"Conjured up by wind and sunlight..."

It happened again yesterday. During a drive through the city, the mundane task of getting from point A to point B was transformed - I followed a curve and found myself with my back to the sun and my face to the most glorious skyscape. Edmonton's distracted driving laws forgotten, I basked in the view, admiring the sculpted clouds, their crevices a myriad of subtle hues, regretting, once again, that I am in no way a photographer.  But the impossibility of capturing the moment didn't darken it; if anything, it made the fleeting beauty all the more precious.

Methinks my fascination with skyscapes is a culmination of having grown up in the prairies. While I do have a deep appreciation for the topographical subtleties of rollings fields broken only by copses of birch and windbreak rows of aspen ('flat' is an adjective reserved for parking lots - and only before their first round of frost heaves), I only ever focus on the landscape on days of empty sky. When it's perfectly clear or totally overcast, I treasure the hues and dips and divots as we drive by. Otherwise, I see them only as foils for the main attraction - a lovely footer for the ever changing canvas of sun, wind, and sky.