Full moon rising, 30 December 2020 At home in sequential lockdowns during 2020, we take much pleasure in the beauty of sunrise and sunset, in moonlight and in rainbows. And we share the joy they bring with our neighbours. Our horizons shrink, our freedoms are curtailed but the natural world has grandeur and splendour and it is there for everyone.
So at sunrise and sundown I'm eager to see what these winter days may bring.
So at sunrise and sundown I'm eager to see what these winter days may bring.
She looks down upon a frozen Easedale Tarn as the afternoon temperature plummets She rises above a snow-clad Blencathra and looks down on Castlerigg Stone Circle. The moon has seen it all before, these winter landscapes over thousands of years.
The full moon rises to the North North East, peeping above Scots Pine. There’s a scatter of light about her that I cannot fathom. She gives a glorious light but she’s tricky to photograph and there are quirky effects I can’t account for but rather like. We think those rays of light emitting from the moon might be spiculae, tiny shard of ice in sub-zero temperatures.
All night, I follow her course through the sky from her rising in the North in a dark sky to her peering down into a skylight window, to the east high amongst snow clouds at midnight, then when the skylight is laden with snow-drops, sinking to the west before dawn.
The moon is dispassionate and serenely beautiful. Her grandeur has us full of wonder as we follow her progress . She is one of the glories of this grim year, she and a winter sunrise. However unwelcome the news we can look to the horizon, to the skies and consider that this too will pass. And that the beauty of sunrise and moonlight will help sustain us.
Read the diary of the Reverend Francis Kilvert and you sense what it was like for a curate to walk beneath the moon between parishes. And for Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy making their way home after dark in winter. Perhaps, this year, we reconnect to the natural world as lockdowns limit our horizons.
All night, I follow her course through the sky from her rising in the North in a dark sky to her peering down into a skylight window, to the east high amongst snow clouds at midnight, then when the skylight is laden with snow-drops, sinking to the west before dawn.
The moon is dispassionate and serenely beautiful. Her grandeur has us full of wonder as we follow her progress . She is one of the glories of this grim year, she and a winter sunrise. However unwelcome the news we can look to the horizon, to the skies and consider that this too will pass. And that the beauty of sunrise and moonlight will help sustain us.
Read the diary of the Reverend Francis Kilvert and you sense what it was like for a curate to walk beneath the moon between parishes. And for Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy making their way home after dark in winter. Perhaps, this year, we reconnect to the natural world as lockdowns limit our horizons.
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