This is the dark season; but to make up for the shortness of the days we are given such glories of sunrise and sunset, and such a glittering brilliancy of stars, as come at no other time. All summer these belong to farmers, shepherds, and sailors; but now even slug-abeds can be out before first light, and watch the great stars fade, and dawn grow, and then come back to that cozy and exciting feast, breakfast by candle and fire light.
You step out into the frosty dark, with Venus pulsing and burning like a great lamp, and the snow luminous around you. The stars are like diamonds, and the sky black, and lo! there is the Dipper, straight overhead. It is night, yet not night, because of the whiteness of the snow, and because the air is already alive with the coming morning. The snow crunches sharply underfoot. The dry air tickles and tingles and makes you cough. The street lamps are still bright, and here and there the lighted windows of other early risers show a cheerful yellow in the snow. It is a friendly time of day. Neighbors call good-morning to each other in the dark, and sleigh-bells jingle past. Then you come home to the firelight and the gay-lighted breakfast table, with dawn stealing up fast, like lamplight spreading from the bright crack under a door.
As the first shafts of sunlight strike across, they light up a million frost-crystals. The air is alive with them, on all sides, delicate star and wheel shapes, flashing like diamonds. This beautiful phenomenon lasts only about half an hour. The fairy crystals, light as the air, floating about you, vanish, but the snow continues to flash softly, from countless tiny stars and facets, all day.
Frost mists hover all day about our valley, the breath of the sleeping river. They are drawn through our streets all day in veils and wisps of softness. Smoke and steam clouds hold their shape long in the winter temperatures. At night the smoke from the chimneys curls up in pale blue columns in the rarefied air, against the dark but clear blue of the winter night sky. By day the steam puffs from the locomotives rise pinky-buff, or almost gold-color, and keep their shape for a few moments as firm as thunderheads.
This year, mid-winter for the sun is the moon’s midsummer. The full moon rises and sets so far to the north that she completes full three-quarters of the circle. At night she rides at the zenith, high and small, and the snow fields seem illimitable and remote under her lonely light. The expanse of snow so increases both sun and moon light that she seems to rise while it is still broad day; and still to be shining with full silver, in her unwonted northern station, after broad day again, at dawn.