Sage Moon, Silly Me

Waxing Moon, January 2015.

Lessons come, whether we knowingly seek them or not.

I did not make offerings this month, primarily because I was annoyed. Annoyed at the Moon.


Moon: fixed, bewildered, "Where are the offerings?"

Me: petulant, accusatory, "Where are the Lights, Ms. Moon?"


We have been fruitlessly chasing the Northern Lights across Anchorage for the past couple years. With a sudden coldsnap came crytal clear skies & the promise of their spectacle. The Aurora Borealis; heavenly, spectral rains emitting galactic silence. They are among the most incomprehensibly surreal things I have ever seen & not heard. 

At the advisement of our Aurora Alert app (oh, those insipid smarty-pants phones...) we geared up & set off for the bluffs overlooking the mouth of the Turnagain Arm. Blustery as always are these bluffs -- this visit, their blustery waxed bittery thanks to the chafing, stinging cold. The children, such troopers, were driven onward by the promise of finally experiencing what they have only seen in pictures -- a sky filled with solar ribbon candy, sheets of sparkling, coloured stardust falling to meet them. 

But, THAT MOON.

Aurora chasing.

Standing on the bluff, tediously nipped by the winds, we could see the futility of our foray & everything else, thanks to THAT MOON. 

Moon-tans, maybe Moon-blindness in the making.

Gah! That Moon!


But the next morning She humbled us with Her gloriousness, so much so that Hubby felt compelled to drag me from bed in the darkness of the 8 or 9 o'clock hour to witness Her night's finale as She drifted behind the neighbor's house on the much-further-than-opposite side of the sky from which She rose...

And in Her descent, She was ferocious.

And yet the lesson was not yet over. (Over the years, I have realized this is how She works, yet I always seem to forget.)


This morning in the gloom of daybreak, She persisted even until the Sun's tendrils tentatively felt their way over the mountainous horizon. There She was, fat & sassy, slung low over the airport for everyone to see. 

Moon: Fat & sassy as seen from the hoarfrosted edge of Lake Hood.

And despite the insanity of trying to perpetrate photography in the mannerless cold, I felt an irrational desire to chase Her further.

Still dissatisfied, I parked in a government lot at the furthest point of the lake shore drive to get one last series of shots. But as I stepped out of the car I saw it.

Wonderland.

There was no way to capture the resplendence of this fleeting place with a lens made from inorganic matter. A row of hoarfrost laden Birch in the earliest dawn -- perhaps more akin to twilight -- illuminated by high pressure sodium lights anchored at the strangest angle. It was like being inside a hanging garden of ice-bound fractals. I felt dwarfed & lost among them. And I wished I could fly, not like a bird, but like a moth...

However, had I been a moth I would have frozen instantly.

I could have lingered indefinitely on the ground in the crunchy snow surrounded by that fantasy land, forgetting myself, save for the fact that the cold was seeping through my jeans into my knees. So I reluctantly made my way back to the car & there She was, bold & almost blood red, as if to emphasize that Her point had been made.

Shivering like mad, I set the camera on the roof of the car & willed my frozen fingers to push the button.

Yes, Lady Moon, you too are worth chasing.

Every damn time.