Wolf Moon
A crisp start to a new chapter (Walk 1)
Piece by piece, the pizza vanished. The light out the suburban window waned, and us brothers realized it was time for me to go. The cold January wind pushed my little car south, wind in the sails of a tiny Ark, scudding along increasingly country roads, and over the mountain pass. The empty highways were familiar, but this time it was for real. I had said goodbye to my little house, visited friends, and put the last belongings in the car. A coffee pot, a plant dug up at the last minute, the DJ rig, a fossil found lifetimes ago in New York…
The moon loomed out of the haze. “Hey dad, is it a full moon?” I asked him on the phone. “Sure is! The Wolf moon!”
Gradually, the clouds parted, and the icy moonlight bathed the snowy landscape with a ghostly glow. Tiny hamlets flew by, the houses waving with warmly lit windows. Onward, southward…
I arrived. The new digs, for a few months, while I shop for a new house. The Wolf moon gazed down at me. I had to go out and say hello. When I was a little boy, my folks read me Walk when the Moon is Full (Frances Hamerstrom) , 12 vignettes of a family’s nature walk under an illuminated Luna. For the past few years, I try to carry on that tradition. Moving forward, I’d like to bring you all along.
I set out to find the creatures - I took my knife in case of those “kahi yotes” (coyotes), and felt like a predator, off to prowl…but then was quickly humbled. The snow had iced over, and each bootfall hesitated a moment, and then CRASHED through it. Stealthily as an elephant walking a highway covered in bubble wrap and inflated paper bags, I made my way to an ancient oak tree that guarded the field. Sitting for a good bit, a foreign ink spot on a snowy landscape, I surveyed the scenery…no animals, but the brilliant moonlight kept shifting as the clouds raced overhead. More elephan-on-bubblewrap…hmmm…maybe I can slide down the hill on my belly…an atrocious scraping, sliding sound, and then CRASH. “OK, OK, I’ll hit the gym” as I broke through the snow again. Clomping down to the stream, I sat and listened to it chatter to itself. The full Wolf Moon burned down at me, fragments of clouds swirling like thoughts of this new chapter in the night sky.
I almost wanted to howl back.
Josh