Cloudspotting

Though his lucid descriptions of clouds meet scientific rigor, Pretor-Pinney is not above resorting to more colorful language. As when he describes the puffy stratocumulus as looking "like someone couldn't find the 'off' switch on the cotton candy machine." A nimbostratus, he tells us, "won't be winning any cloud beauty contests." Underneath a child's lovely drawing of a family and clouds, he offers this trenchant observation: "Six-year-olds are generally rubbish at drawing but, being amongst the best cloudspotters in the world, they are actually quite good at drawing Cumulus."

Perhaps the most appealing thing to Pretor-Pinney about clouds though is their inherently democratic nature. "The great thing about clouds is that everyone has something to say about them because everyone has a perspective on them, literally," he says. If we choose, we are all cloud witnesses, free to watch as they reimagine themselves, moment by moment, with nothing to restrain them.

So deep down, maybe we really do like clouds -- maybe they're even good for us. A cigar may sometimes be just a cigar, but a cloud is almost never just a cloud. "Clouds are for dreamers," Pretor-Pinney writes, "and their contemplation benefits the soul. Indeed, all who consider the shapes they see within them will save on psychoanalysis bills."

Wouldn't you know it, there are even studies showing that face time with the sky and clouds really can make us feel better. "There's actually a lot of work on the effects of nature on physical, emotional and social well-being," says Nancy Etcoff, a psychologist and director of the Program in Aesthetics and Well Being at Harvard University. One study showed that patients recovered faster from gallbladder surgery and took less medication when their hospital beds faced windows rather than a brick wall.

In controlled everyday work environments, "our attention is really stressed," says Etcoff. "We are constantly multi-tasking and focusing on minute things." Stepping outside, she says, we pay attention in an effortless way, because nature is inherently fascinating and always changing. "The birds, the trees, the sky and clouds are very pleasing to us because they capture our attention without us doing anything. They restore our attention, recharge our batteries."

Nowhere is the feel-good vibe of clouds more evident than on the Cloud Appreciation Society's Web site, where members have submitted thousands of cloud photographs (even a cloud of the month!), paintings and poems ("The Banality of Blue Skies," "Clouds -- A Reverie," and "The Other Side (of God).") There is also a discussion area that is "open to those with thoughts, questions and opinions about absolutely anything. Anything, that is, so long as it is about clouds."

But let's be perfectly clear about this: Clouds are not suddenly cool, hip, happening or stylish. There is not a cloud movement afoot. There is nothing the least bit "it" about them. A few Weather Channel geeks might be able to rattle off the names of the most prominent types of clouds, but for almost everyone on the planet they remain a little noticed backdrop to the daily sally through life. We all see clouds, yes, but do we see them?

"I was trying with the book to get people to look at something that was so familiar, but to just try and think about it in a slightly different way," says Pretor-Pinney. "And that's a kind of shift that I think can happen. They look up and these clouds have been there the whole time, but they look up and go, 'Wait a minute, they are incredibly beautiful and I never really stopped to think about it.' "