This is Thanksgiving week, and it is now proper to speak the word Christmas in regards to contemporary plans. Similarly, with the trees bare and fits of snowflakes in the air, we can now speak the words last summer without feeling like we are hastening it's end. Summer is over, the days are short, and the winter weather patterns have arrived.

Last week's weather was predominated by lake- effect clouds, snow flurries, gusty northwest winds, and single- digit temperatures at 10,000 feet. Our familiar deck of winter clouds frequently laid between 3000 feet and 6000 feet in this area but dissipated to the east. These clouds were the only weather feature in a sky which would be clear, were it not for the Great Lakes moisture, and they deposited a layer of ice on the plane as it passed through them. It was a typical week of winter flying.

Lake effect clouds usually do not present an icing problem because the exposure time is fairly short and predictable. The plane spends five or six minutes climbing through the thick but featureless gray cloud and suddenly pops out into a starlit sky. The transition is almost like being expelled into outer space because the clouds are so flat on top; one second the world outside shines gray in the airplane's lights, and the next second, there is absolutely nothing in the crystal clear air for the airplane's lights to illuminate. Eyes take a few seconds to adjust to the new darkness, and for a moment the sensation is like outer space, with no up, down, right, or left.

The waning moon gave a great show one night as it was rising above the clouds just as I popped out of them. On my southeast course I looked to the left as I broke through- into outer space- and saw a big orange three- quarters moon resting on the top of the clouds with me. It was keeping companion with Orion, who was seemed to be laying on the cloud deck, just to the right of the moon. I watched them rise on my eastbound trip, and saw them again ln the high part of the sky on my westbound trip eight hours later.

On this night the clouds thinned and then disappeared east of Wilkes- Barre, and I watched the cities and countryside pass by. Allentown, Bethlehem, and then Easton lit the southern horizon in an almost unbroken line as I came up on Stroudsburg and the Delaware Water Gap on the left, paralleling I-80. On a good night the lights of Greater New York can be seen from this point, beyond the darkness of Western New Jersey, and the outline of the coast can be discerned for many miles to the south.

The view reminded me of an unusual satellite photomosaic I saw recently. The picture covered the whole world, in a conventional flat map format, but was made entirely of photos taken in the late evening. It was not a map of mountains and oceans but a map of people, because people live where all the lights shone. It was fascinating to see the sharp demarcation between urban and rural areas, and to see how so very much of the land is rural.

The night sky is a rural sky compared to the tumult of the daytime. The moon and the stars seem like friends, and the lights of various cities are familiar landmarks, even at a distance. With fewer things to see, each detail takes a more personal significance. Even the radio becomes a small village at night. I recognize many of the traffic controllers by their voices, and each night I come and go in the company of the same airplanes as we each fly our coinciding schedules.

I guess that if you can't be cozy at home on the long winter nights, is almost as good to be cozy among "friends".