Full Wolf Moon: Place Post No. 2

9 pm. Saturday, Janaury 30.

Full moon over the lake tonight, and the clouds look like fish bones in the sky. Serrated and fine, they hang with a hollow presence, suspended above me with the weight of a navy blue sky. Quickly, a coyote runs in front of me as I nose my way along the shore; startled eyes are like moonbeams in front of me. Tonight is a Full Wolf Moon, the name bestowed upon the January full moon by the Native Americans who once roamed this land with coyote as a guide. I come to the lake tonight to see its beauty in a new light, and despite its familiarity, the shadows dancing on the ground incite in me an eerie sort of paranoia.

At the main shore a streetlight burns, its fake orange light as appealing as a spray-on tan. Because I'm here trying to see things as they really are, I move away from the main shore, go south and then west, looking for nothing in particular but the spirit of the night.

Night time in Nebraska has always been a sacred time for me. When I was 17 and sneaking back in at first light, the cover of darkness and its activities made me feel most alive. When various boyfriends lived in other places and I told them to look up in the sky, to see the Moon and feel her shared light, despite our distances we were always, in that moment, connected. The fragile quality of moonlight lends a surreal presence to everything it touches, making out world seem something more than normal; making everything a little less comfortable for humans.

No matter where I have been or how old I am while there, or who might offer company, the light that comes from the sky makes me feel like there is something special about this life. The glistening promise of stars, reaching out to us from distant and past galaxies is reassuring smile from a special someone, a reward of some kind. My life in cities has been mostly devoid of this light; light pollution robs me of that feeling and the connection to the sky and all that will be or ever was.

I drive to the edge of the lake-- as close as I can get and still know that what I am seeing is actually land, and not frozen water. It's been cold at night, in the negatives, but I'm not sure how sound the ice is, the Rav is heavy; this is the side of the lake that sometimes bubbles with new water. Because nothing looks as it normally does, I'm not tempting a horror story.

And yet everything looks like a nightmare. Dead trees strain blackened branches to the sky, bony limbs of dark wood laid cold and bare in this winter night. Even with the moon's glow my eyes fight for understanding and adjustment; a barbed-wire fence choked by tumbleweeds seems like something less ordinary until my eyes get their bearing. There are no lights on this side of the lake, and eventually, when my eyes are fully adjusted, I can take in the frost on the ground, sparkling with the only animation I've seen since that 'yote ran through my lights.

I've cut the lights on the Rav, the radio and now the heater. All I can hear and feel now is the quiet of the night. Slowly, a small anxiety warms in my ribcage, and I shake my head at this. I'm in the middle of nowhere, a place I've known forever.

But the way I'm knowing it tonight is all but familiar.

Sitting there in the expanding cold and chocolate pudding of the night, it occurs to me this is probably how many people feel in nature: paranoid, unsure of their surroundings and what lurks behind every twig and crevice and noise. How terrible it must feel to consider oneself a stranger in the natural world.

How terrible to only know domestication false light.

In front of me the lake is a section of slivers and pockets; silver bars reflecting moon light and humped waves of snow that devour it and cast shadows. I am saved by own foolishness: I would love to walk out across it, to the middle of the lake and open myself to that epicenter of rippling light. But because I am human and my eyes aren't made for this dark, I am still apprehensive: I won't risk walking out onto the lake tonight. I know my limits, but I am human, after all, and as much as I like pushing them, I think this is far enough for tonight.

I twist the lights back on and the Rav warms its metal parts with a deep intake of air, it sounds almost like a sigh. The trees spring to life in the glow of my headlight-- I see finer twigs and piles of shed leaves on the ground. Suddenly everything is made familiar. Grasses shoot across the spectrum from black to yellow, and even though it is fake light, it makes me feel better. I crush through a mirror of frozen water in the rutted road (broken bones, broken bones, I think to myself), and soon am back on the main road. It's funny, if something were out here and wanting to get me tonight, it still could, despite the headlights and plastic. How we have duped ourselves into comfort, plastic shells and fake lights.