Ah, Moon!

Tuesday, June 22, 2021 (In 2 days, June’s fullest [Strawberry] moon will rise.)

Already this month’s Strawberry Moon looks full. There it was very early this morning lighting the western sky, reflecting in a window as I let my dogs outside for a few moments. This month’s moon is to be at its fullest Thursday night. My friend Susie already is studying solar data and deciding where best we might witness actual moments of the moon’s rising.

I’ve always loved full moons, especially autumn’s big harvest moons. They’re farther from Earth than winter Super Moons, but nonetheless are incredibly bright, and to me, comforting. As autumn days become shorter and I’m trudging up from the barn in near-darkness, a harvest moon is warm and inviting.

That used to be plenty enough, to encourage me to pause beside my house and photograph the beautiful moon. Next morning, I’d post a picture, blog about the moon, speak to it’s joy and of course how it revives Shakespeare’s magnificence.

I’m not particularly adventuresome and rather happily “live in my head”. A vision from my house of the moon once was quite satisfying. That has changed since Susie and I teamed to “chase the full moon”. She’s outdoorsy, not satisfied to gaze at full moons from our neighborhood, but wishes to witness the actual moments of a moon’s rise above a very dark horizon. In other words, no city lights.

She studies solar information for when a full moon will rise and to estimate where best to witness it. I’m a passenger during miles of traveling toward more darkness. We will park in a remote spot and wait staring at a blank horizon until it reveals a spot of very-first light.

What an incredible light! It’s like the whole world itself newly is rising. We two are like prehistoric humans, awed by a new light that’s making safer the surrounding darkness. We are joyful and dance with our cameras.

Being pushed outdoors has altered my relationship to the moon, now closely related to my increasing sense of the total connectedness among everything living regardless of classification. We humans are beginning to grasp this holistic inter-living connectedness. It’s the reason witnessing a moon-rise interrupting darkness seems nearly a primitive experience, erasing time and commitments, freeing ideas and soul, and re-enlightening.

This Thursday evening we’ll head east into darkening, searching for an optimal view of horizon. We’ll park and await in darkness with cameras for an earliest light, and the quickly increasing glow that offsets the Earth’s night.

Dear Friends: Studying the worlds of nature and solar affirms a totality of connectedness. Diana