Lights in the darkness

I'd forgotten how spooky one of the big sirens can be.

I'm in a fairly small city in the Appalachians. Apparently it's small enough to have a volunteer fire department. With one of the old air-raid type sirens to summon the faithful. Urgent and plaintive and oddly beautiful.

I don't envy those who answered it. It's below freezing already, and lows in the teen's are in the forecast. I'm already looking forward to waking up shivering, starting the truck, and waiting for it to get warm enough to sleep in. Then doing it again in a few hours.

Getting here was good for working up a sweat, though. Two lanes over the mountains. Hairpin turns on a road a foot wider (per lane) than the truck. Not the worst I've driven, but scary enough. Especially in the dark.

When I wasn't being terrified I was enjoying the scenery. This is about the only time of year you can enjoy scenery in the dark. Come around a pitch-black curve and There! In the distance! A multicolored spray of brilliant dots, sprawled over what seems like half an acre--and is, sometimes. Flickering or winking or glowing steadily--or maybe all of the above. Firefly season for men, in the depths of winter.

Christmas lights seem more impressive to me out here. In the city, rich people's displays seem (usually) a bit--tame. Orderly. As if they hired someone to put the lights up (which maybe they7 did) and the contractor did too neat a job. The lightshow equivalent of McMansions.

The less affluent displays are friendlier, but--well, CRAMPED. Fitting a properly exuberant set of Christmas lights on a city-lot-sized front yard makes it look like work. Or something.

But out here...Half an acre of lights in the middle of a mile of blackness. Or a candle in the window--the only light you can see. Or something in between.

Always a pleasure.