8th October 2006

Full moon in the Pyrenees

Remember those bucolic passages in many books and movies about the full moon reflected on a lake. It is a typical image, very familiar to everybody. Yet when last weekend I camped in the Pyrenees, at 2,400 m above the sea and no one around in miles (except my friend) I realised that I had never seen that image with my own eyes.

Therefore, although I had the image in my brain, I had never lived that moment myself.
And the experience was very different from my false memories. First of all, the light of the moon in that high and isolated place, with no other light source around, was as bright as the pale-greyish yet strong light of a sun eclipse.

I could feel how the cycles of the moon had influenced the life of the ancient civilizations. I could imagine how people went hunting with such a fantastic source of light or how nomad tribes would have been able to travel through those silent and illuminated nights.

So up on the mountains, by the lake with no noise or someone around, the moon was peacefully monumental and its strangely pale but strong light gave the whole scene a magic air of mystery and calm.

I suddenly made a discovery (probably very obvious for everyone, but half asleep as I was it surprised me). I climbed onto a rock by the lake to se the moon reflected on it and I realised that there were two of them. Yes, no matter which angle I looked from, I always would see two moons on the water. And I wasn’t drunk! :-) Of course, it was due to the phenomenon of refraction, but it is weird to see its consequences.

Up there in the mountains in that magic scene you see everything from the distance, set the present in the perspective of a longer term (as part of the flowing course of the events, between the past and the future), all the problems seem so easy, and one feels so calmed and strong that suddenly everything is simple and clear.