Moon Light

I took a short walk yesterday in the early evening hours. The moon was well up, sitting high in the sky in its first quarter phase. It felt close as though I could reach out and touch it. The unlit half of the moon was clearly visible if you looked long enough, and I had the time. As I looked, I thought about all the people before me who had looked, especially our earliest ancestors, as they walked around making sense of the world.

Of course, it was something they would have seen from their earliest moments, a smaller version of the sun to light the night with the odd habit of disappearing occasionally as it waxed and waned. Coming and going in it’s a long, periodic rhythm. A companion of sorts to help them see their enemies, maybe other humanoids, but certainly the wild beasts who hunted at night, the cats, for sure.

Of course, they were curious about it because curiosity is our hallmark. Someone is always asking, what is that? Or better yet, why? And out of that asking came the stories, because we also have imagination, and with the stories came the gods, because we seem to have a hankering for divinity in the absence of facts. Now we know the moon is the result of a collision with our planet, and it’s moving away from us, and we’ve been there. Stood on its surface. Does that make it any less moving in its beauty? No. And rest assured. One day no one will believe we went there. It will seem impossible, just as it once seemed so. And I imagine the gods will return as well.