Still on Cloud Nine

Though I could talk about the clouds for days or weeks on end, I had just an hour of pleasant cloud conversation and cloud gazing with Molly Walsh of Thurston Talk last week, in advance of my April 18th talk at the Olympia Country and Gold Club. Read Molly’s article in Thurston Talks here. And then join me on April 18th at 5:30 (socializing) for my presentation (6 p.m.). This event is open to the public! No need to bring your four iron! I’ll have books on hand to sell and sign.

Olympia Country and Golf Club
3636 Country Club Drive NW, Olympia
360-866-7121

Sideways Wins Silver Nautilus Book Award

A Sideways Look at Clouds has just been named a Nautilus Award Winner--a silver medal in the Science and Cosmology category. The Nautilus Awards represent "Better Books for a Better World." Of course the clouds make the world a better place (actually a livable place as a well as a gorgeous place) but I'm beyond thrilled to think my book on clouds could help make the world a better place, too. 

The core mission of the Nautilus Awards Program is to celebrate and honor books that "support conscious living & green values, high-level wellness, positive social change, and spiritual growth."  How can a book about clouds do this?

My book is a hybrid--natural-history, memoir, humor--and encourages every reader to look up and better appreciate the ubiquitous, life-giving, shape-shifting clouds in all their forms. Even the gray blankets that rain and rain and rain. Appreciating the beauty and function of clouds is just one part of my book. Understanding what a cloud is and does takes some grappling with physics, chemistry, and meteorology. What is a cloud? How does it float? What does it tell ups about atmospheric conditions and the weather ahead? What is the role of clouds in the changing global climate? Understanding what a cloud is also means some grappling with what you, the reader, want the clouds to mean.  

When I started writing my book, I wasn't interested in studying what kind of weather a certain type of cloud indicated. I was more interested in what would happen if I began looking up and wondering about something I had taken for granted all my life.  Why did I know so little about them? Why don't we talk about them? What happened happened over eight years--the forging of a profound, abiding connection to the clouds while also embracing the ephemeral nature of the clouds--of life.  The clouds were (and are) for me a source of joy, wonder, comfort, and even solace. As a global natural phenomenon that requires special equipment or access to observe, the generous clouds are there for everyone to explore. There's no cost, no side-effects, no expiration date. 

What you'll notice when you start looking up is that...things are looking up. 

The Way You Do Anything...

NOTE: This is the second half of my story presented at the Center Salon on April 13, 2018. The first half can be read here. Both stories are true and appear in slightly different form in my book, A Sideways Look at Clouds.

It didn’t take long for the euphoria of my hallway epiphany to wear off. I knew nothing about clouds and assumed I could learn what I needed to know by watching them, by reading books on clouds and weather and atmospheric. 

The clouds proved to be overwhelming—in the sky and on the page. There were so many of them—and they were hard to identify. They were constantly changing shape, by the minute, by the hour, and over the course of the day. Their Latin names were difficult to keep straight. Understanding the clouds required a specialized vocabulary, a firm grasp of chemistry and physics, and more math than an English major like me could ever hope to learn. 

My Muse may have sparked the idea for my book, but apparently she wasn’t going help me understand the clouds or figure out how write about them.

I could not find my way into the clouds. I was lost.  I was frustrated. I was ready to give up. Until l remembered what happened 10 years earlier when I had lost my way—literally.

I was trying out a new yoga studio I had driven past many times. It was on the ground floor of a two-story office building that wrapped around a downtown corner. The yoga studio had big storefront windows on both sides of the block. Signs and banners with the studio’s name doubled as privacy shades from the street.

I walked toward the door thatI assumed was the entrance. It was locked. I walked around the corner to a similar door on the other side of the studio. It too was locked. I continued further down the block to another door. It opened and  so I stepped off the sidewalk and into a vestibule. I looked around for signs to the studio. There were none. 

I walked down a dim corridor lined with closed doors of various small businesses, none offering yoga classes. At the end of the hall I found an elevator. I pushed the button to call it. The elevator arrived, I got on. I pushed the button for the second floor. Why not? I stepped out into another hallway with more office doors. It led to another dead end. I started giggling. I walked back toward the elevator, but took the stairs and found myself in the interior lobby of the building, facing the wide open doors to the yoga studio. 

I walked toward a small desk where a woman (the teacher I presumed) sat in her yoga togs and in an aura of calm. 

“Hi!” I blurted out. “I’m glad I found my way in! The entrance from the street wasn’t exactly obvious so I….” 

I recounted my story of the locked doors, the elevator, the hallways, the stairway. She listened patiently but didn’t smile or acknowledge that the entrance was perhaps a problem.  

Instead, she handed me a pen, gestured toward the sign-in sheet, and said matter-of-factly, “The way you do anything is the way you do everything.”

How rude! How dare she? How wise! She was totally right. This, this, this total stranger, this yogini knew me better than I knew myself. 

The way we do anything—and therefore everything—is the result of who we are: our age, our childhood experiences, our families, our education, our friendships, the condition of our physical bodies, the acuity of our senses, our mental and emotional state. Our habits. Our quirks. All of it. 

We each have a unique and idiosyncratic way of being in the world, of looking at the world the lies before us, and of sharing our understanding of the world with each other. 

And so, I year into my study of the clouds, I embraced the truthful words of the condescending-but-insightful yogini. To find my way into the clouds, I would wander and get lost. I would take the scenic route, follow my curiosity, try all the doors, make wrong turns, giggle a lot, go down rabbit holes, hit dead ends, get derailed, find some truth, make some discoveries along the way.

It wasn’t necessarily the best---nor certainly the most efficient way---to write a book but it was my way forward—or sideways—into the clouds. 

Sideways Plus #6 +Droplets+

Here is installment number 5 for A Sideways Look at Clouds--an excerpt and supplemental content for each chapter of my book you to enjoy. Click these links to  the first five: Prologue /Cloud /Visible / Mass / Water

Each chapter of my book covers one term in the definition of a cloud: a visible mass of water droplets or ice crystals suspended in the atmosphere above the earth. This fourth posting covers the chapter on Water.

"First things first: cloud droplets are not teardrop-shaped. They are tiny, spherical balls or globes. Raindrops are not teardrop-shaped either. Small raindrops are spherical and large ones are shaped like hamburger buns--flat on the bottom and slightly convex on the top. Even human tears are not teardrop-shaped. When they appear (in our eyes and on our cheeks) they are shaped like puddles and rivers. The only time water droplets naturally assume the teardrop shape is wen, as a collection of many droplets, they drip from a leaky faucet."

Understanding the shape of water is no easy task. The most difficult chapter of my book to write and the one that required the deepest plunge into atmospheric science and physics, was the chapter on droplets. What made the droplets of water in clouds different from other water in the atmosphere? Was it a matter of droplet size? Was it something in the droplet?  What was the difference between the water in the cloud and the water next to the cloud in the blue sky?

Water water everywhere...These small clouds (cumulus humilis) are composed of liquid water droplets. The blue sky around the clouds contains anywhere from zero to four percent (by volume) of invisible water vapor--molecules of water too small to be considered droplets, too small to scatter sunlight toward our eyes so we see a watery whiteness that is a cloud.

A droplet is a collection of enough water molecules to scatter sunlight and become visible to the naked eye. "Enough" is billions of water molecules (H20), which adds up to between 2 and 200 micrometers (one micrometer is 1/50th the diameter of a human hair). This is significantly larger than the wavelengths of visible sunlight hitting those droplets. Those wavelengths are between 0.4 and 0.7 micrometers.

These numbers did not help me understand the magic of the cloud droplet so I spent an afternoon at the Atmospheric Science Department's outreach office at the University of Washington in Seattle. Here, with the help of a very patient grad student, I plunged deeper and deeper into the vastly tiny world of the droplet...down into to the molecule...down into the hydrogen atom...the oxygen atom...the subatomic particles...and lots of squirmy lines and dashes that represent energy moving through the atmosphere. 

Understanding what a "droplet" was led me to The University of Washington where I reached a deep understanding of how much I didn't not understand. 

The human brain isn't very good at imagining the very huge or the very small. So holding the idea of a cloud and the subatomic world of the water droplets in that cloud simultaneously  in my mind's eye was stupefying. It was as if my brain simply shut down (perhaps to prevent it from exploding). Over the years, I have kept at it. I watch the clouds and try to grasp the fact that some are stretching across the landscape for several thousand of square miles or are reaching heights of 47,000 feet. And then I try to imagine the unimaginable quantity of droplets--all the little tiny spheres of water--in those clouds. 

This is much easier to do when you are walking in the fog, which I hope you do. Though you may not get a sense of the size of the mass of fog you are walking in, you will be able to see the liquid water droplets floating in the air around you. Notice there is space between them--that's the water vapor, the invisible form of water. 

In each of the ten chapters of A Sideways Look at Clouds, I discuss one of the ten official cloud types. Altostratus appears in the "Droplets" chapter. Though this mid-level layer cloud is considered "boring," it is fascinating in its own right. This cloud is composed primarily of frozen water--ice crystals and snowflakes--and may even have liquid-droplet clouds embedded within it. This cloud is typically more than 6,500 feet thick and spread over several thousands of square miles. It is not a precipitating cloud (that's the lower Nimbostratus) and is very useful 

This is an Altostratus translucidus (translucent enough to reveal the position of the sun, but thick enough to block it from creating shadows). The patches and shreds of lower gray clouds (possibly stratus fractus, or scud) would be white if the Altostratus weren't present. 

Though this mid-level layer cloud is considered "boring," it is fascinating in its own right. This cloud is composed primarily of frozen water--ice crystals and snowflakes--and may even have liquid-droplet clouds embedded within it. This cloud is typically more than 6,500 feet thick and spread over several thousands of square miles. It is not a precipitating cloud (that's the lower Nimbostratus) and is very useful for improving your photography. These clouds are thick enough to prevent the sun from casting shadows and so create a soft, filtered kind of light that is ideal for avoiding squinty selfies, capturing detail and texture of small things in nature (flowers, insects, leaf veins), and waterfalls. 

Don't wait for a sunny day to get out in nature with your camera. Altostratus clouds allow for great upclose photos. Here, our native Osoberry blossoms shelter a tiny spider as an umbrella. Doesn't it know that Altostratus don't rain?