Photo by Susan Snyder
Get a load of that January full moon. It lights the sky like a beacon. My little point-and-shoot camera didn't do it justice. With the clear sky, this moon provides enough light to see the outline of the mountains just below it -- silhouettes of black-on-black.
It's stunning.
Some Indigenous American tribes call the full moon of January "Wolf Moon." Maybe it's because the long, lonesome wail of a wolf on a cold, dark winter's night reminded them that winter was a time of hunger. Other the tribes called it "Hunger Moon" or "Freezing Moon" or "Hard Moon."
Modern mainstream Western society still names a couple of the full moons: Harvest Moon in September and Blue Moon, which is any second full moon in a month's time. We'll have a Blue Moon this year in August, when full moons will light the sky on the 2nd and 31st. But it seems a shame that we are no longer tied closely enough to nature's lunar cycles that we name them.
As for the rest of the year's full moons, here is a rundown of some of the names various Indigenous American tribes have given them:
February -- Snow, Coyote or Black Bear moon
March -- Warming, Worm or Sap moon
April -- Grass, Worm or Melting moon
May -- Fish, Full Flower or Budding moon
June -- Hot, Flower or Summer Starting moon
July -- Strawberry, Hay or Salmon moon
August -- Thunder, Hot or Moon When the Chokecherries are Black moon
September -- Corn, Harvest or Big moon
October --Rutting, Autumn or Hunter's moon
November -- Beaver Moon, Moon of the Turkey or Moon of the Brown Leaves
December -- Long Night, Cold or Snow moon.
And then we're back to January again, the time of the Wolf Moon. Stepping out into the cold, clear night, I can stand in the front yard with my eyes fixed on that great ball of light and imagine I hear the wolves calling to each other on some distant mountain.
