What birds? Look at the clouds!

I read with great interest an article in the Skagit Valley Herald that the Economic Development Alliance of Skagit County (EDASC) and Skagit Audubon Society (where I'll be speaking about clouds on February 13) are teaming up to draw as much attention to the wintering flocks of snow geese, swans, eagles as to the county's fields of tulips in springtime.

The Economic Development Alliance is trying to make the most of the downtime in the tourism season--mid-January through the end of February to boost the local economy.  Biirders and tulip-gazers all need to eat, warm up, shop, fuel up, and sleep somewhere, right?

Truly, Skagit County is a fabulous place for birdwatching. And cloud watching. My experience of this million-acre county is mostly from the car en route to and from Bellingham. At freeway speeds, the birds are just dots in the fields in the broad, fertile floodplain of the Skagit River. Oh but the sky and the clouds! This is Big Sky Country and you get horizon-to-horizon views in several directions at once, with the clouds appearing in many forms at once between the Cascades to the east and the San Juan Islands to the west. When the clouds are just right (as they often are in Skagit County), the sunsets are less about looking west than about looking in all directions to see the dazzling, luminous glory surrounding you.

So if you're heading to Skagit County for the birds (and you certainly should) make sure you look at what's behind and above the birds. You don't even need binoculars or a spotting scope to enjoy the clouds.

Thought the Economic Development Alliance of Skagit County hasn't gotten the cloud bug yet or realized the potential of the clouds to lure droves of birdwatchers and tulip gazers to this beautiful part of Washington, I'll be singing the clouds' praises on February 13 at  7 p.m. at the Skagit Audubon Society when I'll be doing a program on my book, A Sideways Look at Clouds.

The program is free and open to the public. 7:00 Social; 7:30 Program. Padilla Bay Interpretive Center, 10441 Bayview-Edison Road, Mt. Vernon, Washington. 

Meanwhile, please check out the Birds of Winter programs in Skagit County. There's one this weekend (January 27-28) in La Conner. You can enjoy programs by fellow Mountaineers Book author and award-winning photographer Paul Bannick and biologist Martha Jordan of the Northwest Swan Conservation Association. 

And always take a moment to look up at the clouds!

Clouds at the Cole Gallery

Last Saturday, the clouds marched into Edmonds, Washington. The Edmonds Bookshop hosted me for a noon-time presentation on my book, A Sideways Look at Clouds. I arrived a bit early at this wonderful independent bookstore, browsed for a bit, and one of the bookstore staff members lead me next door to the Cole Gallery. As if there weren't enough clouds in the sky or in my book...here was a gallery full of clouds, part of an exhibit entitled  "Color, Light, and Atmosphere--Luminous Landscapes" featuring the works of Amanda Houston and David Marty.

I was thrilled to have so many paintings in one big room, rather than have to chase down the clouds in paintings displayed in multi-storied, multi-roomed art museums. No one would disagree with me that most of the paintings on display were of clouds, even though the exhibit was described as, "Stunning skies, glowing sunsets, quiet lakes and sunlit forests are part of the varied subjects in our latest show featuring a beautiful collection of landscape paintings..."

What? We know what makes the sky stunning. Clouds. We know what makes the difference between a ho-hum sunset and a spectacular one. Clouds. We know what often makes a landscape painting luminous. Clouds.  As I've said here and elsewhere, we should really call them cloudscapes and cloudsets. 

Terminology aside, Amanda Houston really gets the clouds. By chance, this Willamette Valley artist was in the Cole Gallery when I stopped in last Saturday, so I got the pleasure of meeting her and hearing about her fascinating with clouds in the Pacific Northwest. 

Just look at this stunning oil painting (36 x 48) called "Breaking Through." There's the dark clouds in the distance looking somewhat stable and then there are the brighter, peach-hued close-up clouds that are doing something more dynamic.

Upon closer inspection, it looks like the clouds have been swept. This is exactly the look of clouds that are trailing precipitation--known as virga--as they deteriorate after a storm. Virgo evaporates in the atmosphere and never reaches the ground. 

Look even closer at the artists brush strokes and you'll see--or feel, really--that she has captured the crazy energy of these clouds. Energy as lines and energy as color. Look how many colors she has included in her clouds. If you saw this detail of "Breaking Through" you might not guess that you're seeing a cloud. They should be white or gray or pink you might say. Well, sometimes they are but the more you look (and this is the goal of my book, after all) the more you will see that clouds capture all the colors of the rainbow. 

And that Amanda Houston has captured one of the many spectacular moments in the life of a cloud. She has matched the intensity of this skycape with and intensity of her artistic vision.

So...if you find yourself in charming downtown Edmonds, Washington, be sure to stop by Edmonds Bookshop (they have signed copies of A Sideways Look at Clouds) and the Cole Gallery next door. "Color, Light, and Atmosphere--Luminous Landscapes" is on exhibit until February 12. 

Pushing Up the Sky

I first encountered this charming woodcut eight years ago in Ella E. Clark's book, Indian Legends of the Pacific Northwest as I began my research for A Sideways Look at Clouds. I wrote about it in this 2010 blog but did not include this illustration or the Snohomish creation story behind it in my book. There were just too many wonderful local tribal stories about the sky and clouds to do justice to them in my book. 

In a nutshell, the story (sourced by Clark to a book written by Chief William Shelton in 1935) describes the work of several Puget Sound tribes to lift the sky--a sky so low that they bumped their heads on it. Using poles crafted from the giant fir trees and while shouting  "Ya-hoh!" (meaning "lift together") the men of the tribes managed to push the sky up to where it is now. Chief Shelton noted that in his day, the Snohomish still shouted "Ya-hoh" when doing hard work together.

On mid-winter days like today, when the the sky (aka the clouds, the thick altostratus clouds) seem a bit oppressive, I think of this story--not because I'd like the clouds to shove off, but because of the hard work required of us to keep the planet whole, to protect our natural resources, and environmental protections for wildlife and wild places.

The Indian Legends of the Pacific Northwest was first published in 1953 with a 50th anniversary edition issued in 2003 by the University of California Press. Last year, a volunteer for South Sound Climate Reality Leaders, handed me a flier outside the Capital Mall movie theater where I had just watched An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power (Al Gore's follow up to An Inconvenient Truth). The flier featured a simple illustration--clearly adapted from Inverary's Ya-hohing sky pushers. Only there was only one person using a pole--the rest were pushing the clouds with their hands. And one of the four figures was a woman. And, there was no story to explain the illustration. There was a poem--"heiroglyphic stairway" from A Love Letter to the Milkyway by Drew Dellinger.

Ya-hoh!  Ya-hoh! Ya-hoh!

Sideways Plus #4 +MASS+

Oh, dear. It's been nearly two months since my last blog posting. What can I say but...wait for it...the  clouds got in my way. 

The last quarter of 2017 was a busy one ushering my new book, A Sideways Look at Clouds, into the world of readers, skywatchers, cloud lovers, and hunched-over texting addicts. I hope those of you who bought my book (thank you!) are enjoying it, looking up more, and are appreciating the sky and clouds in new ways.

As you may recall, I am posting an excerpt and supplemental content for each chapter of my book you to enjoy. In case you missed them, here are the links to the first three: Prologue /Cloud /Visible 

Recall that 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 mass--not Pacific Northwest weather guru Cliff Mass, but the mass that is a cloud. 

"Though 'mass' has many meanings, the best fit for a cloud comes from the Oxford English Dictionary: 'a dense aggregation of objects having the appearance of a single, continuous body.'

The 'objects' in a cloud are primarily water molecules, billions of them, aggregated into liquid droplets and ice crystals, billions upon billions of them, further aggregated into a single cloud or cloud formation.

The density of this aggregation varies with the type of cloud at atmospheric conditions in which they form. According to one estimated, a typical Cumulus cloud contains about four-thousandths of an ounce of water per cubic yard. This is about a marble's worth of water in a space the side of a loveseat. A typical small Cumulus cloud contains over a million pounds of water--a weight equivalent to roughly one hundred elephants."

from A Sideways Look at Clouds

One of the most fascinating and troublesome problems I encountered understanding "mass" was understanding how so much water could float. Water--the most amazing molecule in the universe--has a trick: as water vapor condenses to liquid water, it releases a tiny bit of energy, known as "latent heat," which gives it the boost it needs to rise above the surrounding cooler air.

My other big problem was visualizing how the mass that is a cloud becomes visible. Part of my problem was imagining the  invisible water vapor in our atmosphere and the invisible process of convection that is largely responsible for many of our favorite clouds (cumulus, for instance). 

Convection is the process by which warmer air (at the surface of the earth) rises into the cooler air. Many science text books feature diagrams like this one, which relies on arrows to "explain" what is happening.

Convection is the process by which warmer air (at the surface of the earth) rises into the cooler air. Many science text books feature diagrams like this one, which relies on arrows to "explain" what is happening.

Convection is one way air is lifted in the atmosphere. On paper, watercolor artist "lift" clouds using paint and a paper towel. To my delight, I found this out in person while sitting in on a watercolor class at the Olympia Center. After several attempts (chronicled on pages 80-85 in my book), I managed to work the paper towel in the wet paint just so to create some masses that could be recognized as clouds. Sure, there's an elephant trunk in the center cloud and a witch's profile in another, but it sure was fun trying to make paint appear to float. 

If you want to try it yourself, here is a very short YouTube video to get you started. 

Next Up: Sideways Plus #4: +Water+