I watched an approaching cloud for half an hour as I descended today from Diablo’s summit. It was darkness split by bright bolts, a long, dismal veil of rain trailing below. At about 4:45 today it came over me, though that is not exactly true. The storm cloud was low, a flat base about 2,000 feet above sea level, and at 4:45 I was at about 2,900 feet.
I spent the next hour hiking inside a storm cloud.
At times I could see no farther than the next fifty feet of trail. The hair rose on the back of my neck, but no lightning struck. Why would it? The ground was right there, the cloud’s electrical charge transferred with each sidle of mist past branch, each filtering of breeze through moss. Or that is what I told myself, and got down off the most exposed ridge as soon as I could nonetheless.
I have seen sparrows dart out across the road just as a car passes, surfing the pressure ridge before the grille. Hawks and vultures beeline for miles chasing thermals. I have often wondered whether birds can see the air the way we see the contours of the landscape. Today I saw the air, great billowing downdrafts off the lee side of ridges, slipstream currents fifty yards thick, rivers and fountains within the cloud, a million different opacities, and wondered if a steelhead holding on a gravel bed might find it vaguely familiar.
And a million shades of green within the cloud, the lights and shadows chopped off the spectrum’s ends. Oak and bay and coyote bush, Toxicodendron and Clematis and manzanita and chamise, their greens as different as pink and black. Castilleja shone an impossible magenta at trailside, and larkspurs in scarlet and azurite. One Ceanothus in full pale blue bloom mantled with a full white virgin’s bower, and I laughed at the extravagance.
12.8 miles and 3,786 feet climbed today, 120.5 and 26,206 for the year so far, and an eternity hiking in a cloud. If ever I wonder whether this life is worth the cost, remind me of that hour.
