewy freshness.
These thunderstorms are the stuff of youth — real and imagined — of hiding under blankets in my living room, listening to the thunder crackle and boom and hearing the rattle of our long, flimsy glass bay windows. Or running out onto the porch, barefoot and screaming as the rain comes down in sheets, wind whipping through the trees.