The Moons of Millbrook

On the night of November 23 I watched a beaver soar high into the sky from behind Medd’s Mountain. It rose silently, purposefully, and climbed into the starry night over the mill pond. In the unseasonably frosty air its face, turned toward me, was cold and bright and so big and close I might have touched it.

I am referring, of course, to the “Beaver Moon” of November, so named in recognition of the hastening winter preparations of our familiar brown friend, Castor canadensis. I haven’t seen a beaver on the pond this year, possibly owing to the ongoing construction around the dam. But those of you who walk the Millbrook trails may have noticed a new beaver dam across Baxter Creek about a ten-minute walk from the fairground. Above the dam the creek has spread out into a shallow pool, submerging the old path, and some intrepid humans have cut a new path that meanders safely around it. This meandering gives me hope for both beavers and humans.

The Beaver Moon falls between the Hunter’s Moon and Christmas Moon, also called the Moon Before Yule, Oak Moon to the English, Bitter Moon to the Chinese, and simply the Cold Moon to the pragmatic Celts. The first full moon after that, in January, is best summed up by the name given to it by the Dakota Sioux: The Terrible Moon. We’re still a long way from that unpleasantness, though.

Before we get there we have to pass through the winter solstice, an event that causes as much confusion, sometimes, as the question of why the moon always keeps one face to us (the moon is tidally locked to the earth, so the moon’s orbit and rotation have an identical 28-day cycle. And, with apologies to Pink Floyd, there is no dark side of the moon, really—just a near and a far side).

The solstice, occurring this year on December 21 at 5:23 PM, is the moment when the earth’s tilt, combined with its elliptical orbit, places the northern hemisphere at the greatest distance from the sun. The mid-day sun drops to its lowest point in the southern sky and we have the longest night of the year. Miraculously, one might say, the sun is reborn at the same moment, and we begin the long march back toward spring.

In the meantime, there’s a lot to notice in the night sky. Mars is still high and bright, and heading toward a conjunction with Neptune on December 7. The Geminid meteor shower reaches a peak on December 13. But most excitingly, Comet 46P/Wirtanen is paying a visit on December 16. If we’re very lucky, it might even be visible to the naked eye as a fuzzy snowball about three degrees of arc from the Pleiades, which will be high in the eastern sky after dusk.

Even if we don’t see it, though, we’re still lucky. Millbrook is far from a dark sky site, but there is a lot more to see in our skies than there is in Toronto, Ottawa, and other places where light pollution is rampant. If we step outside on a clear night with a waning moon we can even see the ghostly ribbon of the Milky Way, our home galaxy, sliding into the west. The ability to do that should inspire all of us to get out—and look up!

Get Out! by Dennis Vanderspek

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