High 26, Some clouds
According to the Farmer’s Almanac, Algonquin tribes of the Northeast named the first moon of our calendar year the Wolf Moon. I don’t know much about this tribe of Native Americans, except that my grandmother was 1/8th Algonquin, and I should (and do!) resolve to research them more thoroughly. The Wolf Moon happened last night, and since we had a nice snowfall the day before, I thought that this would be a perfect night for a moonlit snowshoe in the fields near the Oxbow.
After dinner, I peered out the window, and saw the brightness in the sky of the moon behind the clouds. My husband and I put on our winter woolies and headed out to Old Springfield Road (Easthampton) at around 7. Needless to say, there are no pictures from this hike. It was pretty cloudy, but mild. The first half of the hike, I didn’t think we would get to see the moon at all, but then it poked out of the clouds, and became more visible as we headed back across the fields toward our car.
While we were out in the fields, admiring the brightness of this winter moon and how it reflected off the snow, I could hear dogs barking in the distance. The sounds of highway travellers were quiet in the distance, even though I could see the head and tail lights of cars on I-91. But the dogs were loud, and seemed eerily close even though they must have been at least 2 miles away. The Native Americans called this moon the Wolf Moon because it was accompanied by the howling of hungry wolves outside the camps. Not much has changed.
New England Naturalist 