We just had the super moon the other night. It was also a hunter’s moon. I’m not a big follower of the moon phases. This story is more about the number of moon phases.
When I was about seventeen years old, one of my friends was telling a wild tale about hunting geese at night. He had been hunting geese at night and would be in the trees during a full moon. He could see the geese as they flew at night. It was an interesting tale until he got to the part of how many times he had been in the trees during a full moon during goose season. “I’ve been on a thousand goose hunts during a full moon.” Well, I couldn’t help it. I called bull on being on that many hunts. “You must be a hundred years old.” We bargained down to a full moon being only 3 days per month. Goose season could be three months a year. That would be 9 nights of full moon hunts. Divide nine into 1000 nights and you get the bull number.
Think about the number of nights you really get the super bright full moons with no clouds, rain, fog and everything else to obscure the sky and you see that those really rare nights with clear skies and big moons can only occur on a special day.
Just recently we had one of those special days when the moon was about to be full and the moon was well above the horizon during daylight.
That brings us to the rolling around the moon. I was flying with another friend and we were headed back to the airport about 45 minutes before sunset. The sky was clear and visibility was over thirty miles. October is a beautiful month for flying and the clear washed sky was absolutely beautiful. The moon was well above the horizon and the sun made it bright even in the daylight.
It was the perfect set up. “Look at that moon!” “We’ve got to roll around it.”
You know what happens next. We turned towards the moon, picked up speed by diving down, then pulled the nose of the airplane way above the moon and rolled around the moon. Mostly what you see is the moon turning around with clear blue sky and the cowling of the airplane creating the picture of the earth and moon rotating. It’s as if you are standing back and causing the earth and sky to swap places rather than the airplane just turning over creating the illusion of you moving the earth and sky.
We did a roll around the moon several times and headed back to the airport. It was one of those perfect endings to a perfect day type flight. “Wow” was all my friend could say about a flight like that.
We talked about how rare the sky conditions would be like that and how rare it was that you could catch those sky conditions at the right time and in the right airplane to do that. The days we have and the luck of being able to get those kind of conditions should remind us why we should always be grateful for the amazing things we see and are able to do with the little time we have on this earth.
When all these special occurrences align we should say “Thanks.”