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Birth Moon

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I've always had favorite landmarks and trees and animals and views on my drives. I always note them and greet them when I drive past. I mark the changing seasons based on how they change and enjoy coming back and seeing them when my path takes me back that way after an absence. There is a potted tree on a balcony near the Marquam Bridge that I watched change with the seasons for three years. I still wave to the sign for Hugo, OR that was a landmark on my drive up from college in Ashland.


On my long drive to The Quiet Little Mountain Town I have a few... the field with the cows up near Colton, the guard llama in the field with the reservoir near Molalla and this tree. It is a huge, stately oak tree on the corner of Hwy 99E and Hwy 211 on the outskirts of Woodburn. It is so huge that it must have been there long before the Little Ceasar's pizza it now stands in the parking lot of, or the Arco and Safeway across the busy intersection. It must have stood there when this was a sleepy corner in the middle of berry, lettuce or alfalfa fields. It might even have been there when this was still a soggy oak meadow frequented by mule deer, coyotes and Kalapuya people.

But now it is a friend of mine. A big, stately tree, silhouetted against the winter sky marking my abrut turn from south to east or west to north, heralding the beginning of the scenic, post-sunrise portion of my drive of the dark, straight shot to home. Thank you, tree. Thank you for surviving. Thank you for sporting those dashing yellow leaves and now the splendid black branches against the grey sky. Thank you for surviving, and still being here to show me the way. I hope you are here for another century or more, doing your tree thing.

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** This winter was tough and I got messed up in my calendar. The moon that this post was written about -the Birth Moon - and the moon that it actually was according to Annette Hinshaw's calendar - the Death Moon - are not the same. For more on my thoughts about this, see this post. **

This is an extra, bonus post for the Birth Moon this year. There will be a full, solid, Full Birth Moon post next week sometime. Check out my other posts labeled Birth Moon.