Recently, I was at an outdoor concert. I had my Canon PowerShot with me and played around with capturing different poses of the musicians. My gaze then focused on the building behind the musicians. I scanned it slowly, from bottom to top, through the lens of the camera.

Then up, up, up -– my eyes lingered on the blue sky above the building. A few clouds moved slowly across the horizon. I saw a small white dot next to one; sitting like apostrophe, against the cerulean shaded page of atmosphere. It was 6:00 in the evening. Was this small circle of whiteness in the sky a collection of water droplets that got separated from its core cluster or was it the moon rising?

I became fascinated with the clouds I saw that evening and, for the next week, couldn’t seem to take enough photos of clouds. I took shots from from parks, from the lakefront, from my back deck, and from city streets.

They’re almost always around, but we don’t always notice them. Maybe we will study them if we are planning an outdoor outing and trying to size up the likelihood of rain, but mostly we think about clouds when they are not there, when the sky is clear.

They are made of the same stuff as the sky that surrounds them, but the molecules that compose them manage to differentiate themselves. They’re constantly moving in the sky and changing shape.

No two are exactly alike. I like that. I like the thought of each cloud’s uniqueness.

Just last week, I posted my 200th reflection on gratitude on this blog. Being aware of my Grateful Dozen, (broad categories of things that I know I feel grateful for) has made it easy to identify things I can appreciate in the present moment.