“The moon, the moon,” I enthused, as we were sitting down to dinner last night. “I’ll be right back.” I headed out onto the front lawn with Carley, unwilling to miss the spectacular moonrise over Lake Champlain. Turns out that beauty is known as a sturgeon supermoon.
The sturgeon moon got its name from Native American tribes that found that the giant sturgeons from the Great Lakes were “most readily caught” at this time of the summer, according to Farmer’s Almanac. It’s also known as a green corn moon, grain moon, flying-up moon, harvest moon, ricing moon, black cherries moon and mountain shadow moon.
(Source: NPR)
Mountain shadow moon seems appropriate given the dramatic silhouette this sturgeon supermoon created as it rose out of Vermont’s Green Mountains.
And black cherries moon resonates with the amazing black cherries that we’ve been enjoying the last couple of days.
But sturgeon supermoon appears to be the current epithet of choice. So say the talking heads and typing influencers today, at least. It does have a nice ring to it. Folksy. Alliterative. A little mysterious…
That last quality inspired this short video I shared this morning. Beautiful but bewildering. Slightlyspectral. Arresting.
I’m unabashedly biased when it comes to sunrise and sunset. I favor morning. New beginnings. Abundant possibilities. I rise energized and eager, excited by the prospect of a new verse, a new chapter, a new adventure. Sunset can be stunning. Poignant. Often romantic. But I’m nevertheless partial to sunrise.
However, last night’s sturgeon supermoon was breathtakingly illuminating. Literally and figuratively. Illuminating and humbling. A reminder that I don’t always know what I favor, that it’s tempting to oversimplify. Morning. Evening. Sometimes, last night, for example, close-of-day is an ending AND a beginning. Sunrise and moonrise are cousins. And the latter, especially when it’s a supermoon, is nature’s clever way of recalibrating my convictions.
What do you think?