About a year ago Grandfather D. told me he liked pictures of clouds and he’d like me sending them to him. I already liked looking at clouds, but this gave me a reason to work at it. I’m happiest like a scout on a mission.

I found I like clouds in all their moods. I like how paying attention to them keeps me grounded. There have been countless times in the last year when I have ventured outside crying, uncertain, lost, terrified by the world we lived in only to see the sky and have all that replaced by wonder.

Today has been a rough one. Yesterday was too. If its been rough for you, maybe these pictures collected last year will help.

June, July, August 2025

This was the first cloud pic I took last June. I don’t think I was getting serious about cloud watching yet, but the way these were soft and yet call the eye spoke to me.

I took this on my first long walk with Grandfather D. The walk I first started telling him my story and the story of the girls who were also boys I idolized as a kid.

Anacostine is the island’s first recorded name as far as I can tell, but I’m sure it had another before it and another before that. It was given that name sometime between 1665 and 1670. That was when the Nacostine people living south of the V in the river were driven north by the white settlements down the river and settled on her. I will call her that until I find an older, more correct form, or she tells me her secret one.

She is a loving island with many small protected places where I have prayed or had deep conversations. But also, when I go to her at night I always ask permission before I enter, if you get my meaning. This picture shows her in all her complexity and power. She’s appears almost Lovecraftian in only a way a powerful ecosystem could be.

Summer in DC brings a lot of this type of sky. Fast moving thunderstorms make everything green for a while before the thunder riders move off and take the clouds with them.

You can tell I took this one in an uber. Sometimes you can catch clouds with intent hiding among clouds which are mostly just vapor. The two in the front look like they are planning something. I wonder what it might have been?

Beach Trip - September

My beach trip with J. was full of beautiful sights but I think this cloud formation takes the cake. None of the pictures in my phone did it justice. I think we sat out on the porch for almost an hour, interrupting our conversation every few minutes to point and go “Can you believe that?”.

Another photo that does no justice to its moment. That night there were many semi transparent layers of cloud, each moving independently. The moon shown furiously bright but periodically disappeared as if eaten by the sky.

We were walking quickly and it seemed to me as if she were a fox in the underbrush beside us. By the time we turned back southward we had had become dogs on the moon’s scent—her ducking and diving, always eluding us.

I think those clouds chose their color just for this photo.

September and October, 2025

These were the last clouds of summer. I know because the next picture in my camera roll is the goldenrod I found last fall (pictured below). Looking at them together I can’t help but wonder if the clouds were imitating it, or if it was imitating the clouds.

When I saw these clouds I thought the buffalo had come back in their multitudes.

This picture has three completely different skies in it.

Sights like this make one understand phrases like “the glory of the day.” J. and I watched this sky a long time, eating sandwiches on a rocky outcropping.

I offered tobacco here—who wouldn’t with clouds like those—and gave an impromptu sermon to an audience of ladybugs, who seemed appreciative. I can say with absolute certainty I never saw more ladybugs in my life. We were picking them off of hours after.

Their appearance brought us joy not sorrow, but at that number I still think there’s no word but plague. It was a somewhat biblical occurrence.

Three Photos About Something Else

I’ll end with three photos which I took for other reasons but which had remarkable clouds none the less. The sky is never just background.

I took this photo Thanksgiving day. I was on a walk between helping in the kitchen and dinner. I walked a few miles and found a bench on which I could offer tobacco to the ancestors. I invited them to dinner, to eat with my mouth and eat from our table and be welcomed as family.

As I sat there I saw a young hawk sitting across the road. Seeing her relieved me, honestly. I cared less about the symbolism than proof life was still finding a way in an area covered in trash, rusting metal, and thick stands of invasive bamboo.

I watched it for a while and managed to get this shot just as she launched herself off the branch. However, I think the alligator skin sky is the real star of the show.

I think this was on or about Halloween. It was still warm enough that I wasn’t wearing shoes in the park.

Sometimes, at dusk, if you look just right, you can see gossamer strands of magic stretching out from D.C.. These are the ties that bind us in more ways than we can imagine into a life AJJ referred to as a “death machine”. Sometimes, the clouds help you see them.

Took this picture to show my adoptive grandparents the place I’m going to live one day. The tiny little clouds at the top are photobombing the shot, laughing as they do so.

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