Moon and Sun

There are a lot of things I didn't know about the moon's behavior before I moved out to Blanca Flats. Having spent my whole life in suburbs or cities, I never realized that the moon actually provides viable illumination when it has no competition from the mass of fluorescence that I used to consider "light."

I didn't know that moonlight casts shadows. The first time I took an evening walk during a full moon and saw my shadow extending along the road, I had no idea how the shadow had been created. I actually looked back over my shoulder, wondering who'd installed a street lamp out here in the middle of nowhere.

I have seen the way moonlight leaves a long, wavering fingerprint on water, but I've never seen the moon leave tracks on an open stretch of washboard dirt.

The full moon starts to ascend from beyond the mountains much earlier than I realized -- sometimes by three or four in the afternoon. It hangs in the sky and waits for the sun to go down.

Then the moon begins its interrogation in earnest.

The moon can be frightening.

The burnished moon, the moon sickly colored orange by dust, looks like an eerie inversion of the sun when it hovers over the Eastern horizon at two in the morning.

At dawn, the moon may linger in the sky, taking its time setting.

Sometimes, I think: The moon resents.

When the moon is full, its light makes the desert landscape look like the bottom of a shallow sea. The spiny plants extend their fingers like coral. The volumes of blue above the terrain don't exactly resemble air or water. Standing in the sunroom, looking out beyond the glass, you feel like you're watching the world from the interior of a submarine, E. says.

I've finally learned the difference between East and West. Not just conceptually, but viscerally. It comes from following the sun with the solar panels during the day, catching power to keep this odd organic ship we call a "house" running. I've never had a good sense of direction, have never known how to rely on natural light as a compass. I felt fairly comfortable with Right and Left because I could always use my hands as a references, but the four points of the compass have eluded me until now.

It's not that I've never been camping. I had been in the country plenty of times before we moved to Blanca Flats. But I think you have to live with an open terrain for awhile before your flesh, bones, blood and nerves start to remember how the elements work.