Anyone who has traveled outside of cities has seen cloud shadows. These ephemera are especially sharp and obvious in the wide open spaces and clear sunlight of mid-western and western states. For some inexplicable reason, they delight me greatly.
This past weekend, we visited The Great Sand Dunes National Park in southern Colorado. The Dunes rise up against the San Juan Mountains, all plans and ridges, a crazy quilt of surface textures: ripples and ropes, coarse and fine grit in shades of tan, gray, yellow, and dun with a feathering of black. They are magnificent in the calm, even light of a partly cloudy sky. Then the sun breaks through and the thick shelf of cloud overhead breaks into a hundred shifting veils, floating across the white sun and casting pale intimations on the surfaces of the sand. They are fleeting, a mere glimpse and the shadow has moved on, taking a different geometry as it conforms to the contours of a new part of the landscape. This, then this, then this.
The conditions must be right: high clouds, distance, light and shadow. The truth of things is clear. Each act, each moment in life is a cloud shadow, defined for a fleeting moment by the contours of the land. The slight breeze, imperceptible on the surface and all is changed forever.
