As modern harvest moon rises, our traditions fade

As if awakening from a long slumber, each September the harvest moon rises out of the plain and into our collective consciousness. It's something that people of the land have relied on for guidance through the centuries.

Each year during the autumnal equinox - which this time was on Sept. 23 and for the following few days - the moon gazes on us immediately after sunset, right upon the horizon. When it's a full moon, it's a brilliant sight.

In the past, the harvest moon offered a few more precious minutes of valuable light to work by for farmers putting in long hours to bring in their crops,

But then as now, the "cold-hearted orb" climbed into the sky, where it re-moved "the colors from our sight / Red is gray, and yellow white," forcing all to rest.

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Some say the harvest moon looks larger than our satellite usually does, but that's merely an illusion. Objects close to the horizon appear big because we have visual cues, such as trees and buildings, with which to compare it. A moon suspended in the inky sky appears smaller because there is nothing to judge its width against.

Gaze directly up into the sky, and its top will appear flattened. The horizon edges always appear more distant.

But there's really no difference in size between the two locations. We've just evolved to judge size based on the background. It's given us a niche in nature.

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Illusions can be our undoing, though. There is a belief, for example, that we cannot see well in the dark unless there is light.

Because of it, we annually spend millions of dollars artificially extending the sun into night, splaying our streets and yards with incandescence.

Granted, the night can flatten our perception, though our pupils usually widen to see well enough. But with so many glare bombs - convenience store canopies, restaurant marquees rising above freeway intersections, headlamps washing the sky rather than the asphalt with light - we too often suffer from "ac-commodation interference."

It's that moment when the eye adjusts from brightness to the dark. It's that in-stant when we're temporarily blinded, even though plenty of light shines from the moon to guide us.

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In much the same way, the September harvest blinds us into thinking there is plenty. But as we churn apple butter and pull corn from its stalk, the night air sharpens its crisp bite. Win-ter is before us.

These days, not too many of us worry for food, regardless of the season. Grapes grown in Chile and strawberries plucked in Mexico allow us to enjoy seasonal fruits any time of the year.

That's the way it should be, of course. No one ever should want for food.

And yet because of it we lose our connection with the earth and its seasons. The very holidays arising from humanity's long entwining with nature lose their meaning. Why give thanks after the harvest in November when food is plentiful year round?

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With each generation, we increasingly wind away from the roots of our traditions. When shedding superstitions and misconceptions along the way, this journey is fruitful. And we do not want to mindlessly carry traditions merely to possess them, as if we are characters of Shirley Jackson's short story "The Lottery," in which for no known reason a village resident is randomly selected each year for a stoning.

Where traditions are concerned, though, our society is akin to the man who has left the woods for the first time and stands upon an open plain. The wind howls about his ears as he gazes across the virgin ground. Some of the beliefs from his time in the forest remain "true" - birds appear lighter than air, the sun still is a ball of fire - but there also are new truths to be learned, about the sky's true breadth, about why a distant object upon the horizon appears large.

We've left the land of our agricultural past for the concrete of an urban future. But still the harvest moon appears each September and "we decide which is right. / And which is an illusion."

(originally published Sept. 28, 2003)