What do you think of when you hear big sky? Texas jumps into my mind, which would probably make Texans happy. Texas is the land of everything big. But this year, 2010, I call Bakersfield the land of Big Skies. I’ve never seen anything quite like it – for February, March, and the beginning of April, we’ve had one beautiful sky after another.
Here’s one last photo of the sky from my former backyard. I just can’t get enough of looking at these clouds. I exclaim over them all day long, to the point that my granddaughter texted me the other day: Gramser, the sky is beautiful. She and the others may find it amusing, but I’ll bet they take notice of the sky more often than they might have.
Right now at this very moment, it’s raining. Our Big Sky season is over, and today we had more typical Bakersfield weather – a rip-roarin’ dust storm. The wind blasted all day – we kept our power but I know there were power outages throughout the city. The gale blew over my potted ficus – which is huge – and broke the container. So tomorrow we’ll be replanting. It needed a bigger pot anyhow. But now, after dense dust, we have rain. It’ll rinse out the sky and leave big blobs of dust-mud on the cars, so ironically we will have to hose everything off after the rain.
For now, however, we can feast our eyes on these whipped-cream skies. Mashed potato skies. Marshmallow skies. Cotton candy skies.
I drove around one day to get the sky just outside of the city. Over our lush farmland.
You all remember Jim Morrison of the Doors, yes? Morrison said, “The West is the best.” I’m sure other people have said that also, but not like Jimbo did. Looking at these skies brought to mind how I felt when we returned to the West after six years in North Carolina and Virginia. We loved living in those states, and everything was green, green, green. Beautiful. But when we came home to the West, we felt like we could breathe again. It’s all in what you are used to. I grew up singing, “Give me land, lots of land, under starry skies above, don’t fence me in.” We may not be able to see the stars from Bakersfield, but we have the land.
Soon we’ll have the oppressive, hot, baked days of summer. Those days that seem as if they will never end. I’m going to try to remember how lucky we were in the Spring this year, with these beautiful skies.
I started with a photo of the sky from our “old” house on the lake. I’ll end with a couple from our “new” house on the golf course. We gave up the water, but we got a 180-degree view.
Clouds and blue skies. Blue skies, smiling on me, nothing but blue skies do I see. That’ll be my motto as we continue the unpacking and arranging from the move. One week today and it’s looking more hopeful. Life is returning to normal.
Tags: bakersfield CA, big sky, clouds, sky
I love the photos. I take so many photos of the skies lately… I’m continually blown away at the Master Artist’s creations.
I rode my bike with my mom out to Enos Lane on Saturday, and it was just awesome. 
ahh, nothing like the sky to make you smile! I was just admiring the clouds today. so beautiful!
I think Montana when I think of big skies. Tonight I took a shot outside Spotlight Theater – behind it, in the alley. The clouds begged me to take the shot. As I scrambled for my camera I prayed they would grant me space to hold onto them. ^giggles^ I did! Hopefully I will post them tomorrow.