Last night was a full moon. Did it show up? It had been cloudy and rainy all day, so I wasn’t confident.
This is the first full moon after the Harvest Moon, called the Hunter’s Moon. We city dwellers have lost touch with the moon’s changing phases, but for our ancestors, the night sky mattered more. Historically, the name comes from the period when fields had been cleared, making animals easier to spot, and the bright moon gave hunters extra light.
There has been much written about how the moon may affect humans, particularly the full moon. The term ‘lunatic’ comes from the Latin word for the moon – ‘luna’.
However scientific studies show no direct link between a full moon and human behaviour, though increased nighttime moonlight can alter animal activity or human sleep patterns. Of course we no longer expose ourselves to the changing night skies compared to our ancestors.
Walk Beneath a Full Moon has to be one of my 52 Ways to Walk so I had better take this chance to experience the extra light that the full moon brings. My walk was a modest one after dark up to the shops, hardly enigmatic. The clouds were racing across the moon giving a dramatic effect but plunging me into darkness from time to time. When the moon was fully out there was a certain luminosity to my surroundings. I should have been up the fell.
And then it was gone again.
