The Mysterious Moonlight and Helvetia

The ring around the moon.

Night before last, I slept out in the camper. Mr. FixIt loves to camp, but doesn’t quite see the allure when the camper is less than 100 yards from our comfy bed and a real live bathroom. Still, he does not mind when I get a hankerin’ to go “camping”. He always comes out to kiss me goodnight and brings me a bedtime snack. He da man!

As he was leaving the camper to go back inside, he called over his shoulder, “You’d better come out here and look at the moon coming up. It’s going to be a beauty tonight.” I jumped up, stepped into my camping crocs, and grabbed my phone. I’m having a blast taking pictures with the camera on this iPhone 13 Pro Max. OMGosh! It has a function where you can take low light and night photos now and they are just magical.

Every evening after I’ve written my post and I’m unwinding for bed, I text with my son-in-law’s mom. Sue and I started daily texting when she was going through some medical issues a couple of years ago and I felt helpless living so far away. I couldn’t bring her dinners or come to visit, so I asked her what I could do to help her. She said, “Text me every night and tell me your stories. It gives me something to think about when I’m having treatments.”

The fog rolling in.

We’ve always been close. I have told my daughter many times that she won the lottery when it came to a family to marry into. They are the best people. But texting with her every day has brought us closer than ever and now, if we don’t at least check in to see how the others’ day went, it just feels weird. So, we were just wrapping up our chat when I looked up and the moon was high in the sky over the camper. I could tell there was a ring around it, so I ran out and snapped a few pictures.

Rings around the moon appear when the moonlight refracts on ice crystals in the atmosphere. We see them a lot here in West Virginia…I guess because it’s so humid here. When I woke up yesterday morning, I looked at my phone and saw the rain was going to start soon so I headed back into the house. Mr. FixIt was still asleep so I put a pork roast in the crockpot, ran the dishwasher, made my coffee, and settled in to knit for awhile.

Mr. FixIt had an appointment in town yesterday afternoon and I stayed home for some quiet time. It was lovely because the fog rolled in, the stove was glowing, and I turned on the TV. That’s unusual for me, but I’ve been enjoying watching videos about the Appalachias and her people. I love the music and the cooking, the old stories and photographs people share. I watch these when I’m home alone knitting. It’s so soothing and peaceful.

My morning view out the big picture window in the camper.

There was a wonderful documentary on Helvetia, West Virginia. It is our “Little Switzerland” here in the Mountain State. Switzerland was a very, very poor country and people emigrated to this country to seek a better life and a place where they could own land. They settled into a very remote mountainous area that isn’t too far off the road I take when I go to visit my family in the Eastern Panhandle.

This particular documentary was made possible with major support by the National Endowment for the Arts and was produced by Gerald Mills of the Augusta Heritage Center at Davis and Elkins College in Elkins, West Virginia. You may recall me visiting there there for the state fiddle and flat footing competitions when I was hauling the Girl Camper Raffle Trailer around all over the state in the fall of 2019.

I’ve never been to Helvetia, but now that I’ve seen this, I really must go. Here is a link to the documentary. It’s an hour long, but it’s just delightful and I hope you’ll take the time to watch it.