What is it about the Moon? by Nancy M Bell

To see my newest release Night at the Legislature click on the image above.

What is it about the moon that fascinates us so? I could spend hours just watching her swim across the sable ocean of the sky slipping through the constellations on her nightly journey. Songs have been written and poems composed, indeed even novels (although a lot of them are concerned with the affect the full moon has on certain shape shifters). There is something about moonlight that evokes magic in the heart and the imagination. Familiar sights take on new nuances when viewed through the lens of moonlight. 

The very fact that the daily tides in the oceans of the world are ruled by the influence of the moon is pretty darn amazing.  That an object floating in the vastness of space captured in the earth's magnetic pull moves literally tons of salt water is pretty magical to me. I know, I know, there is scientific information that explains this, but why get so bogged down in all that science speak when one can fill one's heart and soul with the sheer magnificence of the reality playing out before you as you sit on the shingle of the beach and watch the water creep up the shore little trickle by little trickle. Slowly filling the spaces between the pebbles while the magic fills your heart. Water is a living spirit, the earth's life blood. I often think how wonderful it would be to included in the unspoken communication between the waters and the moon's power to move it.

When I was a kid I would sit under the maple tree by the dock of our cottage where the warm night was a velvet ebony blanket around me and watch the moon rise turning the still water of the lake to shimmering ice with her light. In the complete darkness and silence that was filled with sound it seemed that anything was possible and that the stars were singing to to the moon as she journeyed. Later as I grew older, I sat on my horse in the Rouge valley and smiled as the moonlight woke ripples of ice on the Rouge River at the shallow Durnford crossing. So many small, but important moments in my life have been lit by moonlight.

The moon has always been female to me, regardless of the Man in the Moon stories, and the sun has always seemed male to me. The warrior as opposed to the healer. Both strong in their own way.   

I'm not sure I'll ever really figure out just what it is about the moon and it's light that inspires me and holds me in awe at the same time.   

Until next month, be well, be happy.