The heavens had been pure blue all day but, as dusk fell, they acquired a smoky quality at lower elevations. I sat to watch four red deer across the slopes opposite, until I happened to glanced westward.
The heart of that woodland scene was burnt out by the brilliance of the low-angled sun, but to either side of the glare, I could operate with binoculars and camera. In the canted light, the middle distance beyond the oakwood foliage, as well as the field foreground, were all the softest shades of pale copper and sepia. Yet the vegetation, especially the horizon of bent grasses, was glazed in a fractal pattern of splintered light, and through it all, where the faintest breeze had passage, was a seethe of slow-wafted particles shining white against the darkness.
Gradually, I brought into focus hundreds of thousands of these motes. If I concentrated on any one, I could eventually judge from its direction-free journey that it was probably the seed floss of willowherb or thistles, whose lifeless heads spiked out the grass horizon. Some specks, however, had intention and I was able to separate the dancing shoals of midges from individual craneflies or bumblebees in transit.
It was not any part of the spectacle that compelled me, it was the autumnal whole – the way these drifts gave a precise geography to the transparent fluidity of space. Our air, which we can almost never see, was transformed into something eloquent and beautiful. To say I haven’t previously experienced a moment like it would be untrue – I actually want to say that I’ve seen it subliminally a thousand times – but I’ve never watched it so intently.
We know our atmosphere is important and the precondition for us all, but whoever stops to give it thanks? This holy nothing, which tonight was warm and embracing, protects life, but is itself a creation of life. In his essay The World’s Biggest Membrane, the late physician and poet Lewis Thomas wrote: “We should credit it for what it is: for sheer size and perfection of function, it is far and away the grandest product of collaboration in all of nature.”
• Country diary is on Twitter/X at @gdncountrydiary
• Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian’s Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at guardianbookshop.com and get a 20% discount
