Call Me Loony…Confessions of a Moon Worshiper

Another full moon tonight…one would think it only happens on a rare occasion, I look forward to it with so much anticipation.  But every month, like a trusted friend, it comes again.  The nights leading up to it, I can’t sleep, or if I am able to fall asleep, I wake up as it passes by my window, crossing the night sky and nudging me as it begins to set.  The winter moons, especially, seem to line up just so with my bedroom window.  Tonight is the Snow Moon.  Sharing the billing this year is a Penumbral Lunar Eclipse, as well as Comet 45P, both highly touted celestial events. I watched the moon as I drove home from a late night at work, and realized later that I had seen the eclipse, without knowing I was seeing it, because I had misread the time. It was beautiful and moody in a dark hue, and we gazed back at each other the whole drive home…

I have a perfectly reasonable excuse for staying up so late for this full moon. I have offered to pick my husband up at the airport, and because of delays, his flight isn’t due to arrive until 3:30. So I prowl around the house, like a cat padding about on silent paws. I stop at each window to look out at the shadows, the silhouettes of trees and branches. As the moon makes its way across the sky, fractured slivers of moonlight come through the skylights and windows, catching the edges of mirrors and refracting on the floor, like a track of emergency lighting leading me toward an exit.

When I can’t stand it any longer, I bundle up and head outside to the beach, where the tide is low, and the expanses of untouched tidal flats beckon me to the edge of the water. The curls of the waves sparkle with moonlight as the they break, and the only sound is the rocks tumbling in the surf. The only light comes from an occasional porch light, and the moon. My shadow is so crisp on the sand, it could almost be high noon. I spin slowly in circles, and scan the sky for stars, planets, satellites, the elusive Green Comet. I am alone on the beach, and it feels like I am the only one awake for miles around. I know there must be eyes upon me: eagles, owls, maybe the ducks are nesting again in the pampas grass, and sit ever so still, hoping I will pass on by. It feels so peaceful.

I have always been a night owl. As a child, my parents had to scold me routinely for reading under a blanket with a flashlight, well past my bedtime. My moonlight ramblings began as a teenager. After a night out, my date would drop me off, I would bid farewell, and instead of going inside, I would go for a walk, around the neighborhood or to the beach, drinking up the night air and the quiet.

My first real full moon hike was with a guided group, while I was staying at a ritzy spa in Arizona. The full moon happened to coincide with my visit, and was advertised ahead of time as an excursion. So I showed up at this fancy spa with my hiking boots and backpack, eager to try something new. On the night of the full moon, I headed to the designated meeting spot at 10:00, and our small group of eight headed out into the Santa Catalina mountains. We did not use flashlights or headlamps, and our eyes adjusted quickly to the night. The Sonoran Desert and surrounding mountains were like an alien landscape to me, and I was in awe as we scrambled over huge boulders, walked by streams, and were serenaded by coyotes. We startled a bobcat, and were startled ourselves when a giant owl swooped down over our heads. I will never forget the feeling of freedom of being out in the night, with just the moonlight to guide us.

Since then, I have taken various hikes during the full moon. I have hiked at Sunrise, in Mt. Rainier National Park, during several full and super moons, where the destination was Burroughs Mountain, a spot that feels so close to the mountain, you feel like you can reach out and touch it. I have gone alone, and spent two hours sitting in the truck, waiting for the moon to rise, and gathering up the courage to step out into the night, the only person in a parking lot on the side of a mountain, at 6,000 feet of elevation. After the hike, I slept in the truck, too tired to drive home, and waited to watch the sunrise. It is not always easy to convince others to join me on these excursions. In the summer, the moon rises so late, the hike is strenuous, and the drive home is long, so an entire night of sleep is lost. My sons and sister are usually game, and my husband has gone once, as well. He was the one that drove us back home at 5:00 in the morning, and though I fought hard to stay awake, I finally succumbed. He deemed it a “tried it once” category entry, and has not been convinced to go again. I took my youngest son and three of his friends up one year, when they were 13, and we arrived early. Needing to kill some time before the moon was high and my older son and his friend arrived, we wandered out on some of the trails that ring the parking lot. It was already dark, and as we turned a corner on the trail, the boys nearly ran into the side of a deer and her fawn. She stomped the ground hard, then bounded away. The boys were so startled that they insisted we go back to the car to wait. When my other son arrived, the younger boys could not be convinced to get back out of the car, so I drove them home, and my son and his friend went on to hike the mountain without us.

I have hiked in the jungle of Costa Rica in the moonlight, and joined the migration of the Halloween crabs (Gecarcinus quadratus) as they marched toward the ocean to breed and lay eggs. Thousands upon thousands of colorful crabs, decked out in red, purple and black, so many that you almost can’t find a place to step without crushing one. It was an eerie and magnificent sight to witness the magnetic pull to the sea, and to watch the crabs emerge from burrows and nooks all along the jungle path, merging into the zombie-like procession. The rustle of the foliage as they emerged from the jungle, and the sound of thousands of tiny claws clicking over the rocks on the trail was hypnotic. Once we reached the beach, and finished watching the crabs burrow and dig, we hiked in search of egg-laying turtles, past lagoons filled with crocodiles, their eyes reflecting the light and glowing above the surface of the water, their gaze following us as we passed by. It was an experience I will never forget.

If I had lived in the witch hunt days of Salem, I am sure I would have been high on the suspect list. A woman that ventures out after dark, alone, and seems to worship the moon. I would have been one to find a quiet glade, and dance in the light of the fire, arms swaying above my head like the branches sway in the wind. Guilty of whispering to the trees and cavorting in the moonlight, I would have surely been hanged, if not wily enough to evade capture. Or if captured, I would have had to have been clever enough or seductive enough to have been able to bargain for my life, or be an actual witch, able to cast a spell that would save me. I believe that the myths of the werewolf are based in some truth…women in their reproductive prime, moved by the moon, preyed upon by men who sense them out alone in the night…what transformed the men? The moon, or the women who followed the moon?

The moon moves the oceans, mobilizes armies of plant and animal life, triggers concerted spawning on massive reefs, changes the hunting patterns of apex predators, dictates the turn of the tides over the planet and the tides of the cycles within us. The carbon cycle of the ocean relies on the lunar cycle to move the carbon pump: during the full moon, the mass of zooplankton sinks deep into the ocean, plunging the carbon below and drawing the predators deeper for feeding, taking the excess carbon from the atmosphere and trading it for the depths, where it becomes shells, coral reefs, the structure of the ocean. The very air we breathe depends upon the full moons.

Some may call it lunacy, but for me, a full moon is a time of awakening, of restlessness, of seeking. It is a gift that I celebrate every month, as the moon rotates around the earth, and visits me again, like an old friend.

Photo credits: India.com; Wikipedia