FM 12.15.2024 Rutting Deer
Moon of the Rutting Deer
Full Moon Walk at Sacred Coldwater Springs
Sunday, December 15, 2024
Gather at the park entrance, 7pm
Park on the Hwy 55 access road
Even at the start of the deep dark and cold life renews. It’s rutting season at Coldwater. And Coldwater Spring keeps running, the forever groundwater pours, seeps and oozes out of the limestone bedrock. Regardless of political assignations or wars occurring above ground, water moves through the body of the Earth the way blood pulses in animals.
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 an archaeological dig at the Sibley House in Mendota, the b’dota, Dakota for the area of convergence of the Minnesota and Minnesota rivers.
The National Park Service claims “we own Coldwater.” On paper is a plastic, a manmade reality. 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 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.
Full moon walks have been celebrated at Coldwater Springs each month since 2000. Traditional group howl when the moon peeks out.
Sunset 4:32 pm (11-minutes earlier than last full moon)
Moonrise 4:31 pm (13-minutes later than last month)
Moon’s up a minute after the sun’s down.
8-hours, 48-minutes of daylight (45 -minutes less than last month)
Moment of the full moon: 2:03 am
In 2021, it was 58-degrees on this date!
Raindrops take 8 minutes traveling at 14.5 mph to reach Earth from 10,000 feet.
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.
Our website is https://www.friendsofcoldwater.org