The Sky's Seasons

What a lovely day. The snowflakes are falling lazily down and the world is muted on this first day of the year. To be realistically pessimistic, a lot of the lack of activity is probably due to hangovers in a significant chunk of society. But that's not a cheery wintry thought, now is it? Last night was marvelous as well. The wind sighed and blew and whistled about the trees and houses with a sorrowful yet simultaneously soothing and invigorating sound. Today is the kind of day when you want to read old books, play old piano songs, and drink strong chai tea. Once again, reality is a downer and truthfully, today is the day that I realize I have two days of break left and quite a bit to finish in that amount of time. I still get my tea though (plus I found some gingerbread cookies to eat with it, yum!), and my streak of unsuccessful tea-brewing has come to an end, thankfully. I started typing this yersterday, but I felt like adding this little bit today. Now on to the part that pertains to the title of the post.

I looked up at the sky yesterday and noticed how incredibly lovely it looked. Then I realized that it was the first truly winter sky I've seen yet this year. There are two types of blue skies: summer and winter. During fall and spring, you just get some days with summer skies and some with winter skies. Richard Adams does a wonderful job of describing the two kinds in one of my favorite books, Watership Down: "It was a fine, clear evening in mid-October...The sky, too, was void, with a thin clarity like that of water. In July, the still blue, thick as cream, had seemed close above the green trees, but now the blue was high and rare..." It was a delight to find that little passage at the end of the book when I first read it several years ago, because I thought I was insane for thinking that there were different blue skies for different seasons, but as you can see, if I'm out of my mind, at least I have good company. Yesterday's sky was distant, as if separated from the world by a thin but completely transparent sheet of ice, if that makes any sense at all. In the summer time, the sky and the earth are one everywhere, but in the winter they're only united at the distant horizon, and only barely even then. It gives a more dream-like quality to the world.