Moon Chasing

Taken from a 1997 writing, based on one November evening's drive, as a participant of the freeway ballet and alone with my thoughts...

The night sky was as one, huge sandbar of clouds, stretching horizontally before me. Dark clouds...as though a giant sea creature had emptied its ink sac--in disguise--to escape some real or imagined enemy or shield itself from detection by its prey.

Dark clouds...as stormy nights spoken of by old, worn sailors living off fish stories as tall as big-city skylines.

Dark clouds...as every night seemed when I, but a child, shut the chicken coop door after hens had gone to roost.

As dark and starless as a ghost story cue. Dark as hopeless days and endless nights can feel.

Traffic streaming out of the city thinned as work-week-weary commuters fanned out along tributaries branching off the Interstate. Reno's pink glow, behind us. Ahead to the East, there awaited bedroom communities already yawning, as dusk, then twilight, quickly became night.

Few headlights played upon the darkness. Then teasing, the illusion of light behind the cloud bank. Like a Kinkade painting. An irregular sliver of white light outlined the upper rim. Like watching an artist at work on public television, but no pleas for pledges.

With each mile, a new perspective. The sight, spectacular! Like horizontal lightening against a mascara backdrop. Home was just around the bend. No street lamps welcomed us. Did someone forget to pay the bill?

The air hung in a kind of suspense even as the edge of the drama softened, the end predictable.  As though playing a child's game, the seeker spied a sudden peek of the hidden--just a smidge of--moon. The chase was almost over. And then...before me, in full splendor...winter's moon, soft yet crisp, already the color of spring's promised paper whites and crocus.  The golden, autumn moon slumbered.

Symbolic of the drama of the faithful, who, willing to step to the edge of knowing, and a little beyond into the darkness, claim the promised light.

Magnificent creation! The drama of an Ansel Adams black and white. Timed-exposure photography, at its best. Welcome respite.