A Cloudspotters’ Guide to Climate Change: On a lost-in-time island off the coast of England, a group called the Cloud Appreciation Society gathers to look skyward and bask in the delights of nature. But halfway around the world, scientists have modeled a scenario in which Stratocumulus actually disappear under extreme climate conditions. What’s a cloud lover to do in the Age of the Anthropocene? (MARI SAITO on LUNDY ISLAND, ENGLAND, Photographs by PHIL NOBLE, July 25, 2019, Reuters)
Apath of trampled grass leads up the hill to St. Helen’s, the only church on Lundy Island. Near its doors, a stray lamb nibbles on tufts of tall weeds. From a Gothic tower topped with the English flag, the coastline of Devon is faintly visible to the east, while the expanse of the Atlantic Ocean stretches west, the seas uninterrupted all the way to North America.
Inside, a handful of visitors in windproof jackets lean forward on wooden benches to catch the Rev. Jane Skinner’s words.
“Majestic or wispy, solid yet ephemeral. Who could conceive of clouds?” Skinner asks, sturdy Teva sandals peeking out from underneath her white robes. “God has the whole spectrum in view, from the heavenly sphere to the atom, the clouds delivering dramatic forces of nature, shielding and obscuring light.”
As she speaks, workmen bustle about the nave setting up equipment for the days to come. It’s no easy task, hosting a group on an off-grid island powered by a generator that switches off at midnight, and where the internet signal goes down in overloaded circuits whenever someone uses electricity to make tea.
Cirrus and contrails compete in the sky above Lundy Island, with a lighthouse in view in the distance on this spit of land off England’s southwest coast.
“Clouds remind us to be joyful,” Skinner starts again. “To pause and glory in nature, which is beautiful and good.”