The moon was full on Valentine’s Day. After a 46-year cycle (looking back to 1968), the “Lovers’ Moon” returned. Our windows let in a flood of moonshine, even with rain and clouds that caused strange effects and veiled night rainbows.
The moon was full on Valentine’s Day. After a 46-year cycle (looking back to 1968), the “Lovers’ Moon” returned. Our windows let in a flood of moonshine, even with rain and clouds that caused strange effects and veiled night rainbows.
The moon was full on Valentine’s Day. After a 46-year cycle (looking back to 1968), the “Lovers’ Moon” returned. Our windows let in a flood of moonshine, even with rain and clouds that caused strange effects and veiled night rainbows.
I often wake in the “wee hours” when Hina the Moon Goddess rules because of the luminous quality of the night. But I don’t howl. It’s a good time to dream and plan and I’m one of the lucky people who can drift back into deep sleep.
This dose of silver light is what prompts gardeners and farmers to plant seeds and set plants. Farm almanacs carry blurbs on how moonlight helps stimulate germination and root growth. Also, the ebb and flow of ocean tides are synchronized by the moon, as well as the cycles of women (I once read that the first calendars were developed by women who kept track by notching sticks and divided up the year’s 12 divisions into “moonths,” or what we now call months.)
Each month, my husband Dee saves the “Skywatch” map for me. He leaves the newspaper folded with the circular star map in view, smack in the middle of our dining room table. We browse that star map and check out Mike Shanahan’s (Bishop Museum) column on the planets, star alignments and sky events. Although we fall far below even amateur astronomers —and you’ll soon learn how far we fell during December’s red full moon — we are starwatchers.
When Dee was still teaching, we partnered on a Hawaiian stars unit for the students up in Kokee, away from city lights. An alarm was set for 2 a.m., when we trooped out to shiver in the crisp mountain air. The learning challenge was to notice the progress of the constellation Makalii (the Pleiades), how it had climbed from low in the east at dusk to now shine high during its transit up and over the bowl of the sky, drawing an arc to the west (imagine how thrilled the teens were to be waked for this star science). Then, in Waimea in 2012, we joined the throng who met to gaze through telescopes at the Venus Transit, following the example set by British astronomers who came to track this event at Kauai’s 22 degrees north … But that must be the subject of a whole other column.
We humans have, through time, liked to make connections: comparing parts of the body to natural features or creatures (or vice versa), “joining the dots” on stars to name recognizable patterns, likening their own qualities and emotions to those of known animals and plants. It’s an accepted fact in teaching or learning any subject that relating new information to what is already known helps us retain knowledge.
On an opposite note, while scanning the offshore view from Makaiwa Beach before sunset during a December picnic, we saw something on fire. During the few seconds we watched, the reddish flames licked higher, increasing in color intensity. O-m-Gosh, call 911! “A boat seems to have run aground on the reef. It’s on fire.” I made the call, gave the details. The dispatcher said she’d send help.
“It may be too late,” I told my husband as we saw what looked like an explosion. It was intense, boiling upwards in a burst of flaming color. We both flinched. I pictured wreckage hurled every which way, and burned and wounded people grasping floating beams out at sea.
It wasn’t five minutes before we heard sirens and horns. Two fire trucks from the Kapaa station came barreling into the parking lot just after we got into our car. The rescuers hurried to the shore. What next, we wondered. A short time later they sauntered back to their trucks, and Dee got out to ask. I saw the shrugs, the thrown-up hands. Was it too late to save a life?
I soon learned the meaning of that body language: By the time the firemen reached the beach, no such sight as I’d reported was to be seen, just a flaming, largest moon-of-many-a-year moonrise.
We were blush-orange embarrassed. We also prayed our stupid 911 call would not be reported in the next day’s Garden Island.
Now that I’ve revealed our shame, dropping us low on the list of knowledgeable skywatchers, I urge you to be aware of what spells that Hina full moon can cast, and yet remind you to mark your calendars for a pair of noteworthy sky events. This time, it will be the opposite of flaming when all goes dark during two total lunar eclipses that will be visible to us in Hawaii —on April 14, between 8 and 11:30 p.m., and on Oct. 7, between 11:15 p.m. to 2:30 a.m.
If you really want to warm up to skywatching, look for that waning gibbous moon next to Saturn early on Feb. 21. Also, learn more about full moons and eclipses at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lunar_orbit.png
• Dawn Fraser Kawahara has been a Kauai writer and promoter for 30 years. Born in British India, brought up in Australia and California, she found her home and heart on Kauai in 1984 when the fourth of her children was almost raised. A former writer and department editor for The Garden Island, she launched and continues to run her TropicBird Press and TropicBird Weddings & Celebrations —Kauai as part of DAWN Enterprises.
