Cloudy Skies: Crested Butte, Colorado

While we were in Colorado in July, Taido took tons of pictures of the sky from the same spot in our campsite in Crested Butte.

I am thankful that he and my dad are always keeping an eye on the changing skies when we’re camping and hiking.

Being caught in storms while hiking has bestowed in me a healthy reverence for the unpredictable weather.

I really prefer to listen to the rain from the inside of the camper or watch the hail fall from underneath our magic tarp, but the weather changes very quickly in the mountains so we don’t always find ourselves at camp when it storms.

One afternoon this year we were hanging around in camp after a morning hike and a hailstorm quickly moved in. Since we weren’t rushing down a trail, we had the luxury of watching in awe as the sky turned ominous.

We huddled together and listened to the plink, plink, plink of the hail on the camper.

For just a few minutes the landscape was covered in these dreamy little white balls of ice.

Strangely beautiful.

It was gone in an hour, and the ground was dusty again by bedtime in the dry Colorado air.

If we hadn’t taken pictures, I might have thought we had dreamed it.

I was reminded of this crazy storm this morning in church during a reading of Psalm 147.

He hurls down his hail like pebbles.
Who can withstand his icy blast?
He sends his word and melts them;
he stirs up his breezes, and the waters flow.

Psalm 147: 17-18