‘It isn’t entirely necessary to visit ‘That Same Stupid Cloud National Park’ to see the titular slice of sky. It’s a cloud, after all, and its visible from certain viewpoints for miles around. Optimal angles aside, the park’s experience is worth the nominal cost of entry for two reasons: context and charity.
Context is important in viewing ‘The Same Stupid Cloud’ because it appears like any other except on days when it’s the only cloud in the sky or when the high-up airstreams have whipped its peers into quick movement around it. In these conditions it’s easy to see that ‘The Same Stupid Cloud’ is static both in place (above the park) and in shape (decidedly cumulus). On shape, ‘The Same Stupid Cloud National Park’ devotes the great majority of its educational displays to a friendly debate about what ‘The Cloud’ looks like. An anatomical heart? A puppy’s head? A gemstone of some sort? These are just a few of the many suggestions that have been sourced from visitors and turned into tall, difficult-to-read signs, each with a cut-out of the specific shape they detail to aid someone who might not otherwise recognize, say, a gyoza in the sky.
This brings us to the second reason to visit the park: charity. The rangers stationed at ‘The Same Stupid Cloud National Park’ have so little going for them. All park resources outside of those suggesting cloud shapes are devoted to explaining, in great detail, why exactly ‘The Same Stupid Cloud’ is anomalous and what has been done to study it. ‘The Cloud’ is a marvel, of course. It is a perfect scientific outlier, defying much of what is understood about physics and meteorology. It flies in the face of what humanity has learned of permanence and nature. It resists attempts to dispersal. It hums low tones on the winter solstice.
Recognizing all of this requires that one think really hard about the cloud or attend the annual ‘Sky Song Festival,’ neither of which the average tourist is likely to do. An hour’s pitstop is rarely enough time for a road-weary traveler to properly wrap their head around the implications of the thing- is really only enough time to empty one’s bladder and agree that the cloud does look like a pigeon, from a certain angle, as one Kumar D. pointed out in 2003. This is a source of frustration for the rangers who are, on the other hand, inevitably driven mad by the mind-bending impossibility ‘The Same Stupid Cloud’ represents.
‘The Same Stupid Cloud National Park’ earns Autumn by the Wayside’s highest recommendation, not because it stands out among the rest, but because your earnest attendance may grant a local ranger the will to see another day through to its end.’
-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside
