Mystery Moon

 "Oh, there you are, friend!," I said looking up at the black pre-dawn sky this morning. "That's where you've been hiding."

It had been days now since I'd glimpsed the Moon. It had been frustrating and confusing. Rising in the darkness, I had looked out to the West through the windows expecting to the see the waning crescent as it progressed to the New Moon. But it hadn't been there. Even a glimpse out the bedroom window to the south revealed nothing.

Obviously my expectations were off. Everyone knows that the Sun, as it moves through the year, hides high in the sky in the summer and low in the sky in winter.  It does this as it goes through the complete Zodiac cycle. The Moon makes the same journey through the Zodiac over the course of each month, swinging from low to high in the sky and back. But the journey is different each month, and depending on where the Sun is. 

For a Full Moon, the rule is fairly simple. In midsummer, the Full Moon sits lowest in the sky, because it is opposite the Sun in the Zodiac. Likewise in midwinter, the Full Moon sits highest in the sky.  At other times of the year and other phases, the Moon will be high or low depending on geometry that is predictable by mathematical means but seemingly erratic by casual human observation. 

Yet knowing this, I was still confused. As the Moon nears being New, it will set in the early morning later and later early it is barely above the Sunrise right before dawn. I confess I had gotten a little mixed up in my thinking. So hard it can be to develop a lunar intuition by reason alone. But isn't that the way we want things to be? 

To settle the issue this morning as to where the Moon was, I got dressed early. Right after morning prayers I went out into the still and calm morning darkness. Even walking out in the parking lot I could not find the Moon. The sky seemed clear. Then I spied it, a stark bright crescent low in the southeast, barely above the rooftop of the building to the south, at which moment I said the words at the beginning of the post.  I meandered down to the south edge of the complex along Trailside Avenue where one can see across the dark park to the South. There the Moon was unmistakable and prominent. Along the McDowells to the East was a bright aura of the twilight of the coming day.

Tomorrow morning I will look for the Moon again, but from the eastern windows. If necessary I can lean over the balcony railing while looking to the South. But even then I may need to walk out into the parking lot again to see it, given it will only a few days from being New. It's a small thing to do, to say hello to an  friend.