NURSLINGS OF THE SKY 



their flocks. Once below Pastaria Little 

 Pete showed me bones sticking out of the 

 sand where a flock of two hundred had 

 been smothered in a bygone wind. In 

 many places the four-foot posts of a cattle 

 fence had been buried by the wind-blown 

 dunes. 



It is enough occupation, when no storm 

 is brewing, to watch the cloud currents and 

 the chambers of the sky. From Kearsarge, 

 say, you look over Inyo and find pink soft 

 cloud masses asleep on the level desert air; 

 south of you hurries a white troop late to 

 some gathering of their kind at the back 

 of Oppapago ; nosing the foot of Waban, 

 a woolly mist creeps south. In the clean, 

 smooth paths of the middle sky and highest 

 up in air, drift, unshepherded, small flocks 

 ranging contrarily. You will find the 

 proper names of these things in the reports 

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