Short days, long shadows

The winter sun, “a sadder light than waning moon,” though its warmth is feeble and its everyday life brief, shines with a frigid clarity that creates its own hard beauty. Winter air is rarefied, that is, less dense, and so in the clear sunlight, objects are revealed in all their textured detail – outlines are harder, colors richer, shadows longer. In the Yard, in the unaltered light, leafless trees, stark statuary, and classic architecture seem pared down, truer, more themselves.