Country diary: The light and shade of autumn’s shortening days | Merryn Glover

It is the one clear day in a fortnight of heavy cloud, wind and rain, so I am out by the loch, basking in the rays of light, breathing them in, hoarding for the weeks to come.This time of year makes them all the more precious. Here in the Highlands, once we are past the autumnal equinox, we can almost feel the Earth tipping away from the sun as the light grows shorter each day and the night steals back. It’s a turn that is especially obvious when the clocks change and our evenings are suddenly dark.As an Australian brought up in south Asia and raised on sunshine, when I first moved here I found this shift dismaying and I dreaded the months ahead. For a few years a light box sustained me through the depths of winter. But in my three decades in Scotland, I have acclimatised. I’ve found increasing reasons to glory in autumn, when the encroaching darkness is offset by a particular radiance in the light, especially at either end of the day, as the low sun cuts through cold air.It seems to gain greater clarity, drawing sharper lines around shadows and making every twig and rock stand out in high relief. And there’s intensity to its long-reaching rays, casting a glow on the fire palette of the berries and the changing leaves. When shafts of sun break through on otherwise slate-dark days, the trees seem lit from within, like the golden halo in an icon.Today, the first snows on the hills are brilliant white, echoed in the gliding swans on the loch. But even the darkness no longer feels such a threat. Its cloak falls gently now, each day giving more ground to the velvet night, studded by a silver brooch of moon.I feel myself tipping away from the sun myself to stare at thousands of stars, planets, meteors, comets and the soft glitter of the Milky Way. And I am drinking and breathing it in, hopeful for the winter to come.