Once Upon A Blue Moon

I’m an unapologetic Vermont chauvinist.  I have a big deep love for this state. 

How do you describe something as visceral as love?  There’s the clinical explanation; the dumping of adrenalin into the bloodstream, ramping up respiration and heightening senses to animal intensity.   More genteel and esoteric ways of describing love have been examined in songs, poems and books celebrating amour, countless perspectives that illustrate a simple truth:  love is best described by the feelings it evokes.  Like now.

I’m sitting alone on a high lonely place, watching an enormous orange moon rise behind the Greens.   The Sturgeon Moon, the Full Red Moon, the Green Corn Moon and tonight a very special blue moon, the second full moon of the month.  August absolutely rocked.  It’s the best month of weather I can ever remember experiencing and tonight it’s coming to a spectacular firework finish.  It’s after 8PM and it’s nearly 80 degrees.   A sirocco wind gathers the sparks of my campfire into sinuous braids, twisting them out into the darkness.   I’m unaware of anyone else’s existence.  No traffic noise, no house lights.  There’s just my fire, the night sounds that surround me, the silhouette of a distant mountain ridge and an indescribably beautiful orange blue moon.   I admit it, I’m smitten, I’m a goner.  Please, don’t let it end.     

I love Vermont with all my senses.  I treasure the taste of native trout cooked over a wood fire, the smell of fresh mown hay in a high meadow, the feel of sparkling new powder under a snowboard, viewing the sweep of autumn wilderness from the fire tower on the summit of Glastenbury Mountain.  I love it with everything I am, stretching seven generations long from a hazy, distant past to now, this time, this place.  Fortunately, there’s room on my ledge for everyone.

Life’s currents have carried me away from these mountains at various times in my life.  The occasional eddy has allowed me to drift back home.  Now, once again I feel a quickening in the water, the need to push out midstream to navigate towards an unknown future.   But, that’s tomorrow’s business.  Right now, at this moment I feel extraordinary. 

I’m comfortable knowing that it won’t matter where I go, I’ll always have tonight.  I watch the moon climb.  My blood races, my senses alive, my thoughts sublime.  It must be love.