1 week Ago By Russell Wangersky
The summer of 2022. The late evening of Aug.11, 2022, to be precise.
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The summer of 2022. The late evening of Aug.11, 2022, to be precise.
Read unlimited articles for free today: Already have an account? Opinion The summer of 2022. The late evening of Aug.11, 2022, to be precise.
A full moon by midnight, the last supermoon of that year. Supermoons were not a thing I remember hearing about as a child, but, growing up, I was more concerned about catching mackerel and flounder or finding my way into a new cave than learning the language of the sky. Back to that moon: I have photographs, but they don’t do it justice.
It rose above a stretch of dark ocean in front of us, with a footnote horizon of land capped by a soft-edged fog bank. Above the moon hung a bank of low and equally dark cloud, so that the moon was transiting a narrow strip of clear sky as it rose out of fog and into cloud. RUSSELL WANGERSKY / FREE PRESS The moon rises above Conception Bay, NL, in August, 2022.
In front of and towards us, it threw out a long and widening path of moonlit water, broken by the dark straight lines of horizontal bands of swells rolling in, and also by the silver fingernails of light-catching ripples that cast themselves out in all directions. In the photographs, they are the nearly-incomprehensible bent curves of an ultrasound image. In real life, they were a tranche of sparkling ocean in constant motion, a pattern composing and decomposing at the same time.
If there were nightbirds singing, you wouldn’t have remembered what they were, or even the pattern of their songs. If there were cars on the highway behind us, you would not have heard them. If you had swept the horizon’s matte-black edge behind us with binoculars for other people, you would not have found them, not one.
The waves struck shore, slow and metronomic, filling the surrounding night with the thump of their arrival and then the long indrawn breath of the ocean pulling its arms back into its chest, dragging bushels of rounded ocean gravel back with every wave into the depths of the bay. Thump — whoooosh. Thump — whoooosh.
A pattern both primal and deeply familiar, a rhythm in keeping with so many things around us. The streetlights, all eyes cast downwards and humbled, the normally bright stars in the very black night sky, all faded. And though we had all been talking about the magnificence of the rising moon as we got out of the car, all four of us, our conversation and then our words lost their way and petered out mid-sentence, until we stood in a line — not an even line, because Garrett was on crutches, leaning forwards with his weight on his armpits.
And we waited, as if expecting a message to be delivered, but with no idea what it might be or where it might be coming from. The smell of salt hanging in the air — the iodine of seaweed — the cool air from over the water sweeping up the low grassy bluff and over us, the quick shiver they used to say was the feeling of someone walking over your grave. We’d driven quickly to the shore when we saw the light of the rising moon: we drove back again when suddenly it seemed right and necessary to leave.
And there were no words of any weight exchanged between us as we drove back, the instrument panel softly lighting the inside of the car. We had left all the lights on in the house when we departed, a DVD movie still playing on the tiny television, the back door unlocked and only closed to prevent the inevitable winged gathering of the moths. And the house was waiting for us with open arms when we drove up the tree-tunnel of the driveway, light from inside cast out the windows like bright throw-rugs on the lawn, the smell of supper still hanging in the kitchen air, and it seemed just possible to slip right back in to where we had left off.
The world had returned — un-paused. Just possible. Or not.
Later, much later, I went out into the dark and cooling night and the clouds had swept open like curtains and the same full moon hung on high like a bright and shiny quarter. Haughty up there, but knowing, too. RUSSELL WANGERSKY / FREE PRESS A house casts light on a lawn.
Following its appointed arc by gravity and necessity. A note: I apologize in advance if this column seems familiar. In normal times, I try not to go back to similar ground too frequently.
But these are far from normal times. And I don’t think people realize how significantly, and how quickly, our lives are likely to change for the worse. And no, I’m not choosing to simply put my head in the sand and ignore what’s going on around us all: I like to think, like to hope, that I’m offering a small respite.
I got the chance to put my phone down for five consecutive days, from the first April Thursday through last Monday, but failed at it often as the wobbling world wormed its way repeatedly into my plans for life. During Elections Get campaign news, insight, analysis and commentary delivered to your inbox during Canada's 2025 election. I know the value of a break, even if I can’t deliver one to myself.
We all have to get away, and especially in troubled and incomprehensible times, we have to learn to do that the same way we need sleep and exercise. Sometimes, it takes work. When you can, stare up at the moon.
Russell Wangersky is the Comment Editor at the free Press. He can be reached at Russell.wangersky@freepress.
mb.ca Russell Wangersky is Perspectives Editor for the , and also writes editorials and columns. He worked at newspapers in Newfoundland and Labrador, Ontario and Saskatchewan before joining the in 2023.
A seven-time National Newspaper Award finalist for opinion writing, he’s also penned eight books. . Russell oversees the team that publishes editorials, opinions and analysis — part of the ‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism.
Read more about , and . Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider .
Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support. Russell Wangersky is Perspectives Editor for the , and also writes editorials and columns.
He worked at newspapers in Newfoundland and Labrador, Ontario and Saskatchewan before joining the in 2023. A seven-time National Newspaper Award finalist for opinion writing, he’s also penned eight books. .
Russell oversees the team that publishes editorials, opinions and analysis — part of the ‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about , and . Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism.
If you are not a paid reader, please consider . Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.
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