In seventh grade I tried to join the Cloud Club—I remember writing my email on the sign-up sheet.

Regrettably, though, I was informed by my parents that if I (with my weak, pale skin) laid down under the sun to stare at clouds, I would get a horrible sunburn, and possibly skin cancer.

I swore I would wear sunscreen to every meeting, but I never got the chance.

If the Cloud Club had meetings that year, I never got any of the emails; if they were selling their t-shirts, I wish I would have known, because I really wanted one. More than anything, I was disappointed that the Cloud Club had not catered to my seventh-grade fantasy of staring at the sky and watching clouds for hours. Was it all a joke? Were they just an ironic club that existed to be funny?

My heart was broken.

Gradually, I came to terms with the fact that sometimes clubs are hard to organize, and meetings difficult to schedule; the Cloud Club may have been created to be ironic, but they operated with good intentions. They weren’t trying to make a seventh grader bitter, not at all.

Still, I resigned myself to the fact that meetings were never going to happen. I thought about sunburn, and missed emails, and didn’t sign up for the club again. The Cloud Club still fascinated me, though; I couldn’t get over the concept, and after deciding to leave my name off the email list, I had no idea what they might be doing.

It turns out a lot of students feel the same way about the Cloud Club. The concept is there, sure: (“The Cloud Club? Oh, they lie down and look at clouds, right?”) but the knowledge of the club’s true activities is hazy. It’s hard to find the pulse of the club’s activity, which might explain the Cloud Club’s recent descent into increased obscurity.

“I’m not sure if it’s still a thing,” Penny Zheng (’20) says. “Apparently the club’s mission is to appreciate clouds . . . I think it’s kind of sketch. You can quote me on that but you might anger some nephophiles.”

(A nephophile — in case, like me, you didn’t know — is a person with a fondness or obsession for clouds.)

It’s not hard to see why Penny, and many other students, view the Cloud Club with a little suspicion: we simply don’t know what they’re up to. The club rarely makes assembly announcements, and rarely—if ever—holds organized meetings. (They haven’t had one yet this year.) Sightings of those privileged few with Cloud Club t-shirts (“Cloud Club: It’s a Little Cloudy Out”) are becoming more and more rare. Who is the Cloud Club? we ask. What are they doing? Where are they?

I, too, was searching for answers. A few helpful emails directed me to Sophie Sinton (’20), who serves as one of the leaders of the club this year, along with fellow seniors Jennifer Kazler, Isabella Koster, and Tej Sheth. Sinton decided to continue the tradition of the club this year after being asked by Juliet Mahoney (’19) if she would be willing to carry on the tradition.

“Of course I said yes,” Sinton says.

“I think the Cloud Club has always been a mythical thing,” she continues. “I love this club because it’s just a random stupid thing that ties the community together. It’s like a little private joke that only the student body really gets, which I love.”

She clarified that the Cloud Club’s purpose is (yes) to appreciate clouds. The club is meant as a relaxing, casual space: the club doesn’t know much about the clouds, but they like to look at them. Mr. Wagner, the club’s faculty sponsor this year, agreed to support the club because he, too, enjoys “staring at the sky, taking in the natural world, and letting [his] mind drift along with the clouds.” This is the goal of the club: simple study of the sky, with the focus of finding inspiration (and stress relief).

“It’s interpretive,” Sinton says. “We like to get creative.” The Cloud Club looks for shapes in the clouds, or finds clouds they just like, and often take pictures. Sophie directed me to their Instagram (@thecl0udclub), which features a couple images of clouds—one of them includes students pointing enthusiastically at the sky, presumably casual members.

After finding the “Cloud Crew’s” Instagram from this year, I stumbled upon the club’s previous page (@cl0udclub), which had over 100 posts and dated back to September 2016. The page contained images of beautiful sunsets and landscapes with serene skies, but there were other types of gems as well—a Valentine’s Day post from 2017 that reads, “Valentine, you’re cirrus-ly awesome”; a since-graduated student with a Cloud Club turtleneck that reads, “Cloud Club: We Don’t Know What Type of Cloud it is Either”; #cloudshaming; multiple references to “the omnipotent cloud”; a Barack Obama goodbye post; and a caption that encourages students to buy Cloud Club t-shirts because “the money goes towards our hot air balloon rental fund.”

There were pictures of student meetings, a post asking about student leaders for a middle school branch of the club, and a picture of leaders sorting newly delivered t-shirts in the printing studio. Most of the posts’ captions have some kind of ironic element to them, but despite this, there’s a genuine sense of happiness conveyed. Maybe it’s from watching the clouds, and maybe it’s from sharing the experience with the Cloud Club members, but it’s there.

Or, it was.

The Cloud Club had its heyday, and pretty recently—this, if nothing else, is proof. Unfortunately, though, the Cloud Club seems to have faded from a staple of the student body to a club that is more legend than reality, from being well-established in the community to something more obscure, especially in the minds of younger students.

What happened?

Maybe younger generations of students weren’t exposed to the joys of the Cloud Club. Most of the students that were involved in heart of the club have graduated. Leaders get busy; meetings happen less and less; spaces grow between the days when pictures of clouds are posted on Instagram.

It’s a little sad, but it’s true: the Cloud Club seems to have lost some of its luster.

So does this mean that my dreams will never come true? Will I never get to gather with a well-sized group of my peers and gaze up at the clouds? Will the Cloud Club continue its descent into mystery, until it’s nothing but a legend among future classes of students? Will I never get to store-card a genuine Cloud Club t-shirt?

Those of you who share similar dreams to me—or those of you who are, at minimum, kinda interested in the Cloud Club—fear not.

The leaders this year are promising change.

Sinton says that this year the club intends to include all students in the Cloud Club’s activities, and ensure that the club is a space that everyone feels they can be a part of. This year, maybe we can regain this relaxing space. We can rediscover the simple, rewarding joy of cloud-watching! We can gather together underneath the sun and sky just for fun, just to be together.

This gives some hope to my seventh-grade dreams, which had almost faded away.

However, I’d encourage you not to get too amped up about a lightning-fast revitalization; the Cloud Club’s casual nature and the busy lives of those who lead it have made this process of rebirth pretty calm and unconcerned. Regrowth is steady, but it’s a little slow.

Sinton isn’t worried about it, though. “You’ll be hearing more from the Cloud Club in the future,” she promises. “For now, we’re just getting started.”

I’ll be waiting, with my sunscreen.