Cold clear night

I'm just back from a short walk through the woods. Clear sky, -16°C air temperature, approximately full moon high overhead, Orion high in the sky, the Seven Sisters shining--or maybe five of them in the hardly-black moonlit sky. Even after the warmth and rain last week the ground is mostly snow covered and reflective, the trees are bare and cast little shade, and it's not dark out at all with the moonlight. The cold dry winter sky is hardly black with all the moonlight but is still clear and the brighter stars show clearly. Even though, as I always say, it's just waste and pollution, the smoke rising from each chimney on each roof of the row of buildings is pretty. It takes a lot more clothing to be comfortable at -16°C walking than it does when skiing (cold weather makes for fast skiing I always say, because the harder you work the warmer you'll be, and on a good cold night that means going very fast!) but it's easy enough to dress for comfortable walking. (Medium wool socks and fairly ordinary boots, the heavy thermal pants under ordinary jeans, sweater, light jacket under the outer jacket, thin glove liners and heavy gloves, a neck gaiter that's probably not really needed, and hat with headband under it for complete ear coverage. For skiing I might use the same heavy fleece pants with tights over them, just the light underjacket alone over a warm shirt, and much thinner gloves over the liners. That's plenty if the heart rate will average in the 140s and peak in the 180s.)