A Light’s Full Circle

Tuesday, April 27, 2021 (The April full Pink Moon has reached its apex.)

April’s Pink Super-Moon is the first of 2021’s two official super-moons. Normal moons are 240,000 miles from the earth, but super-moons are only 222,064 miles away. Maybe that doesn’t sound like much, but the shortened distance makes a super-moon appear much bigger than a normal moon.

By the way, the Pink Moon isn’t actually pink. It’s named after the herb, pink moss. That herb also is known as creeping phlox, moss phlox, or mountain phlox. Pink moss is one of the earliest spring flowers appearing in the United States.

Susie and I are Moon Chasers. We wear matching jackets and go after full super-moons. Last evening, we hoped to see the moon rise at 7:51 p.m., but had doubts because the sky sported heavy clouds.

Susie, a mountain biker knows lots of interesting stuff. She had researched where the moon would rise. Using her cell phone compass, she drove directly to a location that was 120 degrees east of zero-north. We wound up where China Hat Road intersects with dirt road #200. The spot was right-on to see the moon rise. (I, who barely know what a compass is. was gobsmacked.)

Here, Susie’s about to duck under the barrier to Road #200.

We walked on this inviting path while distant coyotes yapped while hunting. The dwindling daylight punctuated that increasingly gorgeous moon.

The complex ambient lighting confused the autofocus functions of our cameras. Sometimes they caught colors and details and others not. That’s a desert territory moody with junipers, not thickly-forested and set in surreal ways. There’s a spellbinding contrast between moon brightness and arranged junipers.

Occasionally, the rising moon became lost in clouds, but it left light chains.

We played on the path of Road #200.

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We loved the surreal desert.

As Moon Chasers, we wear matching jackets. And in the background here is our team logo.

In the evening after I was home, Susie forwarded the compass position where the morning moon would be setting, and explained where from my deck to look for that location. I ventured outside in 30-degree weather and with freezing fingers captured that full Pink Moon setting behind Mt. Bachelor.

Dear Friends: This chase preps for the only other “official” Super-Moon, it rises on May 26. Diana