The land I live on has always been here but not bulldozed, paved, landscaped, fertilized, and sectioned off like it is today.
When I think of the Native tribes that lived on the land that I reside on, I wonder what it was like for them before the land was colonized.
I haven’t a clue.
But the one thing that I know they and I share is the moon.
Since moving to my house in the suburbs, I have fallen back in love with the moon. Without the bright city lights and skyscrapers blocking my view, I can witness it in all its illuminated glory.
Whenever it is the 15th day of the lunar month, I marvel at the full moon. My bathroom, which faces west, has a skylight, and between 10:00PM and midnight those nights, the moon shines straight down through the skylight lighting up the whole bathroom.
It is a true thing of beauty.
And when I see how powerful that moonlight is, I marvel that this moon is the very same moon that the members of the Massachusett and Nipmuc tribes witnessed, maybe even from almost the same location on this land.
I think about how they didn’t have artificial lights that dulled the moonbeams. I think about how much safer they may have felt during full moon nights where shadows that exist during the rest of the moon cycle are lit up. I think about how much reverence there must have been for that full moon that visited them ever 28 days like magic.
And I think about their tribal members alive today who carry that same reverence for the moon and this land and I feel connection and purpose and care.
How beautiful is the moon we see.
