January 16

I wrote before of the brilliance of the evening stars in the winter skies. Much depends on the cloud cover, of course, and it is the case that we so often have leadened skies in January, which cover the sun and the nightly stars.

This makes the clear nights all the more spectacular, when the stars seem as twinkling pinpoints against the dark of space. These stars seem closer in winter as if we could sweep our hand across the sky to gather them together.

Summer skies lack this character, as the evenings are more often laced with humid air that carries the scents of verdant growth. It is this very air that gives us such wonderful sunsets and twilights that linger on. But this gives way to starry skies that are seen through a humid sheen, however so slight, that the stars look more filtered and dream like.

Though the summer nights fulfill the senses in their own way, for me the skies of January fill us with an austere clarity, of contrasts of light and dark, cold and warm, life and beyond.