2 Moons, 2 Great Lakes, Whatta Looney Year

The Harvest Moon rose tonight. Sorry, I should've told you all beforehand, so you wouldn't miss it. The Harvest Moon is bright, orange, and ginormous when it first emerges at the horizon. (It's my belief that that's what Linus has seen and has been waiting for in the Pumpkin Patch.) While we can attribute its initial immensity and color to an illusion related to its position in the sky, its subsequent brightness is what has given the moon its name, as farmers have used the light of this moon to work through the night to collect their harvest.

My children and I watched the moon rise tonight over the point where the St. Lawrence river and Lake Ontario meet (truly breathtaking); and we are observing it now, from our house, its bright light shimmering on the surface of the river near our home.

I remember last year's moon quite vividly, too, watching it rise -- on a sultry autumn evening in Chicago -- over Lake Michigan. I had taken the kids to a park in Evanston on the lake, with the express intention of watching the moon rise. Harried and addled as I've been since we've moved here, I knew the moon was coming but was not nearly so together as to plan how we would observe it. Thanks to Blythe's friend Martha, who's having a birthday party tomorrow, we drove into town (to fetch a present), and then returned home, driving east, at just the right moment. Wow.

Of course, as my children are now old enough to remember "a year ago," it made for a nice homecoming, or housewarming (depending on how you look at it). I could see in their reaction why mariners would have been soothed by the reliability of fluctuations in the night sky.