Sky Watching: An Infinite Movie

30 November, 2025

"The sky is an infinite movie to me. I never get tired of looking at what's happening up there." ~ K. D. Lang

Sky Watching

I like K.D. Lang's characterization of the sky as "an infinite movie". You might assume that due to my fascination with water, and with all the living, growing, and geological aspects of Earth, I must be always looking down, not up.

Not so. I never tire of sky watching. Just as with all things in nature, the sky is constantly changing. But unlike many other aspects of our ecosphere, you can view these changes in real time. We can't directly watch the movement of tectonic plates, the alterations of the course of a river, or even the germination of a seed - unless we have an unnaturally long life and an awful lot of spare time.

I love to watch the clouds go slowly drifting by on a calm day, gradually moving together or breaking apart, contantly changing shape. And in stormy weather, they race dramatically across the sky, driven by fierce winds, which is always thrilling.

"Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky."      ~ Rabindranath Tagore

Up on the Ridge

For more than 38 years, I have lived on top of a ridge in northern Kentucky. My back yard borders a woods which continues down a fairly steep hill, interrupted by a road and a railroad track, to the Licking River. I mention this for two reasons.

The first is that the back of my house faces roughly east, so I get to see the sun coming up behind the trees every morning. Glorious! The second has to do with climate change, which I'll get to in the next section.

Changing Weather

Maybe it's because I live on this ridge that I'm so conscious of the wind. We feel the wind more accutely up here, and so we are quick to notice anything different from what has up to now been 'normal.' I can tell without a doubt that our weather is chaging. I used to be able to go outside and take photos of my artwork on most days. But now I have to wait for a day when it's not too windy, and that wait can be a long one.

Troubled Skies, above, is a piece that was inspired by the increased winds in our area. I challenged myself to find a way to convey the feeling of wind in a monotype.

Surely everyone has observed the ever-widening extremes in rainfall that are occurring now. It seems that almost everywhere, there is either too much rain, or not enough. Some places in the western US are running out of water. Other parts of the country have had castastrophic floods. Ongoing drought conditions inspired the piece below, Rain Summoner.

"Rain is grace; rain is the sky descending to the earth; without rain, there would be no life."         ~ John Updike

"The sky is always there for me, while my life has been going through many, many changes. When I look up at the sky, it gives me a nice feeling, like looking at an old friend."        ~ Yoko Ono

I wholeheartedly agree with Yoko.

All photos in this post were taken by me. Wishing you all peace, love, and art.