We’ve arrived again at my favorite part of the lunar cycle: the waxing crescent, approaching the half. This means that for the next several days when I take the dogs for their last walk around 10 or 11pm, I’ll see the moon in the western sky, over the water. Then for some days after that I’ll have the light of the full or nearly full moon, though it won’t be over the water at the time I’m usually out.

Yesterday, despite having been a somewhat difficult one at work, seems to have been a lucky day for me after all. I arrived at the water’s edge just in time to see the moon about 15 degrees or so above the horizon, and glowing a very strange and bright pink-orange. There was a low bank of clouds on the horizon. As I watched, the moon sank into these clouds, vanishing from the bottom up. The crescent was almost vertical, so that when it was about half-gone it looked like a candle flame. The whole show lasted no more than a minute. Like I said, a lucky day.