Native Americans called the full moon in March: The Worm Moon. It was also known as the Crow Moon and the Sap Moon. In March, worms returned to the surface of Earth, the sounds of crows calling returned to the skies, and the flow of Maple tree sap returned to groves in the forests.

I have been watching crows chasing after hawks, high in the skies, the last several days. A-ha, it makes me think. The daredevil dive-bombing routine of defending nesting sites has returned to the skies! It’s Let’s-Find-Nesting-Sites season again!

The Worm Moon is winter’s last, bright, nightly glow. For Native Americans in historic New England, it was a light of hope. Many Algonquin Tribes roamed the New England territories: Mohican, Pequot, Narragansett, Wampanoag, Massachusetts, Penacook. They farmed, hunted, and fished. But once wintertime settled in, they relied on stored foods to see them through the months of February and March. For all who survived those coldest, darkest months, the Worm Moon was a welcomed arrival–as was the increase in sunlight and daily temperatures.

I began this week, on Monday, with an early evening excursion out to the woods to watch alpenglow give way to the waxing Worm Moon, which will be full tomorrow, March 5th. All day Monday, prior to my outing in the woods, wintry winds whipped through the trees and over the rooftops, herding loose snow into chaotic, blustery portents of woefully cold wind chills.

But Monday was also a day with few clouds and there was a fresh coating of snow from a storm the night before, so I knew the trails in the woods would be perfect for cross country skiing under Mother Nature’s shine of moonlight cool–wicked cool.

We hit the trail just before sunset, hoping to catch the sun dropping and the alpenglow rising. I’m drawn to this time of day in winter’s woods and fields. If cloud cover is spare, a performance of light ends the day and begins the night through a series of brief verses, sung in harmonies of prayerful color. It happens on a grand scale, but to the sounds of silence. Silence as special as a well-protected wish.

I have–many times–watched, as memories of my newborns’ first breaths have been manifested into soft tones of pinks and blues, onto eastern horizons where winter’s setting suns reflect every day’s last light. The colors–ethereal, soft, yet deeply hued–have struck me with such awe, that any winds battering my body as I watch, end up feeling, to me, like waves of childhood laughter. I recognize those colors. They are almost as perfect as the colors of newborn baby love. Those colors used to overcome me at 3:30 AM, after nursing my babies and rocking them off to sleep. I never put them back to bed on those kinds of heavenly-colored nights.

I rocked them, and rocked them, and rocked them.

Alpenglow creates another exciting effect in the woods where I walk, and, as far as I have noticed, it only happens in wintertime. It is the luminous revelation of Ancient Earth, growing into and out of the trees that line woodland fields, meadows, lakes, and rivers blanketed with snow. Everyone knows that once upon a time, volcanic fury and glacial pressure lived in these places. It’s still part of the rock star, glacial soil. Alpenglow casts otherworldly, vivid light onto the trees growing out of these soils and the trees respond–glowing gneiss, granite, slate, schist. There’s power in the colors, like the heat of igneous and metamorphic rock. Smoky sparkles of quartz, feldspar, and mica blend with glassy glazes of steely blues, blacks, silvers, and hints of reds to create a final breath of brilliance, in every direction, when the day ends.

Reverent radiance. Subdued shine.

And then, the moon takes over.

Mother Nature’s shine of wicked cool moonlight, especially upon rivers of snow that wend through dark forests, is a dreamy thing to walk through.

*****

This week, the Worm Moon arrives. The snow is deep, but the soil down under is wiggling with foraging, herbivorous annelids just as anxious for spring as the rest of us. The crows are cawing. The sap is running.

If you live in snow country, you have one more chance to walk in winter’s bright, night light. After March 5th, the Worm Moon wanes and the alpenglow will do the same.

Spring will come, temperatures will rise, fledglings will learn to fly.

Find a friend, go for a walk.

“May the sun bring you energy by day, may the moon softly restore you by night, may you walk gently through the world and know its beauty all the days of your life.” Excerpted from a Native American prayer.

Get a little moonstruck.