What Lurks Behind the Clouds 2-11-24

 What Lurks Behind the Cloud

Flynn Family Story Slingers

11 February 2024

by Cary Holmquist

Where I grew up was under the Big Sky Country, the East Side of the Continental Divide, where the Rocky Mountain Front to the west was more than 30 miles distant.  The Land of the Shining Mountains, as several native tribes called it, named for the bright Sun’s light reflecting off the snow or bare rock, depending on the season.  Those mountain peaks and jagged outlines blaze out until the shadows of evening crept over them like a dark blanket.

To the south were the tall ancient volcanic lakes called Square Butte and Crown Butte, and the lower buttes called Floweree and Shaw Buttes.  And behind them the dark peaks of the volcanic Adell Mountains and eastward the Little Belt Mountains and farther east the huddled peaks of the Highwood Mountains.

All around and to the north were no peaks.  A few low horizontal ridges we called bench lands, not at all flat—just try walking there and it becomes evident that, with all that up and down and sometimes steep, it is anything but flat.  But the landscape is largely treeless, making it look flat.  And rocky and gravelly and, in season, tall with grass or piles of snow drifts in the perpetual wind.

The wind that mostly comes from the south and west, barreling down the steep slopes of the Rocky Mountain Front and pushing along, pulled by the unimpeded plains stretching toward Alberta and Saskatchewan and on.  A constant and powerful exhaling.   

Clouds in this part of the country are almost always very high, sometimes building into puffy towers above the flat bottoms that the constant wind currents push against.  Often times the high clouds are streamers of white stretching as they travel along the several layers of wind.  And at sunrise and sunset these whipped-along streamers create the dramatic colors or orange and purple and blue and yellow that Charlie Russell paintings hold much longer that the fleeting minutes of daylight lasted.  

My childhood did not include many views of rivers, which were distant from the bench land farms where I grew up.  The rivers were in valleys that were away and below and walled by narrow forests of tall cottonwoods, thickets of willows and only clearly seen when crossing over bridges.  And the wider, deeper Missouri River was just too distant to be familiar to me.

My parents had friends who were a couple from their high school years and who lived in East Missoula.  This couple kept in touch and our families would meet and play, mostly in the Sun River Valley, where the Bakers still had family they would visit on weekends.  Roy and Clione Baker and their three kids, who were our ages and so we were instant playmates.

Once a year or so, my family would pile into whatever vehicle we had at the time and wend and roller-coaster our way west and southward up and over Rogers Pass, to cross over the Rocky Mountain Front, twisting along Montana Highway 200 through the mountain canyons and valleys, past Lincoln and through treacherous Blackfoot River Canyon and Ovando, Clearwater Junction and over Greenough and then along the next Blackfoot River Canyon to reach East Missoula.  

The first time I remember doing this, we had arrived at the Baker’s mobile home (we called them trailer houses in those days) well after dark.  We were all befuddled and bedded down quickly.

The morning’s light was soft because it came through thick clouds which came down near to the ground.  The clouds formed a ceiling through which light brightened the night shadows away.   

The day warmed gradually, as it was springtime, and the cold of the night was stubborn about giving way.  After some cold breakfast cereal and milk, we kids went out to play, wanting to explore this new place.   We were in a small trailer court, with several trailers along a couple of gravel driveways.  And off in the distance, dark walls seemed to form on all sides, walls that held up the cloudy ceiling.

Then the ceiling began to turn into curling shrouds of clouds wisps as the day warmed.  In between playing on swings and running about, we kids noticed, now and then, this slow changing that was lifting the cloudy ceiling.   The walls that held up the ceiling, now getting more light, turned into green pine trees that stood up like pointy bristles on the sides of rocky ridges and down narrow canyons. 

And the walls became taller and angled up and up as the clouds raised their curtains and finally, the forms that had been lurking behind the clouds were the close-together pyramids of mountain slopes, marching along, all around us and finally into peaks that brushed the sky half-way up to the zenith.  

At least it seemed the mountain peaks towered that tall, as we were so close to them and standing on a valley floor, chins-up gazes lifting higher and higher to the tops that were still crowned by white caps, the remainder of winter’s snow fall on the trees and resting on rock outcroppings. 

So, this is what it was like to live in the mountains!   To be protected from most of the wind, clouds shrouding the slopes until sunlight warmed their fogginess away.  It was a new world for young eyes.  Gigantic shoulders of mountains lurking behind the clouds. 

Ever since then, as I came to live amongst the mountain valleys for much of my life, I have continued to treasure the weathers that make clouds that snag on the mountains and then later drift up and away.  Revealing those gigantic mountain shoulders in rows around the valley and through which the rivers flow.  Streams that  a short time ago, had been clouds themselves.  

What Lurks Behind the Clouds

Feb 10, 2024

Carrie Keiser

The clothes have just been hung on the line, they are flapping in the breeze above our heads, Ry and I are laying on the grass at Gramma Boohers.  We are watching the clouds change and move in the sky.  It was a fun pastime to lie there and and watch the changing shapes, calling out what we see. Wondering just what might be lurking behind the clouds. 

Myrna Flynn 

February 11, 2024

Lurking in Clouds?

My son-in-law, who will remain Un-named, (I will call him "X") seems to have a fear that there are strange and dangerous objects or space creatures lurking unseen behind the clouds. He even called many UFO organizations to find out if they had instruments that could probe through and search for any oddities or ships full of aliens hovering.

Many he talked to thought it was a hoax like they got almost everyday from callers. Finally they realized that he was serious and terrified that some day the clouds would split operand earth would be destroyed by the water that gushed down or that aliens would take over.

They tried to tell him that, if there was such a danger that it would have been found decades ago. After all, there were space stations and satellites and spacecrafts all over the outer space. If there had been a danger from hiding beings in the clouds long ago.

X was not convinced. He became even more sure that calamity was coming from what was camouflaged in the back of the puffy matter in the sky. Otherwise, why wouldn't the clouds stay the same at all times. There had to be something causing them to sift shape, change color and at times disappear completely. There had to be a force making this happen.

X started texting and calling private companies who had pilots that offered to take a person wherever and whatever flights wanted. He finally found one who would fly him in, out, above and under the biggest cloud bank in the sky. The pilot thought his passenger was minus quite a few of his marbles, and maybe belonged in the funny farm, but he didn't care. It was a job and a lot of money in his pocket.

X spied something that looked suspicious. The pilot flew back to where the man pointed. Yep!!! they found it, big bag of marshmallows tangled in a forming thunder cloud, supporting a box of huge M&Ms.

The pilot landed the plane and taxied to his hanger. X felt justified that there was something in one of the clouds and was no longer afraid. Story ends with the two of them pigging out on marshmallows and M&Ms.

THE END

STORY SLINGERS

prompt: "what lurks behind the cloud"

Feb 8, 2024

Daren

LOADING IN WICHITA

"Skid Steer Loaders" are small, compact, four wheeled front end loaders. Most people would not be familiar with that description, but would know what one was talking about if they heard the name Bobcat loader. The Bobcat with its white and red color and unique design is nearly universally recognized. Even by people who have no connection to farming, construction or machinery of that type.

Designed for use in tight, confined spaces where standard front end loaders are too large for effective use., the Bobcat became a popular piece of equipment and sold like hotcakes.

Case IH, maker of farm and construction equipment, began making Skid Steer Loaders in competition with Bobcat's increasingly in-demand little apparatus.

The fore-going explanation brings me to the story wich I will share with you. It involves a truck driver, an owner/operator with whom many of you are familiar. A good number of his experiences have been related via these Story Slinger get togethers.

One of the Case IH plants, the one which manufactures their version of the Skid Steer Loader, is located in Wichita, Kansas, the most popular city in the Sunflower state, situated in the south central part of the state.

The before mentioned trucker, having been on the road for some time and anxious to get back to his family in Montana and being in the mid-west, was pleased to hear from his dispatcher that a load had been found that would take him back to the Treasure state. He was informed that a load of tractors was waiting for him in Wichita, Kansas. The next morning he was navigating the bypass around the west of Wichita to the Case plant and was there when they opened for business.

He found that the tractors he was to load and to haul to Billings, Montana were actually Skid Steer Loaders and he observed that they were slightly larger than the Bobcats, with which he was familiar. As the loading was underway, our intrepid trucker glanced upward and noticed that the sky had a strange, to him, dark greenish hue.e also had a weird feeling he could not put into words; like oppressive maybe. Almost like a premonition. Then, when the loading was complete and he was tying the load down he noticed a lowering , wall of clouds off to the east.

He pulled away from the Case plant heading west with thoughts of home and family. Turning on the radio and looking for music, he found a station that came in strong but what he heard was not music. An announcer was reading a tornado warning. Apparently there were three possible tornadoes bearing down on the region south and west of Wichita which included Sedwick, Kingman and parts of Sumner counties. Well he didn't know the locations of those counties but he did know that he was traveling somewhat south and west of Wichita. So he decided to put the hammer down and try to out race those destructive rotating winds because he had no storm cellar or basement or anywhere to run to as he assumed residents of that area had. Soon he realized he was alone on the highway. There was no other traffic, so he pushed a little harder on the throttle while keeping a lookout behind for the twister and to the side for a culvert or somewhere he could go for protection. He saw nothing promising so he kept speeding westward hoping to win that race with those three deadly forces of nature.

Well, he finished first in that race and he has never yet experienced the full force of a tornado, but he will forever remember being chased by three and out pacing them.

What Lurks Behind the Cloud II

—OR— Now that I Think About It 

18 February 2024

By Cary Holmquist

Here’s a second stab at this story prompt, “What Lurks Behind the Cloud.”  

What lurks behind the cloud is usually the Sun, blocked out by the thick layers of atmospheric weather, yielding much diffused daylight.  Or, perhaps just as often it is the moon that lurks.  And stars.  And practically every other celestial event, including lunar eclipses, Northern lights, comets, meteor showers.

I recall in early 1979 trying to see a total solar eclipse that was going to pass over Montana.  So, you recall what a solar eclipse involves, that the moon passes between the Sun and the Earth, creating a moon shadow that blocks the sunlight of the day, a brief and displaced-in-time night time.  

And people get excited about solar eclipses because they are relatively rare to see and as a novel experience it brings out all kinds of kooky human reactions or downright panic and horror.  Especially total solar eclipses.

I wanted badly to see and experience that eclipse back then because it had been a long while since I had seen any eclipse.  But wouldn’t you know, the winter-time weather report for much of western Montana was for overcast layers of clouds.  Especially in the weather-perverse Missoula valley, with its frequent temperature inversions, pulp and plywood mills pumping humid heated fogs into the the air, and the convergence of three full rivers and multiple small streams into the cramped valley.  It is an age-old habit for the Missoula weather to be murky, especially during cold weather months.

So, my girl-friend-at-the-time had a rickety Mustang and we rattled out of town toward Butte, hoping to find friendlier skies, with open viewing of the Big Sky.  We got as far as that old rest area at Gold Creek on I-90 by the time the eclipse totality started.  It was still a bit cloudy, but they were very high thin clouds.  

Lots of other people were there to put on a show—hippies with their caged roosters and nut jobs with their aluminum hats and truckers with sunglasses.  It was still winter, that 26th of February, so the circus-at-the-rest-area was contained and brief as the temperatures discouraged out right mania.  

The clouds still blocked a good deal of the viewing and so except for when it went dark for about 15 minutes, it was an underwhelming experience.  Again, the eclipse lurked behind the cloud.

It turned out that the Missoula valley had mostly cleared out while we were gone that morning and the viewing for the eclipse was just as good or better than what we had at Gold Creek.  Or so we were told.  But by the time we got back in the afternoon, it was all back to characteristic cloud lurking.  The curtain went up for the show for one act and then came back down.  Typical.  So much for the dark lurking behind the clouds.

The most recent time a solar eclipse came along, it was not going to be totality in Montana, so I hopped in a minivan with Hosanna and we headed down the interstate to the rest area outside of Dubois, Idaho.  It was crystal clear in the summer, no lurking behind clouds that day and we were much entertained by the circus of humanity that was in full swing.  

total eclipse

This past year has been exciting for many skywatchers in Montana and lots of others as the Aurora Borealis lights have been very active and dazzling with the eerie colored light and dancing patterns.  Except!  Here in the Missoula valley, where it is typically overcast every night.   So we rely on people posting their photo captures on Facebook or elsewhere on line, to see what was lurking behind the clouds.  

That way, we here got better sleep time, uninterrupted by all those oohs and aahs….