As I drove south out of Chicago toward home this weekend, I was treated to the perfect end to this nearly perfect weekend. Almost as soon as I was on the interstate, the sky began to do some amazing tricks, seemingly just for my enjoyment. The relative flatness of northern Illinois is the perfect place to watch things happen in the sky, and this trip home was one spectacular picture postcard after another. For the next four hours, I saw clouds of every variety. The sun provided the perfect lighting for some astoundingly beautiful natural works of art.
We had had nothing but high thin clouds and rain for most of the day. But as I entered the highway, storm clouds appeared directly in front of me. Then a part of the sky cleared to the right and the sun lit up the solid deep blue-purple of the storm and the fresh leafy greenness of the fields and woods below it. I love the way colors of the landscape are so beautifully saturated before a storm. As I drove south, lightning put on a display right through my front windshield.
Clouds lowered around me as I drove into the storm, then random huge drops of rain, then a downpour for a minute or so. As the rain cleared, I saw almost every type of cloud imaginable from low scudding puffs to towering thunderheads. White clouds that grew from little cotton balls to huge fluffy monsters. Sheer bands of dark clouds that colored the clouds behind them unnatural hues. Streaks and curlicues and feathers. Sunbeams poked through on my right, and a double rainbow arched over the left.
As the sun moved from late afternoon brightness to evening glow, clouds were lit from every angle. Every single moment was more spectacular than the last. I saw every color in the sky tonight, and a thousand shades of each. Deep golds, bright yellows, firey oranges and reds, deep purples, lavenders, rosy pinks, turquoise sky between the clouds and robin's egg blue at the horizon. Yes, even greens. Not angry stormy greens, but pretty light greens where the sunlight turned the sheerest of clouds a warm gold and the blue of the sky was turned, for an instant, to green.
The giant red ball of the sun fell below the horizon just as I reached the eastern outskirts of St. Louis. By the time I drove across the downtown bridge, the evening star was shining brightly and the tiniest sliver of new moon was rising in the twilight, again directly in front of me.
Just for a moment, I thought of wanting photos. I didn't have my camera. But even if I had, I don't think I would have taken any. It made me happy just to watch nature unfold in front of me and to remember that there is still so very much beauty in the world. And I like to think that this was one show that was just for me.
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