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Angelkeep missed the opportunity of seeing a New Year’s Eve “blue moon” on the last day of 2009. The sky was cloud covered, obscuring the seldom seen spectacle and for some of us, due to age and blue moon infrequency, the chance may be gone forever. The next New Year’s Eve blue moon will also be a total lunar eclipse in 2028.
By one definition, a calendar full moon is called a “blue moon” when it occurs for a second time in any month. That happens uncommonly (next in 2013). The only thing “blue” about it was the emotion of those who unfortunately missed the past New Year’s Eve observation.
If I’d been awake, and the sky had been clear, any observation would have been similar to a February morning’s pre-dawn snowy ground and its bright moon-lit panorama. With a stretch of the imagination, the light charcoal hues of the snow might have been called blue.
Certainly lips would have turned blue with a prolonged exterior observation.
The large moon shone boldly from its western position, normal position for 6 o’clock on that wintry Angelkeep morning. Snow, fresh and virtually untracked from the previous day’s fallen inch, spread itself over the frozen ground like a chenille bedspread over a bed of sleepers. That too was quite common for Angelkeep and Indiana winter. Now it’s just a memory vanishing in March as quickly as the snow and ice.
Such a crisp clear night was not common and was usually the cause for plummeting temperatures into single digits above or below zero.
The cold caused the pond to freeze deeper, as it does the ground. A patio flower pot burst from being too full of moisture leaving the dirt exposed, yet frozen in the likeness of the now dead container.
Crevasses had broken open the ice shelf of Angelpond and extended onto the earth. Some appeared wide enough to swallow a man. No life was evident; perhaps all living creatures had already been taken into the abyss.
Other finer cracks extended like tributaries from the primary fissure threatening to open up the entire landscape into a new canyon. It was not unlike the Grand Canyon viewed at night.
It was a scene that many a horror film tried to emulate. It was as a moonscape seen only by astronauts and camera. It was the uncrossable lifeless desert feared by the lost traveler. It was the wasteland unchallengeable by Indiana Jones. It seemed the brink of Hades itself.
I gave my head a stern shake. At least it cleared night-sleep webs.
There were no crevasses. No caverns. No ravines to cross—no crosses to bear.
The near full moon, not blue, was casting long black shadows across Angelpond and the snow covered ground. They rose and fell and stepped left or right following the irregularities of what had been covered with the snow blanket.
The pattern of earth-bound cracks and fissures were but a shadow which was duplicated in its full intricacy with a vertical rendition caused by ash tree branches against the moon-lit sky. The moon shone like a spot-light beyond. It was about to go down, for the hour was near when the sun would appear in the east and recreate the caverness shadows in the opposite direction.
They would not be as frightful in the daylight. Or after an awakening cup of coffee.
In the meantime, as the Starbucks brewed, the man in the moon looked down in all his fullness, and seemed to be laughing. That’s fine. It’s March. Winter is nearly history. My turn to giggle.
by ALAN DAUGHERTY
Mr. Daugherty is a Wells County resident who, along with his wife Gwen, enjoy their back yard and have named it “Angelkeep.”
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