Its waxing days were my waning days in Chicago, spent packing up my apartment, saying goodbye to friends, tying up loose ends. At the end of the day Davi (my housemate and best friend) and I would walk east through the circles of streetlights, stopping to buy 40s at the corner store under the el tracks, passing the park where children played late into the night while their fathers chatted nearby, and ending at a five block stretch of beach front deserted after a busy afternoon, the sand dented with footsteps, the smell of bbqs still lingering in the air. I remember these ritual walks down the beach always in half-light—absent of the car headlights and store signs shining a few blocks away, yet lit enough to see where water met sand, to watch Davi’s face as she talked, to feel safe. Sometimes we would also see the moon, hanging out above the water, above its own reflection stretched out and rippling. Yet this Chicago moon was one-dimensional: full, crescent, or half had the same affect—pleasing my eye, but not aiding it to see more, to dissuade the dark.
My mom comes down and we load up the farm truck with everything I own. We are on the road by noon, and then after a long day of driving, we pull up our driveway at dusk. The first night I sleep in my old bed in my old bedroom in my parent’s house and the next morning, my brother and my dad take time out from their work on the farm to help mom and I unload the truck, carrying cardboard boxes and milkcrates of my stuff into little house just up the driveway from my parent’s house, my grandma dale’s old house. They stack my things in the living/dining room and then head back out to the fields. Tomorrow I will join them, but today I am inside all day, cleaning and unpacking; I just want to be settled. I have been thinking about this day for so long—imagining my dishes in my grandma’s cupboard, my books on her shelves, my bed along the window in the upstairs loft. At five I drive to Washburn to train in at StageNorth, where I’ve picked up a part-time bartending gig to supplement the income I’ll make working on the farm. Before heading home I stop to buy groceries. At the store, I am overwhelmed thinking of my empty fridge and pantry, so I decide to just focus on breakfast, putting bagels and cream cheese and a bunch of bananas in my basket. I will have to wait for milk and coffee I decide, as I have also been fantasizing about my a trip up Nevers Rd to buy milk from Tetzers, the dairy where my family has bought their milk since I can remember, and then on the way back to the highway pulling in to buy coffee and chat with Harry, my friend Kate’s dad who runs a coffee-roasting business. I love catching up with Harry over a cup of coffee or bottle of beer, but today I know I don’t have the time or energy, also I promised myself that I would get a run in. It is dusk when I pull up the driveway. I’m tired and worried I’ll be running in the dark, but I dart inside anyway. Drop groceries on the counter. Change into running shorts and shoes and head out the door. Even if it’s a just a short one, I think. I’m training for a long distance run at the end of August. In Chicago I had been running five to seven miles every other day, but with the commotion of packing and moving it’s been almost a week since I’ve gotten a good one in. I head down the driveway and turn left—choosing hills over flats, in order to wear myself out quicker, thinking I’ll have to cut it short as I loose the last bit of daylight. Bending past Frizell’s driveway, and then the first small hill bordered by Tom Galazen’s almost ripe strawberry patches on either side, flat again and then dipping down after the drive into Johnson’s apple orchard. Up to Chelsea’s driveway and then a sharp left onto the rough patch of pavement that connects Valley Rd to County J in its steep ascent to the top of the hill. My legs burning, my heart racing, I tell myself, “If I can make it even half way up, I can turn around.” And then as I come out on J, I am reenergized by the round orange glow of a huge full moon creeping up from behind the pines that line the road. Only on this day, at this time, at this spot, does this exist like this, I think. I keep going so I can keep watching it—climbing as I climb. I must have caught a glimpse of the growing moon in the nights before this one, yet wasn’t expecting this. I no longer need to rush my run. Tonight, real darkness won’t come.