“In a journal it is important in a few words to describe the weather, or character of the day, as it affects our feelings. That which was so important at the time cannot be unimportant to remember.” Journal, 2/5/55
SnowMoon Rising
During some winters, a sub-zero temperature is enough to draw me out – the snow that whines underfoot (even it offers cold complaint); the webbed nose hairs; the downright rarity of it all. Ah, then there’s our current winter, where the high temperature during a recent snow was 2 degrees. And last night, when February’s full moon, the SnowMoon, shone like a huge lamp in the white pines, it was 10 below, when I went out to try for a photograph of its deep blue shadows on our feet of snow.
Our SnowMoon follows early January’s Wolf Moon, which arrived when our ground was nearly bare (remember that?) and the winter felt decidedly unwolfy, a sort of Midatlantic compromise. No longer, of course; we seem into a winter that summons the mythic, and so the wolves are back, their ways lit by this moon in the pines. At least imagination suggested this as I squeaked over the snow and pointed my lens at the tree-framed SnowMoon.
My little camera, unsophisticatedly automatic, like much decision-making technology, caught little more than what looks like a wan light in a pitchy night, though it did amuse me by firing a weak flash of return light each time I pressed the button. All the blue shadows and pathways of pale light go missing in each frame.
Not the moon of story, but a SnowMoon nonetheless
Which left only the walk in the cold-crazed air.
Which is, I suppose, as it should be. All the better for listening and wondering:
“My, what a big moon you have.”
“All the better to summon the next snow.”
“And that faint, distant moaning sound?”
“It could be the wind. Or it could be the dogs of night, my dear. The very wolves.”
Ah, company of what once was for a night’s walk under the SnowMoon.