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When despair for the world grows in me, and I wake in the night at the least sound, in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go & lie down where the wood drake rests in the beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free. –Wendell Berry

“October had tremendous possibility. The summer’s oppressive heat was a distant memory, and the golden leaves promised a world full of beautiful adventures.”

Sarah Guillor

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. 

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.

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. 

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.

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 opal kissed 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 tourmaline stained sky which cradles the full Hunter’s Moon. It’s always the time of the season.🎴

When October’s Full Moon is traditionally known as the Hunter’s Moon—a name that reflects the seasonal shift from gathering crops to preparing meat for winter.

Following the Harvest Moon, fields are typically cleared, leaves have fallen, and animals are easier to spot in open landscapes. At the same time, game such as deer and other wildlife have fattened up over the summer and early fall, making this an ideal time for hunting.

The bright Moon rising soon after sunset provided extra evening light, allowing hunters to track game longer into the night. For generations, this was the season to hunt, preserve meat, and lay in a store of provisions to sustain families through the long winter months ahead.

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Drying Rice Moon: Dakota tradition, post-harvest rice preparation. Falling Leaves Moon: Anishinaabe name for the transition to fall. Freezing Moon / Ice Moon: Ojibwe and Haida names marking colder temperatures. Migrating Moon: Cree name marking southward bird migrations.

Some years, the October Full Moon is the Moon closest to the autumn equinox. When this happens, the October Moon is called the Harvest Moon and the September Full Moon is referred to as the Corn Moon.

“Autumn colors my soul in the loveliest shades.”

Angie Weiland-Crosby

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“Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald