In praise of winter nights

With winter days short, although lengthening at last, it is easy to lament the loss of longer, warmer summer days, and yet, each day as I am about to curse the dying of the light, I look to the sky and see such scenes of beauty that it is hard to deny the magnificence of winter. In fact, sometimes it feels as though winter provides many more perfectly calm and solitary moments to truly enjoy it's beauty. There is so little hurry, so little hustle in the cold evenings, that I find myself looking up and cherishing what sunlight we have as it slips beneath the horizon, the blanket of white on the ground, and later the piercing stars in a clear night sky. If us northerns must endure the cold and the dark, at least we learn a unique appreciation of the light.