Cold Moon rising

Solstice has come and gone.  Technically the days are getting longer.  My Farmer’s Almanac says we’ll have an extra hour of daylight by the end of January.  Two minutes a day doesn’t really feel like an increase.  The full moon is tomorrow.  There was a time when everyone would have known the name of the full moon and what it meant for your garden, your live stock, and your hearth and home.  We don’t really need to know that now for obvious reasons.  But moon watching is one of my winter time ways to keep in touch with nature.  Our skies are sharp and clear but more importantly, there are no mosquitoes.

Farmer’s Almanac calls the January Moon the Wolf Moon, as in there is less food and the wolves can be heard howling closer to the villages.  I did a smidge of research on the January Full Moon.  There are several other names for it—Old Moon, Ice Moon, and Cold Moon just to name a few.  On the Wikipedia page, the Wolf Moon is designated as the Algonquian name.  Since that name only sounded vaguely familiar, I had to look it up. (sorry, it’s been a long time since 5^th grade).  The Algonquians are Native American tribes from the Northeastern US and Canada.  Since the names I found seem to be culturally and therefore location driven, I decided to see what the name would have been for the Native Americans in our area, the Cherokee.  For southeast TN, this is the month of the Cold Moon.  So come tomorrow night, I will be outside checking out our Cold Moon and watching for Orion rising (mostly b/c it is one of the few constellations I can find.  I even have problems with the Big Dipper).