10/18/2024
🪶🌕🪶
Our Harvest Moon, or Duninvdi, was dropping down into the frosty western horizon this morning as I drove the boys to the bus stop. William quietly asked what our ancestors would be doing this time of year, and I thought I’d share it here for those who want to know.
If these were traditional/precolonial times, the adults would be fasting for around a week’s time while moving camps to their upland winter shelters along the south-facing limestone ridges of the Appalachians, timing the move with the first stiff winds that bring the scent of frost from the north and take the leaves that are already curled and browning.
That week would be so busy there wouldn’t be time for anything other than a few bites of fresh greens, sunchokes, and herb teas as we knew the cold was coming in quickly. Once the winter camp was struck, older children in the community would be tasked with hunting game for dry cold storage, the elders would teach the young how to make cordage from the dying dogbane and other textile plants for hanging squash and other produce and stretching the hides from the hunted game, and pass down the stories about this special time of year. Gratitude for the food we’d grown in the low-lying summer meadows, appreciation for the venison, trout, and wild turkey coming in from the forests, honoring the circle of life that sustains us all is the general feeling of the entire village. The women would begin processing the furs and hides while making clay pots and other storage necessities. Songs of thankfulness lilting up from the main camp would help mask the hurried energy of getting things in place before the first frost swept in. After all that work, we would begin feasting together for a few days with the rise of this moon, sharing the surplus of our harvests with nearby communities coming to share their surplus as well, while the menfolk make plans to gather all the deadfall wood in the forest for keeping us warm through the coming winter. This also kept our forest floors clean and the forests safer from the risk of wildfires that could be sparked by the last visits of the Aniyvtiqualosgi - the Thunder Beings. Making relations between communities, the young ones could leave their birth clan communities and go stay with the clans that better suited their natural skills, and taking partners was common during the feasts - after all, it’s getting chilly and “shacking season” isn’t just a modern day NDN joke. When the Great Bear sign started moving into the skies at night, we knew it was time to rest, reflect, craft, stay warm and fed, and make babies. 😁
Life was simpler, gentler, and kinder then. Was it harder by today’s standards? Absolutely - but we didn’t know it was. It was the way of our world - everything in its own time, with all of nature giving us the news, the weather forecast, and directing our movements.
