[FrankHudson]

Yes, well put. You put into words one thing I miss from my rural upbringing, the opportunity to try to comprehend the full night sky, the full absence of human sounds.

Over at my blog I was revisiting Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" last week. I wondered (remembering rural roads at night) if Frost, instead of contemplating a well-lit copse of trees while traveling in the country on "the darkest evening of the year," was more at lost in the falling dark. The Frost line in it that stood out to me as I revisited this poem: "the sweep of easy wind and downy flake." Reminded in memory of that level of ambience where you can hear the top layers of snow sweeping over the layers of snow beneath them.