LAKE SUPERIOR MAGAZINE / JUNE-JULY 1995

I Remember

Beguiling Goddess: A Wilderness Moon

I have walked the shores
of Lake Superior …
enchanted by the sight.

by CLIFF SAKRY

Evening settled calm, cool and clear over the Lake of Echoes. As the last faint blush of dusk was fading beyond the forested hills to the west, a paler, silvery radiance was appearing like an aura along the high eastern ridge to announce that a full moon was ready backstage for its grand entrance. Still hidden beyond the ridge, the moon nonetheless, as if determined to stem the invading darkness, was sending ahead a strong glow that filled the entire eastern arch of the sky. The result was an unusually prolonged twilight that lingered as day gave way to night, and it seemed to intensify the vast stillness which gripped the northern Lake Superior wilderness.

    Nothing stirred. My companions, ordinarily jovial and talkative after a hearty supper, were uncommonly quiet. Something in the mood of the evening made the slightest sound seem out of place. Even the inevitable mosquitoes were late, detained perhaps by some strange compulsion to rest their wings and be silent. The chores were done, dishes washed, firewood prepared and stacked, and the camp—in general—buttoned up for the night. The boys were over at the point, lying on the rock and chatting quietly as they watched the darkening sky.

    Tom rekindled the coals of his evening cook fire into a cheerful blaze. He sat before it, his weathered face impishly red in the firelight, humming softly to himself as he greased his boots. Near him, using their life vests as cushions, Gene and Al lounged against two big Norway pines. They gazed thoughtfully into the flames, content to listen to the hummer. George, Bill and I left them there and wandered over to a low ledge overhanging the water along the east side of the camp where we now sat with our legs dangling over the edge. Before us stretched the lake and, beyond it, the upward slanting ridge where the moonglow gave the high forest along the crest a soft dark outline. Bill, pensively puffing on his pipe, finally spoke in a voice only a shade above a whisper:

    "This has got to be one of the most beautiful evenings I've ever seen. It's almost unreal … like a dream."

    "I was thinking the same thing," replied George, his voice low and deliberate. "This must be the twilight hush the poets write about. It couldn't be more quiet. Even the birds are listening."

    "Doesn't it make you thankful just to be alive?" Bill responded reverently.

    "It sure does," I replied. "Out here I really feel like a human being."
    "It's times like this," George commented, "that I get the feeling nature is tapping at my window … like there's some kind of message crackling in my receiver." One of George's most charming attributes was his knack for using metaphors to express himself.

    We were interrupted by, the sudden appearance of a bright pinpoint of light high on the crest of the ridge before us. The moon with its first probing ray was peeping into the basin. The gleam quickly grew stronger, tinting a low-lying cluster of thin wispy clouds with silvery brilliance. We watched spellbound as the beguiling goddess Luna slowly ascended to her throne. Imperceptibly the spot of light widened and grew. The boys quietly joined us, as did Tom, Al and Gene, and we were now all there on the ledge, eyes fixed upon that ever familiar yet ever novel spectacle of the moon's entrance upon the night sky.

    Finally it had cleared the ridge and rested momentarily upon the dark forest rim like some fantastic, magic crystal ball, mysterious, compelling, holding us as if in a trance. Never in all my experience has that great pearly sphere seemed so huge, so magnificent.

    Soon it had moved above the rim and was floating in free space, steadily mounting the sky. Its strong luminescence now bathed the entire region in an ethereal glow. Now it was so high that its perfect reflection appeared like a silver disc upon the still waters before us. Nary a ripple marred its mirrored countenance, and I thought it remarkable that one could stare downward and get a perfect view of our lovely satellite and that we had, in fact, two perfect moons to behold instead of one.

    Nostalgic recollections of past lunar delights flashed through my mind, and I realized that the moon had always had a way of linking together a variety of special pleasant events in my life in a kind of cosmic continuity. Dreaming back to long ago, I was once again reclining with my boyhood chums upon a grassy hillside and watching that same glowing orb in a childish ecstasy of wonder and admiration. For us there was mystery and excitement in the fact that such a strange, huge object should be dangling there in the sky, seemingly defying gravity, able to change its shape and position from night to night, and often playing hide-and-seek among swift-moving, billowy clouds. We would marvel at its distance from the earth and chatter excitedly about what a grand adventure it might be to fly some fantastic space ship up there to see what it was like at close range. We never dreamed then that humankind should one day achieve this. And, of course, the notion that such an event could never happen was what gave the moon its mystery and its unworldly charm. The dark patches on its face were to us a familiar countenance that smiled inscrutably and knowingly as if aware of our very thoughts. There was also something benign in the moon's look, something protective and lasting and reassuring, which told us it was our unwavering friend.

    And there had been many times in my life when a quiet walk alone under its soothing glow would restore my peace of mind and my faith in the goodness of things. It had always been for me a symbol of some kind of universal peace—I suppose, because it looked so serene and unruffled and harmless—and it had a singular, tranquilizing effect upon my moods. In my high school years I had written idealistic poems to the moon … mostly on those lofty themes of youth that sing of beauty, romance, enlightenment, and the sweet, sweet joy of just being young and alive … to "Diana, queen of the bejeweled night!"

    Once during World War II, as a Navy communications officer aboard the T-2 tanker Chadd's Ford in the mid-Atlantic, I had spent an unforgettable night on the high signal bridge dreaming idly in this same moon's amiable company, temporarily oblivious to the ever-present menace of submarine attack and, by the hour, watching in utter fascination the spangled pathway of shimmering luminosity which the moon was laying across the waters all the way from the ship to the far horizon.

    Pitching gently as it sliced through the smooth swells of the sea, the ship produced a bow wave that glowed with a weird, greenish phosphorescence in the moonlight. Amid such diverting magic, so lavishly supplied by my bright midnight companion in the sky, I could forget for a little while the fearful peril lurking beneath that sparkling surface and the painful reality of the unwanted world upheaval which had brought me to this distant, lonely spot in the middle of nowhere.

    I have viewed the moon through palm trees and trudged in fields of diamonds where soft snow caught its light. I have seen it rise between skyscrapers and set between mountains. And in that tenderest of moments which a man can share only with his beloved, I have walked the shores of Lake Superior hand in hand with my beautiful wife, enchanted by the sight of that golden head emerging mermaid-like far out across the inland sea. And from that lovely moment, the heart would ever sing …

If we'd had fairy feet that night we might
Have tiptoed to the sky. For as we gazed
Across Superior's vast expanse there blazed
A shimmering pathway stretched across the night
That reached from where we kissed beside the shore
To where the risen moon sat perched upon
The distant rim. No brighter lunar dawn
Had ever so enchanted us before.
It seemed the moon had sent a special spray
Of dazzling sparklers sprinkled from above
By which to bless the mansion of our love.
And so throughout the night until the day
Was all the joy we found in fond embrace
Reflected in that moon's enraptured face.

    What I was now realizing as we all enjoyed this perfect moonlit scene was that the moon is an ancient universal fixture that has hardly changed throughout the whole course of humankind's existence on this planet. It was still smiling there as ever, benignly, wisely, imperturbably, as it had always done. Human eyes long closed had looked upon this same changeless face through time immemorial, and human hearts long stilled had marveled at its mystic beauty. What great heroic deeds this face had seen. What grim events. What secret, unrecorded happenings. All the great human figures parading down the endless corridors of history have passed beneath its stare and have likewise returned its glances, perceiving there exactly the same unaltered visage upon which we now were gazing. We were indeed members of a truly impressive brotherhood of moon gazers, a legion which would have to include not only the numberless unsung masses but all of the great and memorable names throughout the long sweep of humankind's earthly tenure. In this magic moment the moon was somehow bringing us all together within a common living dimension. Time and mortality were for the moment suspended, fused in an eternal web. The moon, dead yet deathless, had been known to them all, and their living awareness had touched its face as ours was touching it now. It must then forever wear their visual imprints, and though they are gone and should a thousand centuries separate them, that
which they once looked upon yet unites them, and us, in a common bond.

    "Yes," I whispered. "Tonight … I feel like a human being.

LAKE SUPERIOR MAGAZINE / JUNE-JULY 1995
Copyright Ciff  Sakry 1988

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