DocAndersen
There are two things that warm your toes on a cold winters night; one is a quilt (we happen to have an amazing number of quilts) and a fire in the fireplace. But there is also another way that doesn’t physically you, but mentally helps drive the darkness of winter away. The reality of the season winter has to do with the refraction of the suns rays as they strike the surface of the earth. During summer they are virtually straight overhead so as the sun’s ray’s come down, they are refracted. They hit and bounce straight back (light does pass thru solid objects, but it is also bounced). That releases more energy, i.e., heat into the atmosphere. In the winter the light is more like skipping stones on a lake. You can. If you try, skip a stone across water.
Even though the stone is heavier than the water, using displacement and surface tension the principles that ships follow, the rock doesn’t sink. It skips across the surface of the water. The same is true as the sun in the northern hemisphere moves off the horizon and the rays strike the earth at an angle. It is why ½ the year it is cooler in the northern hemisphere. The same of course reversed the other half the year in the southern hemisphere. Because the earth is a huge ball, the middle of the ball always gets direct sunlight. It, the tropics, follows the center of the earth or what we call the equator. The tropics do get cool air, but 70 degrees Fahrenheit doesn’t support snow.
So pictures of warm water, sunlight warm you even as the sun doesn’t quite, warm you! Do not go gentle into that good night as Dylan Thomas said. Plus in the winter, when there are no clouds, and the stars are twinkling above, there is magic in the air — a crisp, wonderful world that is silent. If you walk outside during the summer, it is different. In the summer the world is alive. Animals move around at night to reduce the threat of predators. In the winter all is still. It is as the song tells us “The silent night. You don’t need many silent nights in the summer. You do find many in the winter.
Plus, when the snow falls, and then it warms to above freezing so the top of the snow melts and then refreezes there is also the fun of creating your silent night crunching, as you trod on semi-refrozen snow!
This is a very beautiful ship!