The Heron and the Moon
This post is contributed by Barnaby Porter from his archives. Read the previous post here.
Susan says she doesn’t sleep too well when the Moon is full. I have other friends who say the same. It spooks their chromosomes they maintain, or some such thing – it’s somehow connected to howling in the Moonlight.
Other than spooking my wife, the full of the Moon doesn’t seem to have any deleterious effects on me and my chromosomes. No, basically I welcome it and any degree of brightness it lends the night. The Moon and I are old friends. We go back a long way.
The only thing about the Moon that bothers me, if I let it, is the extent to which mere chance played a part in determining something so basic to life on Earth as the lunar influence as we know it. In the beginning, when things were really happening, we could have just as easily ended up with two moons, or three, or maybe no moon at all.
I can try to be intellectual about it, but, set in my ways as I am, the idea of monthly cycles lasting only a few days, or of varying lengths, or, having no moons, having no monthly cycles at all… there’s a notion to give my chromosomes the willies. And it was all just a matter of chance that we got it the way we’ve got it: one Moon, a twelve-month year with twelve lunar cycles, all on top of annual seasons with temperature and chemistry and everything just right for terrestrial and marine life here on Earth. A few hefty loads, more or less, of accreting cosmic rocks and dust, back when the solar system was taking shape, and things could have been a whole lot different around here.
This morning I woke to the silhouettes of pine trees against an early December full Moon, their elegant branchy shapes gracing the silver light shimmering on the river. The tide eddied in silence, and everything was still in the cold pre-dawn… except for the departing shape of the last heron.
And it is that last heron who has waited out the season until being hastened by a glorious Moon, who must now respond to the influence of that singular, orbiting body of gray dust up there… to the twinges and tugs on its chromosomes, on its being. The first major winter storm is in the forecast, as often happens near the full of the Moon.
It was all a matter of chance once, but that was a long, long time ago. Our existence has been tied to a single Moon since our beginnings. For us, and our chromosomes, it could be no other way – no chance at all.
A heron fleeing winter under a full Moon, our only Moon, simply put, is how it has always been.
Artist and author Barnaby Porter has had a varied career in marine research, aquaculture, and woodworking, among others. Most recently he partnered with his wife Susan as co-owners of the Maine Coast Book Shop & Cafe in downtown Damariscotta. On October 7, 2021, Barnaby completed his tenure on Coastal Rivers’ Board of Trustees after six years of service.
