Cloud Watching

We have noticed before when spending time at the beach that there is always something new and interesting to see.  The ocean, or course, is never the same - always a different shade of blue or deep green, always a different texture, calm and still one day like a lake gently lapping on the sand, and the next day roaring with whitecaps and sending lines of sea-foam scuttling up the beach.  The first day we were here we saw the sharp black fins of dolphins in the surf, and we have also gotten out the binoculars to watch several huge cargo freighters coming from Morehead City.  If you are ever bored by walking along the ocean, you just aren't paying attention.

In the same way, the sky is always changing here, and we notice it more.  Perhaps that is because we live in a valley the rest of the year, and here there is just so much sky to look at! - far out over the ocean with its ever-changing clouds coming and going.  Sometimes it is that most ordinary light shade of blue we call "sky blue" where puffs of clouds drift by in measured, stately procession:

In the afternoon, the refracted light of the sunset begins to tinge everything in broad strokes of purples and violets and pinks, reflected back by the gleaming ocean:

What a glorious display!  Sometimes we keep turning our heads back to look at it again and again as we return from our walk to the pier with the sunset at our back:

And best of all are those magical sunsets where big diagonal curtains appear across the sky, with perhaps a deeper gleam, as if there is a bright hot fire burning on the surface of the ocean.  It would be difficult for even the most jaded and cynical not to catch their breath in awe at what Barbara Brown Taylor calls An Altar in the World, only waiting to be acknowledged and appreciated.