The latest photo challenge from the folks at dailypost.wordpress.com is right up my alley.

You see, I have a problem.  There’s not much else that will cause me to stop whatever I’m doing and pull out my camera than an awesome sky.  I’ve spent most of my life somewhere on the Central Plains of the US and if I spent too much time away, I feel claustrophobic.  Views like this one take me away from the daily grind to the contemplation of infinite possibilities.

There a peacefulness I find in the infinite vistas of the open prairie.  A freedom that comes from seeing to the horizon in every direction.

When I was living on the coast of Papua New Guinea, there were times when I had to flee to from the school grounds where I worked, surrounded by the immense beauty of the tropics, to a place where I could see the open sea – just so I could see enough of the open sky.

I recently spent a week in New Mexico, north of Santa Fe, where I took this shot of this open, cloud-filled sky, keeping company with one lonely tree.   When I saw this, I had to pull my car over on a muddy forest road.  Tramping up an incline to clear a power line, it was worth the mess I made of my floor mats to capture it.