The Cloudspotter’s Guide (Gavin Pretor-Pinney)

If you’re the sort of wandering soul who walks around with your head in the clouds, this is the book for you. The Cloudspotter’s Guide is an official publication of The Cloud Appreciation Society, of which I am a proud member. For the record, I am number 5191 of 13,494 current members.

Haven’t heard of The Cloud Appreciation Society? This is a UK-based group (http://www.cloudappreciationsociety.org/) devoted to combating “blue-sky thinking” and encouraging the appreciation of the “ephemeral beauty” of clouds. The society even has an official manifesto, which I find exciting; I feel like I’m doing something subversive, coloring outside the lines, rejecting polite society’s usual groupthink. In a way, that is exactly what cloudspotters do.

“Blue-sky thinking” is “happily ever after” thinking. You know how it goes: the prince and princess overcome all their problems and live happily ever after. Every day is perfectly perfect, with a deep blue sky, no troubles, no clouds—day after day after day. How boring is that? Yet I and many others grew up believing that this was how life should be: You go through some hard times, then you get everything together and keep it together forever. Everything will be beautiful forever. Wrong!

Clouds remind us that beauty (as life) is ephemeral. You can’t freeze your life on one perfect day and keep it perfect forever, and you can’t capture a cloud. You can take a picture, but even the clearest photograph will be missing some of the essence of the cloud, which is motion. Clouds are in a constant state of flux, which you know if you’ve ever watched a parade of puffy clouds marching across the sky. The Cumulus that looks like a unicorn now will look more like a squashed toad in a few moments. That breathtaking sunset with fire-tinged Altocumulus will soon be gone. Stop and look, at least for a moment.

I’m at the end of this post and realize I haven’t written much about the book. Briefly, The Cloudspotter’s Guide describes cloud classification, how clouds form, and how to identify and appreciate clouds. I wish some of the photographs were in color, but otherwise this is an informative and enjoyable read (and you can see lots of color cloud photos on the society’s website).