Counting by the moon

Before there were months, there was the moon.

It's still there. Most nights, most of us don't look.

The word month comes from it. So does Monday. For most of human history, the way to know how far through something you were was to step outside after dark and see how much of the moon was left.

That's worth keeping. A calendar on a phone counts every day the same. The moon doesn't. It grows for two weeks and shrinks for two weeks, and nothing you do changes the timing. It's one of the few clocks left that nobody can speed up.

And it asks something of you that a phone never does. You have to go outside. You have to wait for dark. You have to lift your head.

A month counted that way feels different. Shorter in the busy weeks, somehow. Longer in the quiet ones. More like weather than like a deadline.

You don't need anything to start. There's a crescent in the western sky after sunset this week. Find it tonight, then again in three nights, and watch what it does.

When did you last notice the moon change from one night to the next?

Waxing crescent in Capricorn. Look west after sunset.