Chasing the Clouds

     In the summer, as kids, we would be out playing, usually in a big area, like the mowed field behind Boston Valley Elementary between the playground and the baseball diamond. And every once in a while, a shadow would start to move along the ground across the field. It was the shadow of a cloud moving across the sky! There was not a cloud shape to it – just a straight line across the field – and it would move. It moved at a speed that made us think we might keep up with it – so we ran along with the shadow, always, if I remember correctly, in the same direction from right to left across the field. It was always just a little faster than us – and so we could never catch the shadow.

     That did not seem like a weird thing at the time – we were just chasing the cloud shadows. But one night I told Mike about it, and he gave me such a look that I had to think about what I had just said and finally realized how odd that was.

     I don't see cloud shadows moving across the ground today. Were the shadows not from the clouds? If not, what were they? – because our running after the shadows on the ground was very real. Or am I right – there are cloud shadows – I just don't see them anymore because I am not in an area where they might be so easily seen and chased after, because the age of trying to catch a cloud shadow is past?

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