Cloud Gardening ✨ Cozy Bedtime Story with Karissa Vacker

[00:00:10] Good evening, Sleep Wave. Carissa here, and tonight we have a positively dreamy story to lead us into rest. This is our weekly free episode. If you'd like more support with your sleep, I'd love to invite you to become a subscriber. Subscribers get two bonus episodes a month, plus totally ad-free listening. Details are in the show notes.

[00:00:32] Tonight, I'm going to share a gentle story about a woman who moves to the mountains and, slowly but surely, comes to appreciate the transient beauty of the clouds that surround her new home. In many ways, it's a story about changing perspective. So, let's start by changing your perspective and adopting a calmer, more mindful, and more gentle frame of mind as you move towards rest.

[00:01:00] Perhaps you've had a busy day. Perhaps your body is still holding the tensions of your day. Perhaps your mind is still occupied with thoughts of what's happened today and what might happen tomorrow. Now is the time to stop. Be still. Relax your body and shift your perspective toward thoughts of rest, ease, and calm.

[00:01:28] Before we begin, our only ad break, which helps make this show possible. To listen ad-free, follow the link in the show notes. If you're looking for a feeling of peace, safety, and groundedness as you move towards sleep tonight, then look no further than my channel, Stephen Dalton Sleep Stories,

[00:01:51] where I write and narrate stories specifically designed to give you the sleep of your dreams. I have written many stories, including ones about magical bookshops and libraries, lighthouses and trains, and even some funny ones like my boring stories. Discover why millions have chosen to listen to my voice to get a better night's sleep.

[00:02:19] Search for Stephen Dalton Sleep Stories on your favorite podcast player, and it will be my great privilege to be the voice that you listen to as you go to sleep. Friends, deepen your breath. With each inhale and exhale, allow your body to grow more relaxed.

[00:02:49] With each inhale and exhale, allow your mind to grow clear. Our story starts with Maude. Maude lived an ordinary life in an ordinary city, but lately she was starting to feel tired.

[00:03:16] Not the kind of tiredness that only demands a good night of refreshing sleep. No, this was the kind of weariness that settled into her bones. She was tired of life in the city. She craved quiet, stillness, and rest. For days, for weeks, for months, Maude tried to ignore this nagging sense of exhaustion.

[00:03:43] Until one Tuesday morning, everything changed. It would have been an ordinary Tuesday if it weren't for the fact that, on this Tuesday, Maude made an extraordinary decision. She packed a small bag with the simplest of necessities. Sturdy boots, warm layers, a water bottle, some dried fruit, and nuts.

[00:04:07] And then she turned the key in her apartment door and walked out without looking back. She walked all the way through the city. She walked through the suburbs that lay around the city. She walked through the fields that stretched out past the suburbs and through the hills that rose in the place where the fields ended. She wasn't sure where she was going, only that she enjoyed the feeling of walking.

[00:04:36] Every time she swung her arms or planted her feet, she started to feel in tune once more with her body. Away from the noise and hum of the city, she could hear other, quieter sounds. Birds singing, the grass softly scrunching beneath her feet.

[00:04:58] She loved the feeling of clean air in her lungs and the coolness of the breeze against her face. The longer and further she walked, the more she could sense the smells around her changing. From exhaust and hot asphalt to earth and pine resin and wildflowers. She walked until she reached the mountains that lay beyond the hills.

[00:05:26] The mountains were so tall and imposing that, even in the city, she had been able to see them. She glimpsed them from the balcony of her apartment. They were a constant presence, at the very edge of her view, always at the corner of her eye. But now, standing before them, she looked at them for what felt like the first time.

[00:05:52] They were high and ancient, rugged and snow-capped. But they were also beautiful. Their slopes were dotted with trees and flowers. Their outlines threw graceful shapes against the clear blue sky. And Maude understood that this was where she was supposed to be. She tightened the laces of her boots, adjusted her bag on her back.

[00:06:20] And with the hills and the fields and the suburbs and the city all behind her, she started to climb. She climbed higher and higher, following trails that grew steeper and fainter as she went. The air thinned, making each breath feel clearer and more deliberate. Her heart pumped harder. She felt every part of her body working.

[00:06:50] She walked for days. She ate simple meals. She slept under the stars. She summited peaks and descended into valleys. And in every valley, she set her sights on a new, more distant peak. At last, on a mountain so remote it didn't even appear on maps, Maude found the cabin.

[00:07:15] It was near the top of the mountain, on a small, grassy plateau. It was surrounded by alpine trees that the wind had shaped into gracefully bent, twisted forms. The cabin itself was built from wood that had turned silver with age. Over years, it had been so weathered by wind, rain, and snow that it had altogether lost the look of something constructed by a person.

[00:07:45] Like the trees around it, it seemed to have grown there naturally. Solar panels on the roof caught the thin mountain sunlight, and a hand-pumped well stood nearby, its mechanism worn smooth by use. Maude didn't believe in magic. But seeing the cabin, she couldn't deny that there was something just a little enchanted about it.

[00:08:15] It was the quality of the light around it, perhaps. Or the way the air seemed to shimmer just slightly at the corners of Maude's vision. Or it might have been the way the cabin felt patient, as though it had been waiting. Waiting specifically for Maude. And, in fact, it was. Because there was a sign on the door that said,

[00:08:42] in perfectly curly-cued calligraphy, Look under the doormat, weary traveler. Maude was certainly a weary traveler. She looked under the doormat. She found a golden key. She fitted it in the door, and the door opened. Inside, she found everything she might need for a long stay in the mountains. A wood stove for warmth and cooking.

[00:09:12] A bed with a quilted blanket and faded blues and grays. Shelves of books on botany, meteorology, and astronomy. Jars of dried herbs and teas. A table by the window, where the morning light would fall perfectly. Maude felt a sense of comfort, of being at home. She unpacked her bag, unlaced her boots.

[00:09:42] She would stay here for a while. She would stay for as long as she needed. The first weeks in the cabin were everything she had craved. She woke with the sun. She ate nourishing meals. She read books. She watched the weather patterns move across the distant valleys. She relished the silence she had missed in the city.

[00:10:09] And then learned to discern sounds in the silence. The sounds of wind rushing through the mountain ranges. Of rain falling in distant valleys. Of birds and other small creatures rustling in the trees. Time stretched out. But as autumn deepened and winter approached, something unexpected happened.

[00:10:39] Maude began to feel little twinges of worry. Was she cut out for this solitary, quiet kind of life? Perhaps it was the cold. Perhaps it was the dark. Perhaps it was her own self-doubt. But Maude began to wonder if she had made a mistake.

[00:11:03] And then, one morning in late autumn, she noticed something different. The air had turned from cool to cold overnight. When Maude went outside, she saw that a cloud had descended onto the mountain slope. It hadn't simply passed over the mountain and moved on. It had settled, draping itself across the slopes like a living thing.

[00:11:33] It covered her cabin and the trees that grew around it. Its water droplets hung suspended in the air and caught the morning light. Curious, Maude stepped back inside and ran her fingers along the spines of the books on the shelf until she found a thick volume titled, The Anatomy of Clouds.

[00:11:59] She carried it to the window, where the cloud pressed against the glass and began to read. What she found delighted her. Clouds were made of droplets of condensation. Each droplet was minuscule, perhaps 10 to 20 micrometers in diameter. Yet when they came together, they could form vast cloud formations.

[00:12:25] Each droplet had a nucleus at its center, like a tiny speck of dust or pollen or sea salt. This was what the condensation clung to. These specks of dust and salt, encased in tiny droplets of water, could form a near infinite variety of cloud shapes and sizes. The cloud that she could observe now through her window, she read,

[00:12:55] was called a stratus cloud, from the Latin word for layer. Maude noticed the way the cloud layered itself across the slope and smiled. The name felt apt. Maude opened her door and walked into the cloud, feeling it cool and damp against her face. Its droplets were in constant motion, she realized,

[00:13:23] carried on air currents too subtle to feel, but powerful enough to keep millions of water particles suspended. She stood there for an hour, maybe more, simply observing. The cloud was not static. It breathed and flowed, thickened and thinned.

[00:13:49] Patches of blue sky appeared and disappeared through the veil of cloud. She felt her focus sharpening, encompassing each of these minute changes in view and texture. The cloud lifted in the middle of the morning, slowly dissipating as the sun warmed the air to reveal the same mountainscape as before.

[00:14:18] Nothing had changed. And yet, everything seemed different, sharper, more alive. Maude began to pay attention to the sky and the clouds that moved through it. She noticed how the light changed throughout the day, warming the mountainside into an amber glow at sunrise, turning it silver in the bright light of noon,

[00:14:48] mellowing to gold and crimson at sunset. She observed how the wind patterns shifted with the hours of the day. She saw how certain slopes caught snow, while others remained bare. She learned to read the sky, to understand that high, wispy cirrus clouds meant weather changes were coming in a day or two. She recognized the heavy,

[00:15:18] gray stratocumulus that brought gentle rain, and the towering cumulonimbus that built up on humid afternoons, their heavy peaks reaching into the stratosphere. As the weather changed and cooled, Maude started to notice the clouds more. It seemed to her that they were visiting her mountain home more and more often.

[00:15:46] Autumn began to stretch into winter, and the turning seasons brought chilly, fog-veiled mornings. The fog would settle in the valleys, then slowly creep upward at night, finally arriving outside Maude's window with the dawn. When winter turned to spring, low-hanging stratus clouds made a misty ceiling over Maude's head.

[00:16:17] Summer was the season of fluffy cumulus that drifted past. She spent a year with the clouds, observing their movements and appreciating their beauty. Each one was different. Each had its own unique density, was formed of different droplets.

[00:16:45] Each had different ways of catching and refracting the light. Each brought its own intangible atmosphere, carrying the ever-changing moods of the wind, the sky, the weather. No matter if it was cool or warm or light. Whenever a new cloud descended,

[00:17:16] Maude felt herself being pulled outside. She would leave her cabin and walk through each cloud, observing its texture, its distinct way of moving, the feelings it awoke in her. After a while, Maude became aware of the way that certain parts of her mountain slope invited clouds to settle there and stay a while.

[00:17:47] There was a depression in the slope, just to the south of her cabin. And a cluster of trees on the northern side of the slope, where large clouds would often rest. And all across the mountainside were little cracks and depressions, where clouds would pool and swirl before dispersing.

[00:18:17] That was when Maude began to think of what she was doing as gardening. If plants needed the right soil, the right amount of light and water, the right conditions to thrive, then perhaps clouds needed the right conditions too. Maude couldn't control the clouds,

[00:18:45] but she could work with them and create the conditions that might encourage them to linger. She spent months experimenting, learning. She discovered that certain rock formations created updrafts as the sun warmed them, encouraging clouds to form.

[00:19:13] She found that shallow depressions filled with rainwater created local pockets of higher humidity, attracting low-hanging mist. She cleared some areas of the slope and left others wild, creating variety in the landscape that led to variety in how clouds moved and settled.

[00:19:42] She spent all her time outside in her cloud garden. All gardens changed slowly with the seasons. But Maude's garden was drastically different every day, never the same twice. Some mornings her garden was sparse, with a lone cloud settled there. Some mornings her garden was so dense with cloud

[00:20:10] that all she could see when she went outside was white mist. Some days brought lenticular clouds, smooth, disc-shaped clouds that hovered just above the slope. And other days brought dark, imposing arcus clouds that moved in giant waves through her gardens. At sunrise and sunset,

[00:20:40] the clouds changed colors and glowed incandescent shades of rose pink and gold orange. Maude tended her garden with patience and attention. She would wake before dawn to see which clouds had arrived in the night. She would note the temperature and humidity, the wind direction. She'd tracked the air pressure

[00:21:09] with a barometer she found in her cabin. She learned to predict which clouds the weather might bring. An approaching warm front meant stratus clouds and gentle rain. High pressure meant clear skies, but also meant her garden would lie empty until conditions changed again. On clear nights,

[00:21:38] when there were no clouds in her garden, Maude turned her attention upward. The sky was busy with stars. There was no artificial light to block them from her view. She learned the constellations and studied the vast sweep of the Milky Way. On rare and special nights,

[00:22:08] she witnessed meteors streaking through the upper atmosphere. It felt to her as though the stars themselves were falling into her garden. Maude loved all the time she spent in her cloud garden, but she was especially partial to those times just after a storm had passed through, when the conditions aligned perfectly for rainbows.

[00:22:39] She learned that she needed three things. Sunshine, water droplets in the air, and the sun behind her. The light entering the raindrops would refract, reflect off the back surface, and refract again on the way out, with each wavelength bending at slightly different angles to create the colored ribbon of light that was red on the top

[00:23:07] and violet on the bottom. The first time that she saw a rainbow, she felt inexplicably sad when it faded. She returned to her barometer and her telescope, trying to predict when the next storm might come, and whether or not it might bring a rainbow after it was done.

[00:23:33] But the longer she sat with those feelings of sadness and frustration, the more she understood the nature of her garden. It was ephemeral. Apart from the mountainside, nothing in her garden lasted. The clouds came and went according to the laws of physics

[00:23:59] and fluid dynamics that operated on scales far larger than her small mountain. She could create conditions that made them linger briefly, but she couldn't hold them. A change in wind direction, a shift in air pressure, or the simple warming of morning sun.

[00:24:25] Any of these simple changes were enough to make her garden transform, or even disappear altogether. She learned to love this impermanence. Where once she might have felt frustrated by the lack of control, now she felt liberated by it.

[00:24:52] She didn't have to maintain her garden through effort and struggle. She had only to pay attention, to notice, to appreciate what was present when it was present, and to let it go without grasping when it departed. Maud developed rituals around her garden.

[00:25:23] In the mornings, she would walk slowly over the mountainside, sipping a cup of steaming tea, simply noticing what clouds had arrived overnight. In the afternoon, she was more adventurous. She would travel to different parts of the mountainside to see where the clouds were forming, or lingering.

[00:25:56] She would haul her telescope to the outcroppings of rock and scan the sky, looking for clouds on the horizon. In the evening, she rested. She sat on the front step of her cabin and sketched, trying to capture the way the clouds shimmered in the glow of the setting sun.

[00:26:27] As time passed, Maud began to feel a new kind of longing stirring within her. She loved the new life she had made for herself, and wouldn't wish for it to be any different. And yet, she found herself wanting to share the quiet joys she had discovered here with others.

[00:27:00] And so, Maud began to write. In the evenings, after the clouds had settled into their nighttime arrangements, she would sit at her table by the window with a cup of chamomile tea. She filled page after page with everything she had learned.

[00:27:31] She wrote about the physics of cloud formation and the poetry of their movements. She wrote chapters on reading the sky and understanding atmospheric pressure. She included diagrams of wind patterns and sketches of different cloud types,

[00:27:59] along with photographs she had taken over the seasons. When the manuscript was complete, Maud wrapped it carefully in brown paper and addressed it to a small publishing house in the city she had left behind.

[00:28:25] She hiked down the mountain to the nearest village and posted her parcel into the village mailbox. The clouds came and went. Maud tended her garden and waited,

[00:28:54] though she wasn't quite sure what she was waiting for. One autumn morning, as she was observing a particularly magnificent cumulus cloud, she noticed something peculiar on the neighboring peak.

[00:29:19] There seemed to be more clouds gathering there than usual. What could explain it? A shift in the atmosphere? A change in the air currents? She trained her telescope on the distant slope, on the neighboring mountain,

[00:29:49] was another cabin, and outside it stood a figure. They moved with deliberate attention over the slope. They were arranging stones, creating subtle alterations to the landscape that Maud recognized immediately. They were building their own.

[00:30:24] Sensing her gaze, the figure turned and held up a hand in greeting. Reaching into the pocket of their gardening apron, they drew out a book and held it aloft for her to see. Maud read the title The book was called

[00:30:51] A Guide to Cloud Gardening, The Art of Cultivating the Ephemeral. It was the book that she had written. Maud waved back, her heart full. As your eyes grow heavy and your breath deepens, perhaps you'd like to imagine yourself there,

[00:31:21] on one of those mountain peaks too. Feel the cool mist against your skin. Hear the murmuring of the wind. Watch slowly and attentively as clouds roll past you, some drifting by, some lingering a while. Perhaps, if you stay long enough

[00:31:49] and wait patiently enough, some of them will stay long enough to make a garden.