A Hunter's Moon

We love the trees in our neighborhood - many of them original residents of the street, one planted in the corner of each yard when the houses were originally built sixty years ago.  Just in the past week, the color of the leaves has shifted from mostly green to mostly golden and any appreciable breeze brings hundreds of them fluttering to the ground.

One of the few drawbacks of all these towering old trees, though, is a limited view of the wide Texas sky most natives - including us - proudly enjoy and proclaim the virtues of.  They especially interfere with a view of the horizon, something critical to watching the moon rise.

My parents' place on a hilltop in Central Texas, however, affords a superb view of the horizon.  Our spur-of-the-moment visit there this week happened to coincide with this month's full moon - known as, not the harvest moon, which falls after the autumnal equinox, but rather the hunter's moon, which falls after the harvest moon.

I forgot about the happy coincidence Monday evening, which was the first day of the full moon, but remembered it Tuesday in time to wander outside - shortly after the sun had set, leaving behind a blood red trail stretching across the horizon to the west - and gaze expectantly towards the eastern horizon.

My mom was actually the first to see the disc peek over the horizon, as I'd wandered around to get a glimpse behind the few buildings that blocked our view of portions of the horizon.  I carried Gideon, already stripped down to just a diaper and shirt in preparation for bathtime.

As it slipped over the horizon, it reflected the blood red sunset in the west, appearing almost fuschia.  It was huge and seemed just out of reach.  But as it freed itself from land and rose into the sky, it became pumpkin orange and its size began to shrink.  By 7:30, the last time we checked before Gideon's bedtime, all its color had drained away and it hung silvery white in the sky high above our heads, the way we're used to seeing it.

It's always been thrilling to me to catch the moonrise, when the moon seems so close and so personal.  When it becomes something more than another distant object in the sky.  Gideon seemed equally enthralled, repeatedly pointing it out to my mom, despite the fact that she was the one who'd found it for us, and ultimately prying my dad out of his evening reverie in his recliner in front of the TV, in order to pull him outside to gaze in wonder at the huge red orb looming on the horizon.

There are lots of trees in Maryland that will most likely usually block our view of the horizon, but there are hundreds of miles of coastline surrounding Saint Mary's County.  We'll miss the moonrises of our expansive Texas skies, but look forward to short drives to the beach to watch the moon rise out of the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean beyond.