Coyotes Mating Full Moon Walk at Sacred Coldwater Springs
Wednesday, February 12, 2025
Gather at the park entrance, 7pm
Park on the Hwy 55 access road
A photograph of very early Los Angeles shows the edge of a Pacific Ocean wave and sand dotted with desiccated tumbleweed clumps. My late brother, a history professor in southern California showed me that desert scene so different from the lush, artificially watered tropical paradise that drew so many people to LA. In fact back yard swimming pools and watery plantings jacked up the humidity in Los Angeles to the point of smog pollution since airborne water droplets form around floating particles.
Oh how people are now paying for the assumption that we can create the perfect environment. It is time to make peace with Earth, to work with reality. Coldwater
Spring was an emergency drinking water source in the summer of 1976 when south Minneapolis water tasted putrid due to a prolonged drought. Parts of LA drinking water are under a boil alert because contaminated ash has fallen into city reservoirs.
Meanwhile our planet continues to roll around the sun. On February 2nd we are halfway between Winter Solstice and Spring Equinox. In the pre-Christian Celtic calendar, the day is called Imbolc, associated with lambing and Christianized as St. Brigid’s Day. Imbolc is a time to gather together celebrate the promise of spring and feast. In northern Europe the jet stream is bringing warmer winds to Ireland and Scotland.
The National Park Service claims “we own Coldwater.” The concept of “owning” flowing water is, of course, absurd. Only in the capitalist world is land or water owned. We belong to the land, the land doesn’t belong to us.
Coldwater has been flowing about 11,000-years—even under the last glacier. The record of humans in this area is dated to 9,000-years-ago since a 9,000-year-old bison spear point was uncovered during a 1996 archaeological dig at the Sibley House in Mendota. Imagine the roaring glacial meltwaters at the b’dota, Dakota for the area of convergence of the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers.
Coldwater flowed about 144,000 gallons per day before the Highway 55 reroute in the 1990s, down to about 66,000 gpd now. Water is what climate change is all about: floods, droughts, warming oceans and extreme weather that makes the daily news.
Coldwater is an acknowledged Dakota sacred site. Friends of Coldwater seek to honor our 11,000-year-old landscape ancestor and the people whose dust we stand upon. So we return and return to remember the spirits that feed this Indigenous sacred place.
— Susu
Full moon walks have been celebrated at Coldwater Springs each month since 2000. Traditional group howl when the moon peeks out.
Sunset 5:37 pm (27-minutes later than last full moon)
Moonrise 5:52 pm (1 hour, 21 minutes later than last month)
10-hours, 25-minutes of daylight (1-hour, 12-minutes more than last month)
Moment of the full moon: 7:53 am
Snowflakes take 75 minutes at 1.5 mph to reach Earth from 10,000 feet.
DIRECTIONS: Coldwater Springs is between Minnehaha Park & Fort Snelling, in Minneapolis, just north of the Hwy 55/62 interchange. From Hwy 55/Hiawatha, turn East (toward the Mississippi) at 54th Street, take an immediate right, & drive all the way down the frontage road where you can park at the pay meters.
Gather at the cul-de-sac, which is the Coldwater Park entrance.
Free. All welcome.