Under the Spell of the Moon

 "Buffalo gals won'tcha come out tonight, come out tonight, come out tonight. Buffalo gals, won'tcha come out tonight and dance by the light of the moon?"  Every time I see a full or nearly full moon, I think of this songmy father used to sing to his little girl any time we happened to view a

 full moon together. 

That probably began the magic of moon gazing for me. The gazing improved when my mother told her wide-eyed daughter to look for the man in the moon. Sure enough, I could spot his eyes, nose, and mouth.

 To further weave the magic, we read nursery stories about cows jumping over the moon and moons made of green cheese.  My brain teamed with delightful tales and wonderful images of dancing buffalo gals who looked much like Annie Oakley and Olympian cows that could leave the boundaries of earth's gravity behind. No wonder the moon cast its spell over me.

When we moved to Southern California, we discovered another kind of

 moon magic local to place.  Grunion, a small and silvery slip of a fish, answers the call to reproduce during spring full moons.  These sardine size creatures ride the waves in during high tide to spawn on the shore.

I remember arriving at Huntington Beach at high tide to find grunion hunters under a communion wafer moon. Driving home afterwards with empty buckets rattling did not dampen our mood. 

The joy of running barefooted in wet sand under a full moon reflecting off in-coming waves and listening to the song of the pounding surf made up for our failure as grunion-nappers.  This memory returns on nights I stand outside, basking in silvery moonlight.

Songwriters, lovers,  and poets know the moon and compose songs

titled "Moon River," "Moon Shadow," and "Blue Moon."  Clement Moore wrote "The

Night Before Christmas,” and spoke of the moon "shining on the breast of the new fallen snow."  In the poem "The Highway Man" the author writes, "the moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas."

            These images fed my imagination so that when I had daughters, I wanted them to sense the magic I felt.  I had learned a silly rhyme from my grandmother, and the girls and I stood under a warm summer crescent moon and recited, "Look at the moon.  Someone bit it in two.  I didn't do it.  Naughty puppy, did you?"  They would giggle as only little girls can while the moon shone on tiny baby teeth pearls and reflected in their eyes.  To this day, I cannot see a crescent moon without remembering grandmother and toddling daughters.

Though the world changes, though our families grow and shrink and grow, though we age, the moon cycles every 29.5 days.  We can stand under the moonlight and know that light shines on our loved ones no matter where they live.  Just as the pull of the moon creates tides and wave cycles, it tugs our hearts and creates a life pattern on which we can count.

Magic Overhead

            Whining urgently, my dog awakened me at 4:00 a.m. this morning, something that should have irritated me to no end.  But when I took her and the other little fella outside to relieve themselves, I gazed upward into a movie quality early morning sky.  What should have been a curse was a blessing. 

            Gauzy clouds filtered a waning moon, shedding enough light to put the surrounding trees and bushes into fantastic shadows. My imagination encouraged me to see an elephant or two and maybe a giraffe.  I suspect a few more large creatures lurked in those shadows, but I didn’t have quite enough light or darkness to identify them. 

While the moonlight was limited, a few stars managed to peer downward through periodic breaks in the cloud cover, permitting a bit more illumination on the darkened yard. I felt like I was in a fantasy land or maybe on a ride like Disney’s “Pirates of the Caribbean.” What I didn’t feel was that I stood outside in my own yard.  Abducted by moonlight, I was transported to galaxies far far away.

Actually, I have felt that way several times in recent weeks due to some exceptional skywatching.  Because we live in the country, far from any artificial light source, our yard is ideal for stargazing.  During the August Persiod Meteor Showers, my mom came up from the too bright lights in Oklahoma City to check out the meteor shower on our dark hillside.

That, too, was a blessing.  We got out of bed at 1:00 a.m. to watch the meteors dance across the sky.  I spread out a blanket so we could lie down and look straight up and still be able to tilt our heads backward and sideways to catch a stray meteor shooting off in those directions.  I felt like a kid again, staying up late with mom’s permission, to watch fireflies or fireworks.

As we lay there, waiting to see our first meteor flash by, the Milky Way hovered directly over us as if we could melt right into it.  Artificial satellites cruised heavenly highways, so we waved in case they were taking snapshots.  We had plenty of stars to wish upon and even a descending airplane to confuse us for a moment until we figured out what it was. 

We had to watch carefully to avoid missing the meteor shower.  Most of the flashes of distant light lasted the equivalent of a blink.  A few sported showy long tails that fanned across the sky, so we oohed and aahed appropriately. 

 I can’t think of many adventures my mom and I enjoyed more than that hour or so of relaxing under a August Kansas sky.  My poor husband had to wake up to enjoy the meteor the next night since I’d had to much fun watching them the first time.

Rural Kansans  regularly see night skies that city folks will never enjoy.  It’s good to be reminded periodically by a dog or a camping trip or a visiting mother what a treasure hovers over us each and every night.