Country Life
Northern skies
Peter Quince
The sky takes a larger part in the daily scene at this time of year than at any other. When activity dies down on the earth, the incessant process of change in the atmosphere engages the eye more fully. Life seems to be ebbing away from the landscape: up above it, all is movement, drama, a non-stop cycle of renewal and transformation. The sky provides the boisterous and animated ingredient in the wake of the dying year.
One must be bred in these northern latitudes, I fancy, to take pleasure in this atmospheric spectacle. My own taste in skies is catholic, but incorrigibly northern. I remember once sitting in an Italian garden in the springtime and remarking with admiration upon the dissolving patterns of brilliant white clouds overhead. My Florentine host gave me a look of disbelief, not to say disgust. To him, he indicated, the only good sky was one of unsullied blue; the shifting clouds were no more than blemishes, like warts on a beautiful face. There was a gulf between our responses that was unbridgeable—his formed in the bright clarity of the Mediterranean light, mine shaped under the endlessly varying ceiling of the northern world.
And endless variety, whether we enjoy it or not, is what our sky has been supplying, without stint, of late. There have been great storms, and days and nights when the heavens' single contribution has been a merciless deluge like a rerun of parts of the book of Genesis. But even when one's abiding impression is of unceasing downpour, the reality, for anyone who keeps an eye on what is happening overhead, is very different. It is rare for any day to fail to provide some interludes of rapid change, while many a day, even during a spell of singular wetness, displays a dazzling versatility in the management of sky effects.
The other day, for example, the dawn revealed a scene of shimmering, silvery whiteness. There was a mist everywhere, thick near the ground, thinning as it ascended until the tops of the trees became visible, sketched in the atmosphere like tentative pencil images. There was a complete absence of colour; the whiteness in the air was everything. When the sun became dimly visible, that was at first only a white region in the sky which possessed an. extra intensity; then it solidified into a shining white disc. A little time Passed before it gained a pale yellow tint, and only after that did it begin to show any power as a source of light and, later still, of heat.
The southern wall of the barn began to steam, as the sun's rays vaporised the dripping condensation of the mist. But this miniature local contribution to the haze soon disappeared as the air began to clear. Quite suddenly everything was crisp and sharp and the sky had changed completely from silver to an impeccable blue. For a time there was not a cloud to be seen. The sun shone down as on a summer's day.
Needless to say, it did not do so for very long. A massive bank of cumulus clouds made its entry, propelled by a powerful wind which could scarcely be detected down at ground level. Above that, a faint pattern of thin cirrus clouds took shape high up in the blue. One set of clouds seemed to be moving in one direction, the other in the opposite direction; perhaps this was an optical illusion, although it seems likely enough in such a changeable season. At any rate, at one moment they were staging their marching and countermarching up aloft, then before one had
noticed what was happening they, too, had vanished and a new, low invasion of grey cloud, flat and unbroken, had occupied the sky. This held its place for an hour or so, shedding a light shower of rain while it did so; after which there was a dramatic clearance again, and we were back to uninterrupted blue.
And so it went on all day, until the evening brought great masses of purple and white and dark grey, with a subtle apricot tinge over in the west. All was movement, and colour, and change. Late at night when I looked out the air seemed empty again, and the stars could be seen all around the horizon. Next day there was a brilliant frost. There are times when I pine for those blue Italian skies: but I know, •too, how much I would miss the variety with which our northern atmosphere is so prodigal.
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