My dad would have been 96 years old today.

When I was a kid, our family vacations were almost always spent camping in the mountains in Colorado (sometimes, for variety we’d go to Wyoming or Utah), and the trips would frequently coincide with the full moon. I guess as my dad rose in seniority at his engineering firm and he got preference with vacation requests, it got easier for him to plan trips around the moon. And like a lot of things, I am only now realizing that my current love affair with full moons started back when I was a kid. I have memories of camp sites that were so bright at night that there wasn’t need for the Coleman lantern or a flashlight for that last trip to the latrine before bedtime. Or the inside of the thick canvas tent, lit by diffused moonlight. Or the moonlight casting pine tree shaped shadows on the rock formations I’d spent the day climbing on.

So, of course, taking full-moon photos is a logical step, right?

Dickens, Texas
photographed 10.12.2019

PS – Are you bored? Here are two things I wrote that started with vacation memories: One. Two.