Did anyone see the moon Christmas night?  Or the night after?  They (scientists, reporters, etc.) talked about the Super Moon earlier this year, and after the spectacular show I witnessed on the 25th and 26th I wondered if they’d missed these recent dates.  They did discuss it was the first full moon on Christmas night in seventeen years.

With my lowly little camera it’s impossible to capture what I saw.  But, I tried.  Christmas night there was this beautiful halo encircling it.  The halo revealed faint rainbow colors combined with a few wispy clouds that partially obscured the moon now and then.

The first shot shows the colors better, the second is clearer, but of course the moon looks like the phrase we’ve heard –  Midnight Sun –  instead of the moon.  I wish I could have figured out the best setting to get these shots because it was truly was mesmerizing.

And then…I went outside with Little Dog the next night, December 26th, around 8:00 p.m.  And what did I see?  Another gorgeous moon rise.  I could actually see it creeping up in the sky.  It was huge – and I mean it was so big it didn’t look real – this orangey disc sneaking upwards in the East.  Inside I go to grab my camera, and again, I couldn’t do it justice.

As you can see, I was trying different settings.  The first one is too bright.  The second is perfect color wise, but there’s no reference for the SIZE.  Imagine the pictures you see in National Geographic where the silhouette of a person is overwhelmed by a moon in the backdrop.  That would be a good comparison.  And the last is where I was trying yet another setting, but by then it was rising past a tree and this one shows my neighbor’s light at the corner of their house.  Still, with the tree branches in front and a few of those high level clouds floating across, (ignore the blurry if you can – I was trying not to breathe) it’s almost Halloween’ish.

I’m enamored with the moon.  And sunrises/sunsets that tend towards the dramatic in the early spring and late summer.  I’ve taken more shots of these than I have my own family.

When writing I love to describe a character’s experience with the natural environment.  For instance, in my latest WIP, there’s a hurricane, and a flood, and in the aftermath of the storm it’s steamy with the smell of decay from dead animals.  As the flood waters receded, there’s a moldy, stuffiness to the air.  The characters feel as if they are walking with wet blankets draped over them while the bugs swarm.

No, they aren’t comfortable, yet I can go back and look at some of the shots I’ve taken and figure out a way to describe what they see, and perhaps give them a moment of beauty at the rising or setting of the sun, writing them into a feeling of gratefulness they’re alive.

Much like the way I feel when I happen to capture pictures like I did here – even if they aren’t as perfect as I’d like them to be.

Life isn’t perfect anyway – only the stories we try to tell.