A clear, crisp night with a scattering of stars and an almost-full moon in the south - a huge ring appeared around 10pm and hovered, halo-like, in the sky. Folk legend would have you believe a moon ring is the precursor of bad weather, and so it is. The ring comes from solar light reflecting off hexagonal ice crystals in the upper atmosphere - shreds of thin cirrus clouds that precede warm fronts by a couple of days. These fronts are quickly followed in turn by low pressure systems, aka storms. Winter is upon us.
The last time I saw a moon ring, I couldn't have been more than eleven or twelve. It was a teeth-achingly cold winter night, but clear as a bell, and on our windy hilltop every star stood out sharp as a pinprick. The moon was full and still faintly orange, just over the spiky horizon of the pines. The ring formed a perfectly circular shadow around it, within which the sky seemed darker, more concentrated, than in the surrounding area. The inner edge was sharp, delineated, then faded towards the outside like the feathery touches of a painter's brush. At that moment I felt a great swell of pity for those who never free themselves from the tyranny of streetlights and city noise and simply look upwards. A moon ring calls up Alaskan imagery of northern lights and wild tundra - the smell of spruce and frost in the air, and no place for tarmac and neon.