Life at -25C

[byslantedlight]

Wide awake just after 4.00am this morning (the one prior to today) which had something to do with reading Helen Raven's "Heat Trace" for hours on end. More about that another time.

That place where your eyes won't stay open any more, but your brain is all over the place. Where its worried that you may have left the oven on when you made cheese on toast six hours earlier, even though you know the kitchen has been bloody freezing every time you passed through since then. So I went to check - of course it was off. Since I was up, and the sky had been clear earlier, I peered out the window to see if the northern lights were out. Huge pillars of light stood tall into the sky. Rushed to get glasses, shoes, put jacket on.

When I got outside, I realised that it wasn't the aurora. The city was covered in ice fog, and the streetlights on campus were shining up through it, reflecting off every single crystal in their path. Anti-beams of light, shooting straight and true into the shrouded sky. Like you could touch them. I wandered to the other side of the house, just in case the aurora was out too and I was looking in the wrong direction. Right over my cabin was a beam of silver glitter, just like the glitter in snowglobes when I was a kid. Every inch of it sparking off the cold and shining. Magic.