Housatonic — Today’s moon rose early, before four in the afternoon, and climbed coldly brazen over the hills into the fading blue sky to face the sun down one last time. Indians had, in the old, dark days, named tonight’s full moon the Wolf Moon, since the packs scoured the valleys for prey, their howling echoing sharp and brittle across the frozen land on nights very much like this one.
Today we are civilized, wise, and know too much of the moon. And we’d have about the same chance of seeing a passenger pigeon as we would have hearing a wolf pack in full cry.
It wasn’t always so.
Some tribes believed that wolves were men’s souls. Imagine them, circled around a campfire, startled, doubtful, apprehensive, and thrilled at the same time as they listened to the pack abroad in the January moonlight.
I wish somehow time had stood still. I wish somehow I could have been with them.
Going down to bed on a long-ago Wolf Moon night, I stopped by the French doors to wonder at the full moon light. Out in the backyard under the picnic table crouched a substantial looking animal, its head up, its pointy ears pricked forward, silhouetted against the glowing snow. I grabbed the binoculars still on the table from an afternoon of birdwatching and swung the lenses, finally focusing on its apparent bulk. I say apparent because I saw not one animal but three, three fluffed up rabbits clumped together, eating sunflower seeds blown down from the bird feeder.
In the flinty light I watched them until they separated, one vanishing over the stonewalling into the pines, another hurrying across the open yard to the shelter of the brush pile behind the shed. Either less timid or less aware than the others, the third remained as it was, bending to eat then rising every few seconds, tasting the air alert to what else might be abroad in the night.
It was just a rabbit, and on that night he would have to do. The whole time it’d been just three rabbits, not a wolf at all, but you’ll pardon me my lunacy for thinking and hoping that it might’ve been one.
