The All Gathered Moon of November

November's full moon is usually the the second last of the calendar year, and it is a much colder moon than October's golden visitation. As is often the case at this time of year, I  briefly considered staying indoors last evening but wrapped up anyway, and Beau and I went out to the garden with tripod and camera and waited.  A little after seven there was Luna rising in the east, as round and smooth and lustrous as a great pearl.

Beau is still learning about his mum's passion for backyard astronomy and her full moon night activities, but he leaned comfortably against me and looked up, certain that whatever we were doing out in the cold after nightfall, it was something worth doing and he wanted to be part of it.

November's moon is about loss and remembrance, but it is about trust too - trust in the wild and elemental grace of existence and what I like to call "the great round" of our days and nights. Standing in our dark garden last evening, I remembered the gnarled box elder tree who once graced the southeast corner of the garden with her presence.  The old dear held the rising full moon in her arms for more than a century, but she has gone to her leafy reward and is flourishing somewhere else, perhaps even as a tree again.  I thought of Cassie and Spencer, of the kindred spirits and journeying companions who departed this plane of existence and have gone on ahead. Somewhere beyond the here and the now is a throng of dancing kindred spirits, and I smile when I think about it.

We also know this moon as the: Beaver Moon, Blood Moon, Buffalo Moon, Cold Begins Moon, Dark Moon, Deer Rutting Moon, Twelfth Moon, Falling Leaves Moon, Fog Moon, Freezing Moon, Frosty Moon, Geese Going Moon, Hunter's Moon, Large Tree Freeze Moon, Little Bear's Moon, Long Moon, Mad Moon, Moon of Cold, Moon of Fledgling Hawk, Moon of Freezing, Moon of Storms, Moon of the Falling Leaves, Moon of the Shaken Leaves, Moon of the Turkey and Feast, Moon the Rivers Begin to Freeze, Moon When All Is Gathered in, Moon When Deer Shed Antlers, Moon When Deer Shed Their Antlers, Moon When Horns Are Broken Off, Moon When the River Freezes, Moon When the Rivers Start to Freeze, Moon When the Water Is Black with Leaves, Mourning Moon, Moon of Much Poverty, Ring Finger Moon, Sacrifice Moon, Samoni Moon, Sassafras Moon, Snow Moon, Snowy Mountains in the Morning Moon, Trading Moon, Trail Moon, Tree Moon, White Frost on Grass & Ground Moon, White Moon, Whitefish Moon, Willow Moon, Winter Divided Moon, Yew Moon.

Among the many names for this month's moon, I am rather fond of Yew Moon and Moon of Falling Leaves, but for me, this will always be Christel's Moon.  My friend passed beyond the fields we know on November 1, 2011, and I still miss her.