This morning was the day after daylight savings, so we “sprung forward” an hour thus making it even darker out than it was before. Sort of.
There was a full moon.
If you’ve never experienced a full moon in a tropical-ish location, you cannot understand just how thunderously bright it is.
Photo by David Dibert on Unsplash
[Flashback: When we first moved here from Maine, which had been a brief overlay from New Mexico, it was mid-month. Two weeks or so later, there was a bright light shining in our bedroom windows that had not been there before. Mother, disconcerted and annoyed, got me up so we could go find out which street light it was and…I have no idea what her plans were. Report it to the authorities? Her motives were a mystery on her best days. Anyway, we trapsed out in our night gowns at midnight to find, you guessed it, a full moon. Even Mother was struck speechless by its magnificence. Welcome to Florida: beautiful but annoying!]
Of course our full moon hangs in a mostly star-less sky, due to light pollution, so it is spectacular. It was dropping by the time we got out, but still above the treeline. I try to find it’s reflection in Lake Ella on full moon mornings, and with some effort I can see it among the reflections of the lamps and street lights. It truly does possess a luminous quality that human-made light cannot (as yet) capture, so it’s a flashing sliver of natural luminescence among the other sparkling reflections.
I can only imagine, here and now, how amazing a full moon must have been to people who had no other light around them than sun, stars, and fire. How pure and refined it appeared, or more likely, we have based our language/concepts around its beauty.
“My barn having burned down, I can now see the moon.” –Mizuta Masahide