Hypaethral

I stumbled across this word in a book by Mircea Eliade that I was reading at least 30 years ago. I loved the sound and look of it, but hadn’t the vaguest idea what it meant, even after wrestling with the context which often yields a sense of a word strange to me. I looked it up, penciled the meaning in the margin, and promptly forgot about it until a couple days ago when culling old books preparing to move cross country. “Hypaethral” I mused. What a lovely word, how could I have forgotten its sound and sight, much less its meaning: open to the sky; roofless. Yes, my favorite word even though I forgot about it all these years. To be open to the sky ….

Patricia Kelly