Good Heavens

Many of us can recall our first aeroplane flight, soaring upwards through the semi-darkness with an anxious shudder – then that soothing moment of calm as we gaze down upon the fluffy clouds from above. It feels a bit like being in heaven, which is one of the reasons clouds hold a special place in our hearts – and one of the many reasons why Gavin Pretor-Pinney’s new book, A Cloud A Day, exhorts us to engage with the sky.

You could say that Pretor-Pinney is the patron saint of celestial vapour. The author of three books about clouds, he founded the Cloud Appreciation Society 15 years ago, starting a steady but significant cloud craze. The Society now has over 47,000 members across the world and he knows cloud aficionados from Russia to South Korea – indeed, he’s just returned from Finland, where he discussed the spirits of the sky with Sami (Lapp) representatives.

The Society arose from a gap in our appreciation of clouds. “Omnipresent and ever-changing, clouds are among the most beautiful parts of nature,” says Pretor-Pinney. “But I’d noticed – particularly in this country – that we just see them as bad weather. We’d become blind to their beauty.” He hopes that A Cloud A Day will be a daily reminder to look up. “We should all spend a few minutes a day with our heads in the clouds. It puts your feet on the ground. Cloud-spotting is good for the body, our creativity and most deeply, our souls.” It’s a route, he says, to the happiness that comes from finding beauty in the everyday.

Since the Society began, mindfulness has become a huge trend. While this is welcome, Pretor-Pinney sees a twist. The sky, he says, is dynamic and evocative: it’s about engaging with something bigger than us, reminding us that  we’re not in control. There’s also a “trainspotting” aspect to it – cirrus, cumulonimbus, stratus and so on – which anyone who paid attention in geography lessons should understand. “Clouds were first classified in 1802 by Luke Howard, a British scientist, who was influenced by Carl Linnaeus’ system for plants,” says Pretor-Pinney. “By 1896 [with the publication of the International Cloud Atlas] ten classifications were official.” And here the Society has made history, updating this system in 2017. “We proposed the new ‘asperitas’ classification: turbulent, chaotic and wavelike.” It’s now officially part of the cloud-spotting fun.

The book also celebrates the cloud’s cameo roles in culture, from Joni Mitchell songs to Wordsworth’s poems, paintings by Constable and (Pretor-Pinney’s favourite) Renaissance master Piero della Francesca. “Piero did a series of frescoes in Arezzo showing a lenticular cloud. It’s remarkable. He was clearly an early cloud-spotter.”

To destroy the fun, we now have the brooding presence of climate change and man’s vainglorious attempts to influence weather. “There’s a long history of this, from appeasing the gods to the modern practices of ‘geoengineering’ and ‘cloud seeding’ where you encourage precipitation,” says Pretor-Pinney. “It’s never ended well.” Rather than trying to control clouds, he adds, we should enjoy their ineffable nature while we can – including at Goodwood: “Downland is great for cloud-spotting. Find some elevated ground, look out over the sky and you’ll see some great formations.” You may even see an asperitas.

A Cloud A Day – 365 Skies from the Cloud Appreciation Society by Gavin Pretor-Pinney is published by Batsford

This article was taken from the Winter 2019/2020 edition of the Goodwood Magazine.