Spring Mountain Spring Moon
This morning, as I walked up the stairs to the loft, the full Mountain Spring Moon sat atop Black Mountain. It’s silvered white contrasted with the bulky green of the mountain. Birds chirruped, a cool breeze blew through the Ponderosas. And it was otherwise quiet here on Shadow Mountain.
The snow has uncovered emerald patches of moss against the tan-pink rocky soil underneath the pines. Small tufts of grass have begun to green and the Bearberry, an evergreen groundcover, has toned up its color. All around us the Rockies announce, in ways still subtle and nuanced, that wonder of the temperate zones, spring.
Yes, there are the more metaphorical announcements, pesach (Friday and Saturday) and Easter (today), and they do remind us, in their convoluted way, of new life, life saved by the turning of the Great Wheel and the power of the true god, Sol.
This is the moment promised in the barren days of deep cold when the Winter Solstice gave notice that once again light would triumph over darkness. Then the days began their gradual lengthening, a process about halfway done at the equinox, but done enough that Sol’s waxing power shakes the slumbering plants and animals. Grow, move, live.
The Great Wheel turns, turns, turns. It will keep on rolling through the sky until at the Summer Solstice, when light reaches its moment of greatest advance, the balance will change again, the days growing shorter, the night beginning to expand.
