Alagnak Skies

You know what's a good way to look at photos of the sky? Put them in a fancy Mac screensaver that changes the focus and pans around on them! It's the next best thing to sitting in a camp chair under big open skies and occasionally getting up to do astounded 36o's:

Since few people in their right minds are ever going to find themselves camping on a gravel bar in the lower Alagnak river in August, I'll go ahead and make a Picasaweb album of photos of such skies. Here are a few of my favorites from the last trip right here inline though:

That was my last morning on the river, and it started very beautifully at around 42 degrees.

This one I like because it reminds me of the train of storm clouds that Saruman conjured up to stop the Fellowship on Caradhras the Cruel . . . maybe the old coot was standing over Bristol Bay right then chanting, "Ahni, mani, padma, hah!" or whatever the cloud spell is:

For me, there's something magical about the sky over a big flat expanse of tundra:

And there's always something special about the last bit of sun break in a deepening sky:

And there's the moon:

in beginning corners dawn smirks

and there's the moon,thinner than a watchspring

(Poem XIV of ViVa by E. E. Cummings)