Hunter’s Moon, October 31, 2020

The Rule: Collect a specimen, noting time and place of collection

Twenty Four plant specimens and one rice paper scroll, 8x96”, with graphite, ink, and charcoal.

I liked the synchronicity of hunting for specimens during the Hunter Moon.   It was also a more direct way of recording my experience. I admit that I sometimes spied a particularly exciting specimen, usually some type of drying plant in a meadow and came back for it during the moonlight.  I didn’t know how well my specimens would survive the rigors of time, so I created a record of them by drawing each specimen on a rice paper scroll.
The Hunter’s Moon of 2020 was a blue moon, the name given to the second full moon occurring in a month.  A blue moon occurs only once every two or three years.  The Hunter’s Moon is so named because, with the leaves falling and the deer fattened, this was prime hunting season.  The earliest use of the term “Hunter’s moon” cited in the Oxford English Dictionary is from 1710.

 

Cynthia MacCollum Hunter Moon
Cynthia MacCollum Hunter Moon
Cynthia MacCollum Hunter Moon
Cynthia MacCollum Hunter Moon
Cynthia MacCollum Hunter Moon
Cynthia MacCollum Hunter Moon
Cynthia MacCollum Hunter Moon