The Ascendant Moon

Friday, Aug 4


Today was a beach day. Because I had a sun burn in my back, I tried to stay out if the sun more.  I read "The Golem and the Jinni" in a kind of hot tent.  The Child wanted to go into the surf, and at one point we'd gone out farther than the lifeguards wanted (Mark called us rebels afterward).

I did more compass work, a spiral made up of six circles.  I didn't use the yardstick for straight lines because my quads were sore from the previous day crouching and squatting.  I had tied a large beach towel over my shoulders because I wanted sun protection, and a shirt felt too hot.  I also wore a large floppy hat.  I'm not sure, but I think the combination of apparel flapping in the breeze made me look like some Beach Vagrant Version of a William Blake Painting of God the Architect.

The late afternoon wound up into a house-cleaning frenzy so we could leave early Saturday.

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Late in the evening, Mark, Mike, the kids and I went to the south end of Ocean City to look for ghost crabs and horseshoe crabs.

The waxing gibbous moon cast pale light over everything, and the kids scurried with small flashlights from button-sized hole to hole, occasionally chasing a bolting flurry of crab legs before its owner disappeared into the darkness under the dunes.

They ran ahead.  My sore legs were improving, but would catch at me every other step with a sharp reminder of how I'd cramped them up yesterday.

I stopped to be alone with the moon ascendant over the rippling tide.  A persistant breeze out of the south pressed into me.  Polaris, Arcturus, Spica, Antares, and the other stars shone like beacons for the small cloud wisps sailing across the sky.  I felt as though I stood at the prow of the Earth as it plunged around the hidden sun, and the wind of our passage in my face was the same wind blowing against the moon.

I softly sang "Center of the Sun" and wondered how the moon would look in Eugene:  possibly rising over the eastern hills in a sky that would be blushing into twilight.  I supposed that it would be oppressively hot, as the Willamette Valley was at the tail end of a 102F heat wave, and I worried about our cats.  Smokey would probably snub us; Cicero, already with the aloofness of a barn cat, might have reverted to semi-feral savage (although there had been a photo of him hanging out with his brother, Spencer, on a neighbor's roof).

Then the others' flashlights became too distant for good hiking ettitquette, and I resumed walking.