The Sweet Rise of Summer Vibes🤙

“Wander a whole summer if you can.  Time will not be taken from the sum of life.  Instead of shortening, it will definitely lengthen it and make you truly immortal.”

John Muir

“Summer afternoon—summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.”

Henry James

“Green was the silence, wet was the light,
the month of June trembled like a butterfly.”

Pablo Neruda, 100 Love Sonnets

“Woods were ringed with a colour so soft, so subtle that it could scarcely be said to be a colour at all. It was more the idea of a colour – as if the trees were dreaming green dreams or thinking green thoughts.”

Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

See stars in the changing season and dance among them, shining.

Mary Anne Radmacher

“And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

I feel lucky to be a Marylander. We’re fortunate to see the seasons bleed into one another while our landscape gradually shifts around us. As swift and grand an entrance Autumn makes, coaxing annual crowds of “leaf peepers”, we can’t help but to rubber neck as she coyly dissipates after a mere few weeks. As if she stole the stars above, she marks our rural roads with untold treks who hint like crystalized winks; like an invisible map or an unspoken language that is only depicted by the richness of the moon. Dirt colored snow and black ice pockmark our ancient roads, but the myopic days will grow longer and the stubborn fissures of ice have no choice but to surrender into puddles of mud. Spring saunters in, teasing us with bouts of warmth scattered among the loitering winter days. A familiar seasonal tale, that we all know too well. Our eyes flutter open to a sight for sore eyes. Trees grow obese with succulent emerald leaves that seem to burst from the countless queues of buds that wildly grow from its effete limbs. The tasseled sleeves forever fashion the arms of weeping willows and elder pines; they bow down, touching the earth, as if they’re always welcoming the shift of seasons. Families of serpentine ivy crash and collide, choking neighboring geriatric trunks, suffocating any traces of dun and scorched flora; their chaotic embrace leave only the sweetest viridescent shades of summer behind.

Some are fortunate enough to taste that sweet sense of rumination with a ride down rural roads where the quiet and quaint encompass you, deafening the convoluted chants of society. Roused with change, we wake to the irenic songs and heavyhearted hymns that drown out the infinite thwarted apologies: whispers of seasonal remorse, the unquenchable thirst for the familiarity and the pining for the forgotten senses. Stretching out her ageless arms she escapes, seeping through the fissures of black-out curtains; her lemon stained fingers cast elongated shapes that creep up bedroom walls, beckoning us to rise and shine.

The nomadic twilight yawns, casting a masquerade of dew resembling a kaleidoscope, a trapped play of colors that sheet the earth. Crepuscular rays breach through the clouds, nursing the sear-spotted grounds, and healing wounds from dry Autumn afternoons and the gelidity mornings of Winter.

She eventually succumbs, melting into the invincible glow of a horizon renewed. As nature things, we inherently form cocoons around these volatile days, wrapping the season around us like a childhood blanket. Triggered, we lounge and mask in the familiar warmth of nostalgia, soaking up the season’s diffusing aura like a trite kitchen sponge. Like ancient spirits, we haunt our own homes, roaming from room to room, infinitely searching for ‘ that something’; the first feel of an autumn gust, the taste of snowflakes waltzing on your tongue, the smell of newborn blooms and green or the feel of feverish rays that coat your face in yellow. Kitchen walls and family room floors are eternally saturated in patches of sun; light that escapes through our window panes and splits, scatters and finally settles across our homes.

Canopies of archaic trees oscillate and kiss the ancient sky. Below, cliques of bare naked limbs gyrate to the requiem of nature. Her adularescence light stalks the woods edge, saturating our earth and moonstone waters in sweet simplicity. With arms wide open, we habitually welcome the change of the seasons as the notes of zephyr embrace us like an old friend. Migrating winds collide, and fracture, stimulating the deep, weary cells that lie dormant within us. The melodious atmosphere summons an abstruse awakening that cloaks the alexandrite stained sky which cradles the full Strawberry Moon. It’s always the time of the season.🎴

Over time, many cultures have used different names for the 12 full moons experienced each year. Usually, they’re not based on color but on a common activity that takes place that time of year. 

June’s Full Moon—typically the last Full Moon of spring or the first of summer—has traditionally been called the Strawberry Moon. While strawberries certainly are a reddish-pink color and are roundish in shape, the origin of the name “Strawberry Moon” has nothing to do with the Moon’s hue or appearance, despite the evocative imagery (shown in the artist rendering below). A Moon usually appears reddish when it’s close to the horizon because the light rays must pass through the densest layers of the atmosphere

the many faces of the strawberry moon☾

This “Strawberry Moon” name has been used by Native American Algonquian tribes that live in the northeastern United States as well as the Ojibwe, Dakota, and Lakota peoples to mark the ripening of “June-bearing” strawberries that are ready to be gathered. The Haida term Berries Ripen Moon reflects this as well. As flowers bloom and early fruit ripens, June is a time of great abundance for many.

Blooming Moon (Anishinaabe) is indicative of the flowering season, while Green Corn Moon (Cherokee) and Hoer Moon (Western Abenaki) suggest that it’s time to tend to young crops. Other names highlight that this is a time of new life: The Tlingit have used the term Birth Moon, referring to the time when certain animals are born in their region (the Pacific Northwest). Egg Laying Moon and Hatching Moon are Cree terms that also hint at a time when many animal babies were born.

Alternative European names for this Moon include the Honey Moon and the Mead Moon. June was traditionally the month of marriage and is even named after the Roman goddess of marriage, Juno. Following marriage comes the “honeymoon,” which may be tied to this alternative Moon name!

the next full moon & summer solstice