Warm Beltane greetings to the lot of you! We hope you’re enjoying the season of flowers and new growth.
As I reflect back on the past quarter, from early February through early May, there’s a lot I could touch on. Davd and I have been eagerly exploring and documenting sites in the Four Corners and beyond. We are in the midst of a major lunar standstill cycle where the moon can rise and set farther north and south than the sun ever can. So in addition to continuing our solar explorations, we are rushing about to observe and capture the moon in its most extreme risings and settings before we lose this opportunity in 2026 and have to wait another 18.6 years.
Like many of you, we just returned from a big trip chasing the eclipse. And chase it we had to do! We had planned to go to Garner State Park in Texas, but with the foreboding weather forecast in that area, we ended up driving to Missouri instead, where we had clear skies and a wonderful view of this fabulous phenomenon! It was wondrous, but also bittersweet as we missed an important gathering with family and friends in Texas.
One good thing about going to Missouri was that we were able to spend time at Cahokia, the largest pre-Columbian Earthwork mound. This was our third time there, and it won’t be the last! In December 2022, we did a massive “mounds” road trip, passing through Cahokia, all the way out to Ohio, down through Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas and Oklahoma. It was absolutely fascinating and ancient American mounds are something that more people should know about! Davd’s video this time around shares footage from that 2022 trip.
As we look forward to our upcoming trips, we are scraping all our resources together to travel and document what we can while this major lunar standstill cycle lasts. To that end, there are three major “moon” sites we plan to document:
1) Callanish on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland
We went last year, got some great coverage of the site, including some nice moon shots, but moonset was clouded out each of the two mornings where it was in its extreme southern position.
We have plane tickets to Scotland again this June/July. Fingers crossed that the skies will clear for moonset! We are hoping we will get the documentation we need this time around, and not need to try for one more (very expensive) trip!
2) Chimney Rock, Colorado
This is the site that is mostly widely acknowledged around the world to have an ancient, intentional moon alignment. Chimney Rock is so close to us, and yet it’s been extremely difficult to document because officials there have shut down the site during the major northern standstill times for all three years that it occurs. It has been very discouraging to be blocked from accessing this incredible site, but we haven’t given up yet. Perhaps we will be able to arrange something this year or next AND have clear skies when we do.
Davd does have some early documentation of the site before it was closed down when the moon was moving northward, but not fully there. So we have some back-up coverage, but we really would love to do time lapse photography of the moon rising fully between those beautiful chimneys, not just barely peeking between them.
3) We’re not quite ready to discuss the third site we have our hearts set on documenting. More on this later. Suffice it to say that it’s farther than Chimney Rock and closer than Callanish.
So that’s where we are right now: trying to be everywhere at once with limited resources!
Thanks for coming along with us on our journeys. It’s fun to share with you.
Last quarter moon,
Chloe and Davd
Leave a Reply