Full Moon, Scoat Fell and Red Pike from Pillar

The effect of full moonlight upon the mountains is extraordinary. With the end of daylight the mountains seem to dissolve, they seem to be lost to the gloom. Then, with the rising of the moon, the form of the mountain gradually becomes visible again. But it is different. The sky has a half-tone; a half-light produced by the opalescent glow of the moon. The darkness cast in the shadows of moonlight have an intensity that hints at something beyond our perception. Nan Shepherd wrote, “a mountain has an inside” and it seems the intense dark of night shadow connects to that interior. The immediate landscape of the night is silent and unfamiliar, the shapes and forms of the day are transfigured and blurred, distances and colours are ambiguous. To walk this remarkable and re-imagined landscape is to pass into another world, one that exists briefly with the coincidence of the full moon and a clear sky.