Clouds, made in America

America still does clouds well, clouds may be the best thing America does, and I enjoyed taking pictures of them while traveling cross-country, whether they were in the background or the foreground or whether they were the central image of whatever photograph I was taking. There's something very American about American clouds. Many times on the trip I would get goose-bumps seeing them in the sky, in Maryland and Georgia and North Carolina, even in Connecticut. I came to believe as the trip went on that each state had its own particular brand of clouds, just like each state has a flag all its own. Tennessee clouds were thin, sinuous, for instance, while Kentucky clouds were overblown, pompous and so on. Seeing clouds this way, the clouds of each state took on a distinct personality, an individuality, or at least that's the way I saw them, and I came to believe that I could tell when we'd crossed the border from one state to another by the shapes of the clouds I was seeing.

Somewhere in Maryland, along the Old National Highway (40 East) it started to rain, the kind of rain that doesn't seem like it will ever stop. The clouds became an angry mob with a seething resentment of sunshine, harmony, and political comity. The RV rocked and slid around on the old road, and the clouds did nothing about it. Driving, I could only look ahead, keep my hands tightly on the wheel, my eyes on the road. I lost sight of the clouds, there were no clouds to see, there was just one cloud, the biggest cloud ever, a gray mass made up of indistinguishable features. I drove with real determination through the rainstorm, turning my thoughts from clouds to our great national history: first we fought the Indians, then the British, then the Rebels, and now we're fighting ourselves, by which I mean the demeanor and words of our President, and opioids in small towns and the kind overall malaise all empires face sooner or later.

Clouds above gas station, Frederick, MD, June 19, 2019.