I’m leaving Madison on Highway 14 and the sky is home to a herd of shaggy buffalo clouds, languid and calm grazing on the blue plain. Craning my neck to admire these enormous shapes, I decide for the time being, the horizon is my wilderness and I am on safari.

I have a destination in mind — Parfrey’s Glen near Baraboo — but it is early in my journey and there is much to see. I pass a quarry where the mountain of displaced gravel recently succumbed to the weather; its sides are carved out in twisty, forking paths. I pass a field where the rows of corn flicker on and off like an old-fashioned picture show. Sandwiched between the flat stretches of farmland, trees lump together in bulging domed canopies eager to burst their boundaries.

The road ahead of me smiles its yellow centerline. A shadow develops on the spinning asphalt — a circular ghost of a shadow — hovering beyond my bumper a mere 30 feet or so. The shadow sharpens for a second, stenciling the pin feathers of large wings, but the bird swoops back before I can get a glimpse. Perhaps a large hawk, the bird has reminded me of the sky.

How quickly I have forgotten my sky safari. It now plunges me underwater where a school of cloud dolphins arch their slender white backs across a frothy blue ocean. The clouds appear  lower on the horizon. Have they moved, or have I? I wonder.

My directions inform me my destination is still a few miles off as I zoom pass a small entrance sign for Parfrey’s Glen. I’m going too fast to make the turn, so I go on to the next intersection ready to turn around.

As I make the loop back, something swoops into view – all I see is wings. It must be a bald eagle, I think to myself as the huge bird lurches forward and back midair, putting on brakes so it can land on the ground. However, a distinctly narrow black head tells me I’ve actually seen a turkey vulture.

Finally, I am at Parfrey’s Glen, yet, I have already seen so much. My goal is to take photographs of the site, so I turn a bit more inward as I look through the lens.

My focus changes to capture water sheeting in white ribbons over a tousled rock, to capture fallen tree limbs as they barricade a way off the marked path, to capture rounded rocks held in suspension within a  sheer rock wall. The destination is no less gorgeous than the journey, but it is different — more retrospective and memory-stirring perhaps.

After traversing the trails and snapping the sights, I follow the stream out of the woods back to the parking lot. I see the sky again. As I make my way home the clouds are pancakes lathered in whipped topping.