I call it the landscape of the sky.
With my fading eyesight, the landscape around me is confused by haze, but the sky is brightly lit and clouds do not require precise vision.
The sky is best viewed while lying supine, a position kind to my tired bones. If I drift off, the landscape may have changed without me. Some clouds have dissolved altogether, reclaimed by the empty sky, while other small clouds may have been claimed by a larger one.
I must be imagining it but it seems to me the cloudscape is the boundary land between earth and outer space, or maybe even a border between living and dying.
Sometimes those high, thin, wispy clouds are the leading edge of an approaching storm. And when the clouds sink toward the earth heavy with moisture, I am glad.
When the storm has passed, the north wind drives the white-sailed galleons along the horizon, their cargo spent.
Phila Rogers 
Phila,
As always, so beautifully written. Like you, my eyesight is fading so that there is a gauze like quality to what I see. The clouds move within that. Thank you for your keen observations.
Lynn
Hi Phila,
Thanks for your continuing posts. and my getting to read them. Makes me wish I was laying down next to you, drifting off watching the clouds in their silent, elegant, almost-imperceptible movements. Lots to know going on up here they say. And you have taken the time to understand their language. A fine December musing.
We won’t have a chance to see you this year. Sister Barb from Carpinteria is coming our way to the East Bay for Christmas. We’ll go up and spend a few days in our new thing: a second home in St Helena! No, we didn’t strike it rich. Instead we decided that our savings, untouched (more or less) since we retired from the University years ago might as well go to a good cause: us. With no children or near-do-wells in the family, it’s time. Thank god for university pensions. It’s actually a manufactured home in a beautiful park called Vineyard Valley, just off the Silverado Trail. About a mile from Main Street St Helena. Just getting to know the Valley and what’s really a homey village (when the tourists thin out). Great, stimulating adventure for this time in our lives.
I really love you posts, brief and thoughtful. Still full of the natural world as always. And still full of Phila.
Have a wonderful Holiday with that lucky family of yours.
Steve & Lynn
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Phila –
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