Above the Clouds - Closer to Heaven

If you have read the opening chapter of my three travel-based novels - Rebecca, The Memory of Dreams, or Travels With A Frog - you will soon realize that to travel from Australia to Europe is a major undertaking. A flight, usually in two stages, that takes between 25 and 30 hours. Unless you can afford to travel 1st class then you are bundled into a space holding some three hundred or more passengers with barely enough room to avoid the person next to you, and certainly not enough room to stretch your legs comfortably.

The challenge is to find something to do for these twenty-four or more hours. Some take sleeping pills and try to sleep. Some restlessly try to watch one movie after another. Some keep getting up and pacing the aisle.

What do I do? Well, if it's at all light outside I look at the clouds. We, or at least some of us, can forecast the weather by looking up at the clouds from below. It has been an age-old pastime for those concerned with whether it was going to rain or shine. But now we can look at the clouds from above. The variety of forms is infinite. I still don't know which cloud is which when it comes to giving them names. But that doesn't matter. They don't need names to enjoy their forms.

Returning from France in June 2005 I looked at the clouds from the time the plane took off in Paris until we flew into the shadow of the earth somewhere over northern Iran. I took a lot of photos, but until recently had not bothered looking closely at them. Today, as part of my enforced stay-at-home activity, I looked at them again.

Here are a few of the images I took back in 2005. Above the clouds... and closer to heaven...

[Click on the images to see them full size.]