Yuri Gagarin’s Flight

Clear and cold before dawn, the air near 34°F and dry as bone. The sun came up into an empty sky. It warmed the ground fast and by mid-afternoon the air was near 58° with a west wind pushing across the flats, dust in it. Not a cloud through the whole of the day. Toward evening the sky filled in from the west and the warmth went out of it, the air settling toward 47° under low cloud.