I was all geared up to write about tonight’s full moon in Braidwood. There’s much to be said and the ideas were flowing – but a quick google showed that the moon is only 99.7% full tonight and the actual 100% deal is tomorrow night.  

It’s good that I checked – there’s going to be a lunar eclipse and what’s called a strawberry moon at some ungodly hour which would  tragic to sleep through without knowing about. Which we will – sleeping late seems to be a bad habit we’re getting into a little too much of late.

It’s also super cold in the wee hours right now. Last night temps dropped to four below Celsius and we kept our heating on late into the evening to keep Corner Cottage habitable. Combined with that clear, chilly air, the near-full moon’s rise tonight was pretty spectacular.

I ventured out as night was falling to see if I could capture some decent shots. Wallace Street, the main thoroughfare through town, was really busy with tourists heading for the coast for the long weekend, but the shops were shutting and the pavements were quiet.

It’s quite hard to photograph the full moon: without getting too nerdy, I’ll just say the moon’s brightness is so great that it will burn out if you expose for the whole frame; but if you expose for the moon’s brightness, everything else is dark.

So I had some fun trying to find nice compositions while also balancing these exposure challenges. You tell me how I did.

Anyway, the full moon has all kinds of traditional associations which may or may not fit in with the narrative we’re creating for ourselves here in Braidwood. According to some sources, it symbolises wholeness and completion – the culmination of a cycle, the fullness of the season (hence harvest moon), etc.

For the ancient Greeks, the moon was a goddess: Artemis, whose portfolio included wild animals, hunting, vegetation, as well as both chastity and childbirth. The Romans took her on as Diana, adding domestic animals to her responsibilities. With so much going on on their watch, it’s hard to nail down just why they were symbolised by the moon – except perhaps that these are all quite fundamental natural elements, subject to cycles of growth, death and renewal.

But the moon’s also associated with less wholesome stuff, like insomnia and insanity. You know – the adult human body is about 60% water, so if the moon has such a profound effect on the oceans, tugging them hither and thither to create tides, then surely it must have an effect on all that water in us? There has to be some reason why wolves and coyotes howl at the moon, right?

Now, let’s not speculate too much on things we aren’t qualified to speculate on, such as sanity, insanity and the various degrees in between. After all, I’m not too sanguine about where on that spectrum I would end up – and not in that irritating “I’m mad, me!” way that some individuals infatuated with their own perceived unconventionality like to assert. Mental health is serious stuff and not really the preserve of casual bloggers.

No, I’m referring to insomnia. It’s not a new thing to me: I’ve been a bad sleeper since babyhood, with periods of actual sleep deprivation which have had a serious effect on relationships and work performance. So it doesn’t take a full moon to play havoc with sleep patterns in this household. We do what we can to create an environment conducive to slumber – good window black-outs, comfy mattress, etc. but somehow there are still too many nights of tossing, turning, sighing and groaning.

Last night’s particular bout of sleeplessness may or may not have also been brought on by a Netflix marathon where one episode of this really engrossing drama segued effortlessly into the next until – tadaah! – it was 3am. Some of that time I was also obsessing over images for yesterday’s post. All that screen time is known to overstimulate the grey cells, resulting in sleeplessness.

Someone who found himself in this position quite severely was Shakespeare’s Macbeth, who, for reasons considerably gorier than Netflix and too much laptop, found himself unable to access the restorative benefits of sleep (and let’s not get into his wife’s nocturnal problems). I really liked the way he put it: that sleep “knits the ravelled sleeve of care” – which really captures the way a good night’s kip will mend all those holes in the fabric of one’s psyche rent by the stresses of the day. Without it, you face the new day with a devil-may-care attitude to the army stealthily approaching your castle clutching tree branches for camouflage.

So moon or no moon, tonight’s challenge is to wrap up this post early, resist the temptation of another episode of the latest miniseries, have a good, hot shower and hit the sheets before too much of tomorrow has come and gone.

And there’s the thing – tomorrow’s moon is set to be bigger, brighter and more awe-inspiring by 0.3%, and I want to be sharp when it comes to seeing it.