Awake in Moonlight

Odd Company -- February 10, 2025

Dear Friends, Family, Neighbors, and Those of You I Don’t Yet Know —

Welcome, Odd Company readers. Outside my studio door, the world is frosted with moonlight. We’re two days away from the full moon, and already the night world is full of moon shadows. A few years ago I read a fascinating book¹ in which I learned a truly wild fact about moonlight. The amount of illumination we receive from the moon does not increase (or decrease) regularly with the phases, which is what one would expect. Due to something called “the opposition effect,” moonlight increases exponentially as the moon waxes. Normally the moons natural features cast shadows on its face, and those shadows cut down a lot on the moonlight that gets to us. But when the moon is full, it is exactly opposite the sun, as viewed from Earth. It’s high noon on the moon, you might say, so none of the moon’s mountains, valleys, and craters are casting any shadows. The upshot is that although the night seems awash in moonlight tonight, two nights from now the moonlight will be exponentially brighter. Bright enough to keep the cats awake. Bright enough to awaken me as it pours through our bedroom window onto my pillow. I will just smile and say, “Hello, Moon,” and cuddle back into my blankets, reassured that at least nothing here on the ground has changed what’s going on in the heavens.

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been thinking about the huge difference between what we need and what we want. I’ve mentioned this before, I know, in relation to Timothy Miller’s book “How to Want What You Have.” But it’s a completely different book that has me thinking about it now — Kevin Fedarko’s account of his backpacking trek from one end of the Grand Canyon to the other, “A Walk in the Park.” The title is a study in irony, of course. The hike is hundreds of miles long, over some of the most unforgiving terrain on the planet, and only a handful of people have succeeded in completing it. In the beginning, the author and his buddy Pete, are completely unprepared for the journey they have undertaken. Hoooo, boy, does that ever ring some bells.

I have done some backpacking myself. I was 16 years old the first time I went for an overnight walk, part of a hiking party of six that included myself, my sister, my dad and his new wife, and my grandparents who (thank goodness) were both seasoned backpackers. Grandma and Grandpa must have been, letsee, in their late 60’s, but very fit, and they had done a lot of hiking in the Cascades near their home in Seattle. We had planned to hike around the Tuolumne Meadows area in Yosemite, but the elevation (almost 9,000 feet) set off Grandpa’s asthma. So we changed our plans, jumped back in the VW bus, and set off for the Desolation Wilderness in the Sierras above Tahoe. My sister and I were woefully unprepared. We had decent sleeping bags and good boots (though they were new and gave us blisters). But we didn’t have much else. The idea of layering clothing for warmth did not occur to us. It rained, of course. We had tarps, but no tents. And we were very glad to get home. I still have my notebook from that trip, and I can safely say the experience was wasted on me. I was uncomfortable, and spent almost the whole time wishing I were home soaking in a warm bath. Beautiful surroundings? I know they were there, owing to a hike John and I took many years later over some of the same ground. But there’s no mention of them in my notebook, which is full of complaints.

I’ve made enough backpacking journeys by now to understand the trade-off between comfort in camp and comfort on the trail. As one’s pack fills up with luxuries like a too-big tent and a too-thick sleeping pad, a coffee pot, a dozen fresh eggs, a camp shower…the harder it is to carry all that weight down the trail on your back.

Like Kevin Fedarko, I’m in love with the Grand Canyon, and have been ever since my first sight of it. I was not yet 30 years old when John and I set off with a couple of friends. None of us had ever seen the canyon before. Who knew there could be such a wonder? Speaking for myself, it left me feeling as if the world held so many secrets that I would never know a fraction of them, no matter how hard I tried. It was March, and cold on the rim. In fact, it snowed the day we hiked down the Bright Angel Trail. We only made it halfway because of the ice, which wasn’t our plan. The Canyon is plan-proof, which we didn’t know at the time, and Fedarko didn’t know on his first try, either. If we live civilized lives long enough, it’s easy to forget how powerful and unpredictable Nature is, until something happens to remind us.

I’ve been back to the Grand Canyon a few times since then. Once, I had the pleasure of rafting partway down, which gave me a taste of the river’s true power, and disabused me of the idea that the Canyon might love me in return. It isn’t that the Canyon is hostile or even indifferent. It just demands that we accept it on its own terms. It is itself; take it or leave it.

Years ago a friend asked me why I like to travel. I hadn’t really thought about it before that, and it’s a pretty complicated question, so I couldn’t respond very well. But I now think I travel because I like the way it changes me. To travel and remain fully awake and in good spirits demands the best from us. It makes us more resilient and forgiving of the world and of ourselves. It reminds us of how little we know and how little we fully comprehend. It makes us a better match for the universe we’re a part of, which will always surprise us and ask more of us than we can comfortably give.

The Grand Canyon did all of this and more for Kevin Fedarko and his pal, Pete. They started their journey as a pair of flaky dudes who continually got into trouble due to their unrealistic, cocky view of themselves. The Canyon instructed them with an endless stream of challenges — everything from lack of water to flash floods. And before the end of their journey, it revealed some of its great secrets to them. They learned many lessons. One of them is that everything is alive, even the rocks and the water, and for that reason, must be respected. Another is the difference between what we want and what we truly need. Our needs are really pretty simple, it turns out. We need food, clean water, and shelter from the elements (which includes basic protective clothing). We need adequate sleep and breathable air. We need an environment that’s safe enough so we can obtain those basic necessities. And, because we are such highly social animals, we need the affection and respect of our fellow human beings.

The rest of it — the designer jeans and Nike shoes, the expensive watches, the brand-name luxuries, the fancy-pants titles, the power to force others to do things they don’t want to do — means nothing at the end of our life. Were we awake to the magic of the world? Did we understand our place in it? Were we grateful? Were we kind? These are the things that matter, and they are the things a place like the Grand Canyon can teach us.

Tonight’s music has no direct connection with the subject of tonight’s Odd Company. I looked around for compositions with some connection to the Canyon, and I came away disappointed. There’s just Ferde Grofé with “The Grand Canyon Suite.” No offense to Grofé, but he really didn’t begin to capture it. Almost nobody else has had the cojones to publish their homages. But in my search, I came across this piece by the American composer Aaron Copeland (words by Horace Everett). “The Promise of Living” is sometimes referred to as the song of thanksgiving, from Copeland’s opera The Tender Land. This is a video of a live performance by the Angel City Chorale, in June of 2016, in Los Angeles. The words don’t matter much. It’s the music, and the choir’s faces as they sing it.

For the curious minds out there, yes, my sister’s health is still improving, and yes, I’m still going to church. Till next time, don’t let the moonlight keep you awake!

1. "The Lost Art of Reading Nature’s Signs,” by Tristan Gooley