December 09, 2003
Moonlight in Vermont
Lately, I have been getting up at first light, which up here is usually somewhere around 5:45-6:15am. Last night was good sleeping weather -- really clear and cold, with an almost full moon.
So this morning I woke up and saw the blue light of dawn out the window. I got up, and went downstairs to re-kindle the fire in the woodstove. Except it was still almost completely banked up from the night before -- last night's wood had not yet dissolved into embers. Which was weird.
And I was still really, really tired.
And then I looked at the clock (which is an antique wind-up clock that Maryellen's grandfather rebuilt), and it said a couple of minutes before 12:00. I thought to myself, "Boy, is that clock screwed up. It must have stopped in the middle of the night". But then I noticed the clock was still ticking.
Puzzled. Back to the window. It wasn't dawn. Instead, the brilliant moonlight was rebounding off of the blue-white snow. It was so bright outside I had assumed it was day breaking. You could have easily gone outside and walked around without any lights or candles or anything.
I went back to bed instead.
Posted by peter at December 9, 2003 10:23 PMThe moon that shines on you shines on me, as the lyrists say.
The other morning, clear crisp and cloudless, around 6AM the moon was low in the sky, setting in the west over New Jersey. The light was spectacular as it reflected off the Hudson.
And the moon was framed by little twinkling lights that were coming either from planes landing at Newark or some tower that I had never seen before.
Amazing sight, different than the moon reflecing off the Vermont snow, but still amazing!
Posted by: Mike, pgg's dad at December 10, 2003 06:16 AMI grew up in the Kingdom, Jay to be exact, I can remember driving in the winter at night with my parents and they would turn off the headlights for what seemed like miles, or until another car approached. My memory says that you could actually see further ahead and around you with greater detail without headlights. With the snow as a diffusing miror, the full moon can indeed light up the night as if it were almost day.
Posted by: Chris at December 11, 2003 10:11 AM