The First Time I Saw Nimbus

A couple of years ago, I saw Nimbus for the first time.

She drifted in over the beach alone, the sole cloud in the spring sky. Sunlight gathered along her edges and softened as it passed through.

As she crossed overhead, she blotted out the sun for a moment, wrapping the beach in moving shadow.

Banking left from beyond the dunes, a seabird glided across the open sky.

The Snowy Sea Eagle sailed across her path once, then circled back and did it again. The bird dipped through the air with the confidence of someone who knew the coastal air currents well. Nimbus drifted onward as if the entire exchange made perfect sense.

The two of them shared the sky together for a while, each traveling differently through the same onshore breeze.

I remember standing there watching them, thinking that children understand this kind of moment instinctively. We adults usually require a few extra reminders.

A cloud becomes a companion.

A bird becomes a guide.

An afternoon becomes a story.

Like most everybody else, I have seen countless clouds of all shapes and sizes. They tend to travel in familial herds. Tall, short, round, bulky, stacked one upon another, thinly spread across the horizon like butter on bread. Never before or since have I seen a lone, silvery-white puffball cloud floating absolutely, totally alone, suspended beneath an azure blue dome.

In an instant, I knew her name. Nimbus has remained on my mind ever since.

Since that afternoon, my imagination has drifted with Nimbus above mountains, farmlands, ranches, crowded cities, empty deserts, forests, coastlines, storms, and the endless weather connecting them all.

As I stood there that day, imagination alight, I realized I would someday write her story.

The Nimbus Cloudbook begins here.