"Dad, where do the clouds come from?" asked Jamie. Up above, the sky was peppered with white puffs drifting slowly to the east. Some were fearsome dragons and dinosaurs, others were giant feather cats ready to pounce on fat little mice clouds that skittered around nearby. "The clouds are different on some days," thought Jamie, "I wonder if they all come from the same place?" He watched a big furry tiger chase after a delectable white rabbit with only one ear.
"Way out west in the high mountains," his dad said, "that's where the clouds come from. I've been there, you know, and those mountains are so high that even in the middle of summer there is still snow on the peaks. When I was a kid, Uncle Jonathan and I spent three days camping up there, so high in the mountains that even trees couldn't grow. We had a snowball fight in the middle of August!"
Jamie and his dad were driving along the curvy road which led back home from the town dump, where they had unloaded at least twenty big plastic bags of leaves and grass. It was springtime, and he and his older sister, Elizabeth (everyone called her "Beth") had helped mow the lawn and rake up all the dead stuff in the backyard that was left over from winter. Jamie shifted position in the front seat of the old pickup truck, and put his feet on the dashboard. Beth was at her violin lesson, so he didn't have to fight over who got to sit next to the window.
"I've been thinking," said his dad as they rounded the curve by the old train station and crossed over the bumpy tracks, "Now that you and Beth are grown up some, maybe it's time we went out there to the mountains. You could see for yourself where the clouds come from!" Dad thought for a while and smiled. "Hey, you know, that really IS a great idea! When we get home, I'll talk to Mom about it. Maybe we could go this summer."
Just then, they passed old Mr. Farnham, the postman, who was delivering Saturday's mail to all the boxes on his route. Dad honked the horn and waved. Jamie waved, too, because he liked Mr. Farnham. He especially liked Ralph, Mr. Farnham's cocker spaniel, who always rode in an empty mail tray in the front of the little red, white, and blue truck. When he stopped at Jamie's house, sometimes Mr. Farnham would let Ralph carry a newspaper or a small package all the way up to the front porch, just to show off and prove that Ralph was pretty smart. When that happened, Jamie always gave him a biscuit from the package Mom kept in the cabinet next to the stove, and he was careful to say "Thank you, Ralph," as if Ralph were a real person. Jamie thought that Mr. Farnham was a little strange, though. He lived all alone (except for Ralph, of course), and in every room of his house he had newspapers stacked right up to the ceiling so when you went from the kitchen to the living room it was like walking through a tunnel. Last summer Jamie and Beth had secretly explored the neighborhood near Mr. Farnham's house and had peeked through the windows when he was away. That's how they knew.
When they got home, Dad parked the truck in its special place behind the garage, and Jamie put their work gloves and the broom away in the tool shed. Saturday's were always fun when they worked on projects around the house or out in the yard. As he went into the house, he watched the last of the mice clouds get eaten up by a camel with a funny hump, and he noticed some thin, wispy mare's tails high up in the sky. "The clouds are changing again," he thought, and he knew that mare's tails meant it might rain tomorrow. He hoped his dad wouldn't forget about going to the mountains in the summer.
It didn't rain the next day. It got very cold, and to everyone's surprise, it snowed! The radio said that this was the most unusual weather in the last fifty years. But it only left a few inches of wet slush on the ground, and by ten o'clock it was all melted and the sun was out.
"The yellow daffodils that always poke through the ground next to the driveway have just had a drink of ice water," thought Beth, "but I'm sure they will be ok." She was in charge of making breakfast, but Jamie was supposed to help, too. They were mixing pancake batter in the big stainless steel bowl. It was really pretty easy because all they had to do was add water to the pancake mix and stir it with a big fork and pour the batter onto the hot frying pan. They had done it before. Mom was still in bed, but they could hear Dad in the shower, so they knew there was about ten minutes until everyone would be ready for breakfast. Jamie set the table while Beth turned the pancakes with a spatula; she was careful that there were bubbles on the top before turning them the first time and that they didn't burn on the bottom.
"Do you know where the clouds come from?" asked Jamie as he loaded a plate with the pancakes Beth had already made. "Dad says they come from the mountains out west. He said we could go there this summer and see it, if Mom says it's alright." Just then, probably because he was thinking more about the clouds than what he was doing, Jamie dropped one of the pancakes onto the floor next to the stove at exactly the same time as Beth turned around to get more pancake batter. And wouldn't you know it, Beth stepped right on top of it and squished it with her slipper!
She was thinking about the clouds until she suddenly felt the pancake squish under her foot. "Yuck, Jamie, can't you do anything right!" she snipped at him and stamped her foot, trying to get the pancake off. Her brother was already getting the sponge from the sink to wipe it up. "I'm sorry," he said, "It just fell off the fork."
Beth thought a trip out west would be neat, especially if they could discover where the clouds were made. Nobody else she knew at her school had ever been on such a trip, and Beth could make an interesting report to her friends when Mrs. Marble, her teacher, asked everyone to tell about special things they did during the summer. Mrs. Marble had a big wart on her nose and always smelled like flowers because of the perfume she wore, but she knew about things like insects and trees and fish and the stars and planets. She would be interested in hearing a report about where the clouds come from, too, Beth was sure.
Just as Jamie cleaned up the last of the squished pancake, Dad came in and poured orange juice for everyone. Beth didn't say anything about the pancake accident. "Looks like it's time to eat," Dad announced, "And, boy, does it smell good. I'm starving!" Mom came in, too, and everyone sat down at the kitchen table near the big windows where you could look out into the back yard. All the snow from last night was melted, now, except in one place along the edge of the woodpile next to the driveway where the ground was still shaded from the heat of the sun.
"I heard you talking about where the clouds come from," said Mom as she reached for the plate with the pancakes. "Dad tells me that you'd like to see for yourselves how they are made. It's a long trip out west to those mountains, you know, and then it's a long and hard climb up the slippery mountain trail to where they are actually first born. There aren't any roads, and you have to walk around boulders and rocks big as this house. I've never been there, but I've heard about it. That's where the side-hill gougers live, too, and they are sometimes wild and mean, living in caves at the top of the mountains and eating the thin, stubby grass that grows there. Nowadays, there are more of them than when your dad and Uncle Jonathan went there! So you would have to be very careful. And it's cold and wet and rainy, and sometimes it snows, even in summer! We would have to do a lot of careful planning to make a trip like that."
Both Beth and Jamie were excited. What an adventure!
Everyone had finished their breakfast, and they were cleaning up the kitchen table when Dad looked over at Mom and asked "What do you say, should we go to the mountains this August? We could stay in Snowflake with Aunt Mary and Uncle Bill. And we could hike up to Slippery Pass with the kids to watch the clouds being born!" Jamie and Beth held their breath.
Of course it would be ok! Mom thought it would be a great vacation! It would be fun to take the train, too, or maybe fly in an airplane to the mountains instead of driving all that way. Beth could help make a list of the camping things they would take. Jamie could write a letter to the Geological Survey and get some special maps showing the route up to Slippery Pass past the caves. There was plenty of time for planning. And it would be nice to see Aunt Mary and Uncle Bill, she thought. "Sure," she smiled, "Let's go!"
That night as they went to sleep, Beth and Jamie thought about the clouds and how they came swirling across the sky from the mountains in the west.
Part Two: The Dream
It's odd, thought Jamie, how a person feels lighter and lighter when he falls asleep. He felt almost as if he were floating...
In fact, he was floating! When he looked down at his toes and held out his hand in front of his face to be sure that he was still who he thought he was, he saw that he had suddenly become a pile of marshmallows as big as a blimp. "I'm a cloud!", he shouted.
Now I'm as big as a polar bear
and have whipped cream instead of hair.
It's ever so lovely up here in the air
floating along as a cloud.
Where did I come from? Where's my lair?
off in the mountains over there.
I'll take you along, if you aren't too scared
to the place where clouds are born.
Like a big white ocean of jiggly jello.
Or perhaps a scrumptious fluffy white pillow.
It's just quite different from the land below
in the place where clouds are born.
There's my sister a tiger king,
now she's a bunny jumping through a ring.
Clouds are funny changeable things,
all the ways they can grow.
Sometimes little like a fuzzy-wuzzy mouse.
Sometimes big like a monster's house.
A cool babycakes or a gray feathered grouse
all piled up in the sky.
Jamie liked being a cloud. Now, if only he could talk to some of the other clouds nearby (maybe the pretty one with the sparkling rainbow in her hair), he could learn where they came from. Then when he got back to being his natural self, he would become a famous cloud expert. As far as he knew, nobody in the whole world had ever talked to a cloud!
Because he was so high up in the sky, the people on the streets below looked tinier than bits of sand on a lettuce leaf. But even so, he thought he could see Mr. Fahrnam and Ralph. From his lofty vantage, their mail truck looked like a red, white, and blue garden beetle moving from house to house. It's certainly easier to recognize people when they are your friends.
Jamie shouted to Mr. Fahrnam. And he whistled to Ralph. "Look at me," he cried, "I'm a cloud!"
Jamie noticed a strange thing begin to happen as he tried harder and harder to attract the attention of his friends. The louder he yelled, the darker the sky became. And it got foggy, too. But he wanted very much to show off his high-altitude cloud tricks, so he kept trying.
As he yelled and yelled, the friendly clouds around him began to melt away and the sky slowly turned darker than the blackest night. Mr. Fahrnam and Ralph never did look up.
Jamie became tireder and tireder from his thundering attempts to communicate with the people below, until finally he was so feeble and exhausted that he couldn't yell anymore. By this time he had shrunk to the size of a raindrop, anyway, and he could no longer see his friends through the dark mist. After a while, he began to fall gently toward the ground.
"Maybe clouds can't really talk to people," he thought to himself, "but if we go to the mountains this summer, I will listen very hard. Maybe it's just that clouds speak a different language, like French or Spanish. Maybe I could learn to understand the clouds!"
The raindrop landed on the roof of Jamie's house precisely above the corner where his bed was, and it plummeted plop! onto the pillow, making a small wet spot about the size of a dime. This was the last sound that Jamie heard before he drifted into a warm and dreamless sleep. In the morning, the wet spot was gone.