Late spring and early summer here in the foothills is just lovely. The mountains are still green, with snow higher up, and the light is still clear–not the long gold light of July and August. The cloud shadows on the mountains always, always make me think of the opening of Out of Africa:

The chief feature of the landscape, and of your life in it, was the air. […] The sky was rarely more than pale blue or violet, with a profusion of mighty, weightless, ever-changing clouds towering up and sailing on it, but it has a blue vigor to it, and at a short distance it painted the ranges of hills and the woods a fresh deep blue. […] Up in this high air, you breathed easily, drawing in a vital assurance and lightness of heart. In the highlands you woke up in the morning and thought: Here I am, where I ought to be.