The sky has always fascinated me.  I will go outside at midnight and just stare at the stars. Because I live in such a rural area I can usually see them all vividly.  There are no city lights to detract. At around 5:00 every evening I will look to the west and watch for the next 30 minutes as the sky turns orange, pink, salmon, yellow, and navy blue. And on the rare occasion when I am conscious in the early hours when the sun starts to peek over the Teton Mountains, I am in awe of that as well, all though in a sleepier, subdued way. In the winter I watch snow, in the summer I watch lightning, all year around I watch the wind, or at least the effects of it.

Clouds are mesmerizing.  They billow up and flatten out and streak across.  Sometimes they are so thin you have to squint hard to block out the suns harsh rays to see the wisps scattered here and there in the sky.  Often they are rolly, lumpy handfuls of cotton slowly changing, getting more bunched up here, more stretched out there, drifting en mass from one edge of my sky to the other.   So today I am sharing an awesome website with you.  The clouds shown are so surreal they look photoshopped. The weather man who gave this site to me assures me they are not. Enjoy. http://pic1.funtigo.com/valuca?g=25544746&cr=1

When I see the sun start to set a feeling of serenity comes over me.  It speaks to my soul using the language of color.  As an artist, color is a very powerful way to communicate. Days when things haven’t quite fallen the way I wanted always seem less important when I can see the vibrant, or subtle changes in the sky as the sun sinks behind the Menan Butte. I have many many photos of those sunsets.  I want to capture the feeling I get when I see it.  I’ve been known to run outside barefoot in winter, camera in hand to catch the changing sky before it’s gone. I’ve been the object of some good-natured ribbing over this. (“There goes mom again, taking another picture of the sunset.”)  I don’t really care.  I wish I could paint sunsets that give the same feeling I get when I view one.

Lightning storm are terrifying.  They are unpredictable and powerful.  My fear of lightning is tempered by my awe at the power and majesty I see. I have had a life-long fear of talking on the phone during a thunderstorm.  This was fueled by tales of my great-grandmother hiding under the bed with her children and exacerbated by the news that our neighbor was electrocuted during a thunderstorm while talking on the phone. My husband would tell me how unlikely that would be every time a storm came and I would refuse to answer the incessantly ringing phone. Then I would find magazine articles, or news stories about other unfortunate individuals “caught in the act”. One of my favorite stories was of Dannion Brinkley. If you want a fascinating account you should check out his books on what happened to him as a result. I don’t think I ever convinced Mike about the dangers of phone talking during a thunderstorm, but now I don’t worry as much.  I usually use my cell phone.  No wires and no direct line for the electricity to follow straight into my ear.

It is cold here in Idaho.  My brother’s blog of yesterday tells some of the tales of Idaho winters.  I could always tell when it was below zero.  All you had to do was breathe in through your nose.  If your nose hairs froze it was probably at least heading into the negative range. Blizzards of years long ago were much harsher than the blizzards of the last 20 years.  Our road would be totally impassable for days.  If you had to go out you needed to hike over the cement hard drifts which were so dense we drove our extremely heavy old station wagon on top of it just to get a picture. I really didn’t mind being snowed in.  It was a great excuse to;

#1. Not go to school.  This was always the goal.  School was cancelled many days back in the 60’s and 70’s in our neck of the woods. And,

#2. Stay home.  When you can not drive anywhere you have a perfect excuse to play, read, goof off, build snowmen, and enjoy the day. I think our road crews nowdays are just a little bit too on the ball.  It wouldn’t hurt to be stranded at home once in a while. I kind of mourn for those days, for me and my kids.

 Once in a while, though, we really do have a great big storm come in that is reminiscent of my childhood.  The one I remember the most happened three years ago on New Years night.  A huge blizzard was raging outside.  Our family was all home and cozy by the wood-burning stove watching a movie and enjoying a peaceful relaxing evening.  We could hear the wind whistling outside, which only seemed to add to our feeling of snugness and security.  After the movie ended my husband went to the window to watch the storm.  All of the windows on the front side of our house were totally pasted with snow.  He opened the front door instead, so that he could see.  The wind caught the door and blew it in, hard! We have double front doors and somehow the pressure of the wind forced open the second door as well. Immediately we had a full raging blizzard in our living room.  There was a lot of shouting and running as we got hammers and towels and people pushing against the wind to close the doors. Finally the door closed and we leaned against it in relief.  Then one of my daughters wanted to see the blizzard for herself. She went out in the back yard on the opposite side of the house, where the wind would not affect her.  What she saw caused the second panic of less than 5 minutes.  The wind had sucked the fire up from our wood stove. Flames and sparks streamed away from our house toward the stand of trees in our back yard. We then had to run water both up to the chimney, where my husband poured, trying to douse the flames, and down to the wood stove that was now screaming like a blast furnace.  Within a few heart-stopping minutes we had the fire out and stood to survey the damage.  We decided it was time to take a drive.  Our 4x4 Ford Explorer was able to break through the drifts on our driveway without a problem.  We took a short tour of the neighborhood.  Not another soul was out.  No one was on the road. Not one other car.  It was very sobering to think that no one was outside. Not one person would have noticed our house on fire. We could have gone to bed while the fire took over the house.  I think we had a little help that night.  As stressful as that episode was, I’m grateful that it happened.  If the windows had been clear, if the front door had been easily opened and shut, if we had no reason to look in the back yard, we would not have seen our fire.  I’m grateful for the seemingly annoying things that happened that night that ultimately blessed our family.