Adventures on the Doorstep

ordinary moon-filled moments

I found myself google searching adventurous summer holiday destinations the other week without any serious sense of commitment. I needed something, but that wasn’t it. An impromptu mid-week cinema trip shook things up a little, but not enough. But on the drive home from the cinema our car crested a hill to reveal an orange orb hanging low in the sky, punctuated by a trail of fluffy cloud. It could have been the sun come out to play were it not for the darkness of the evening. It was a Buck Moon. My body lit up with excitement and awe. We chased the moon as we drove, but she hid from us again and we couldn’t find a trace of her in the sky around our home.

Photo by Heather Wilde on Unsplash

A bit of research revealed this Buck Moon (a Super Moon, no less) was so good at hiding because of the position of her orbit in relation to Earth, creating a ‘moon illusion’ where she hugged low to the horizon, appearing much larger than she actually was. This full moon of July is called a Buck Moon because it’s the time of year when male deer grow their full antlers. In North America they call her the Thunder Moon because she often coincides with summer storms. In China they call her the Hungry Ghost Moon because her appearance heralds a time when spirits move freely between this world and the Other world, like the Celtic festival of Samhain, or Halloween as we have come to know it.

The next night my daughter had a friend to sleep over. Dusk fell and we decided to chase the moon again. I thought our best bet was the field at the top of our lane. It faces East and is slightly uphill, surely we’d find the moon there? We walked up the slight incline towards the field, chatting amiably in the muted light. We scanned the horizon but she was nowhere to be found. Determined, we decided to retrace our steps of the previous evening and jumped in the car. We crested the hill and there she was, the beautiful Buck Moon in all her orange-hued glory.

We pulled over to marvel at her beauty and couldn’t believe our eyes when a badger strolled across the road, pausing to glance in our direction before disappearing into the bushes. We were astounded, none of us had ever seen a badger alive in the world before. It proved to me that I don’t need to travel to far flung destinations to feel a sense of adventure and awe, I just need to step outside my front door, sometimes I don’t even need to go that far.

A friend told me she teaches her son to savour the small moments of their lives. Whenever they’re hanging out and engaging in the ordinary, she reminds him that these are the special moments in life. Adventures and big experiences are great things to have and should be sought, but not at the expense of these ordinary moments, which are really anything but.

The whole world is a series of miracles, but we’re so used to them we call them ordinary things.

-Hans Christian Anderson

An ordinary family day in 2018. There’s been a couple more additions to the family since then. Time flies, but we can make the most of it.

What ordinary moments do you cherish?