Towering cumulonimbus clouds lit up from behind as the sun dipped below the treeline. A few birds crossed the frame just as the light was right. You could feel the humidity shift as the front moved east.
The cloud was enormous — one of those anvil-shaped formations that builds all afternoon and then catches the last light like a lantern. Pink and purple on the bottom, bright white on top where the sun still reached it.
I stood at the edge of the water for maybe twenty minutes, watching it change. The birds appeared out of nowhere, five or six of them in a loose line, silhouetted against the red band at the horizon.
The storm never reached us. It drifted south and dissolved somewhere over the hills. But for those few minutes, the sky looked like something out of a painting.