Tag: cold

Week 16:

Most weeks I’m able to work from home on Thursdays. That was that case this past week which was lucky for me because the moon was full and the skies were clear and I was able to adjust my work schedule around the moonrise. All week long I’d been seeing photos of the moon on the eastern horizon against the Kenai Mountains and I had a hankering to be out there and witness its ascent myself. The moon was due to rise around 4:30pm and the sun was due to set just a little while later. I don’t know what the temperature was, but if I had to guess I’d say it was somewhere around zero.

If I could go back in time and tell my eighteen year-old self that one day I’d be a woman who would plan her day around the moonrise, eighteen year-old me would surely be worried. Tracking the moon was not the sort of thing that seemed normal to me back then and if I’d met anyone who wanted to talk to me about such things I would have thought they were wacky, possibly a little bit unhinged and spooky.

What was normal to me as an eighteen year old was an accumulation of what I’d experienced up to that point which involved small town sports, hours and hours of television sitcoms, lots of pop music, going back and forth between two blended families in two Western Colorado towns, and attending Pentecostal church services every week. Those were the things on the surface.

There were deeper things I was wrestling with too, things that didn’t add up. I’d witnessed hands-on healing, people speaking in tongues and dancing in the spirit, and had heard all kinds of biblical interpretations of current events. I’d had my heart broken already by a boy and by life circumstances and by the false notion that we are not worthy of any of the grace we’ve been given. I lived in fear of never finding love, of the impending apocalypse, of not being able to make it on my own.

I’d heard that there were women out there who concocted strange brews and gathered around fires during a full moon, but the thought of them made me nervous and so I didn’t allow them to take up any space in my imagination.

On Thursday when I made a pot of herb tea for my thermos and went outside to start a fire so that I could stay warm while watching for the moonrise, I wasn’t thinking so much about my eighteen year-old self. I was thinking instead about the practicalities of my situation. Both of my dogs were cold and wanted to go back in the house. I’d started work early that day and hadn’t yet figured out a plan for dinner. While I worked without gloves to get the paper and cardboard and kindling set up just right before I lit the match, the cold worked its way into my fingers. After the fire caught and started throwing heat I realized that from where I was standing I wouldn’t be able to see the point on the horizon where the moon was going to make its appearance.

The fire danger is low this time of year so it was fine to leave the fire in search of a better vantage point for viewing the moonrise. I tromped past the old birch tree and the chicken coop and turned north and east. I kept an eye out and soon a portion of the moon became visible. A stand of cottonwood trees stood between me and an unobstructed view, but the light was impressive the way I knew it would be.

Seeing the moon on the horizon never gets old. I love the persistent trick of the brain that makes it look bigger against the mountains than it does overhead. It’s a reminder that there are things we know to be true that can’t fully be explained. It’s a reminder that what is and what we perceive aren’t always the same thing.

While the size of the moon on the horizon might have been an illusion, my cold fingers were not. After a few minutes of moon gazing I let the short haired dog back into the house and made my way back to the fire. From there I thought about what to cook for dinner and watched the sun grow larger as it dipped toward the ocean. I warmed my hands and sipped my tea and stayed long enough to see Venus and Jupiter come to light.

It wasn’t until I was back in the house and cutting up potatoes that I thought of my eighteen year-old self. She sneaks into my awareness sometimes like a phantom and asks me to forgive her for being shallow and lost and afraid. She asks me for love and reassurance and for a reason to dream. She asks me to light the way forward, and so I do. I give her the sun and the moon and the stars. I build a fire and keep it burning.