The Strawberry Moon is full at 3:44am this morning here in Vermont. I expect most of us will miss that moment of fullness, though I have been having insomniac nights lately. Too much to do. I have those lists of things that did not get done plaguing the predawn hours. Still, there isn’t much to see in the sky these nights and days anyway. Rain or smoke. That’s the sky these days. I’ve sort of lost track of the Moon.
Hard to believe we are already in the middle of the Strawberry Moon. There aren’t even any strawberries yet. The summer hardly feels like it has started, but we are in the middle of it. The Summer Solstice is next week. The days will gain about four minutes between the full moon and the solstice, and then by the new Hay Moon on the 26th the days will have shed two of those minutes already. The days of expansion are almost over. Once again. Strange how things that are so predictable and regular can creep up on you like this.
For me, it is also Vestalia, a holiday season dedicated to the spirit of the hearth and home, Vesta, or Hestia, to use her Greek name. I tend to think of her as Brigid, because I am Irish, but Vestalia is the name of this time.
Vesta is not only the hearth-fire. She is the embodiment of the nurturing home, the spirit of place that sustains us, that cares for us. These places we inhabit, this is what creates and renews us. This is who and how we are. And a good deal of why, as well. I am reminded of this every time I walk through the garden or pull a hot loaf of bread from the oven in my tiny kitchen. When I turn down the sheets at night, I marvel that there is this place to shelter my sleeping body in such opulent comfort.
Not everyone has such places, I know, but everyone has some place that they are from, that pulls on them even if they have travelled far in life, even if they never put down roots. Or want to. Roots have a way of sinking in despite intentions. And, ask any gardener, they’ll tell you that once roots take hold it’s impossible to excise them entirely. That is Vesta. That is our connection to this Earth. To life. And that is what this holiday time is honoring.
As you can tell, I am feeling a bit poetical these days… talking in metaphors and alliteration. So this moon’s Full Moon Tale is a little odd. Best not try to explain it. Just let it be…
A Meandering Thought Stream for the Strawberry Moon
When I was a kid, we called the full moon closest to Midsummer the Fairy Moon. We would build bonfires and tell embellished folk tales of night travelers waylaid by the Good Folk or the Faerie Queen’s penchant for stealing away infants and hapless bards. We lived in the largely pre-Disney era of story-telling. Those stories rarely end well. At least not for the humans. I’m not sure what constitutes good for the Folk.
I can’t help but think that the Folk have good reason to dislike humans. But it’s also possible they live at such different scale and pace that they don’t notice us. I try to think like they might, to see humans through the consciousness of a forest or a river or a mountain. How does a tree tell one human from another? In their endless chattering underfoot, do fungi ever talk about us? Can the stones even perceive beings as flighty, ephemeral and insubstantial as humanity?
Would any being ever deign to take on human shape? Perhaps if they wanted to say something to us. Knowing that we are narrow-minded and incapable of hearing any voice but our own, maybe they sometimes make an effort to appear. The sheer bulk of all those stories seems to validate that idea, though most fairy tales are more about humans than Folk.
I remember as a child watching A Midsummer Night’s Dream for the first time and wondering why someone as old and powerful and astonishing as Titania would look like my babysitter, who was playing the role. Why not give her the voice of the wind and the aspect of a mountain stream? At least a sleek black panther, I thought. But a tiny human with unlikely wings? No. And why would she not open her charmed eyes and see the roses and woodbine and become besotted with their loveliness? Why would she notice Bottom of all the beings in the wood at that particular moment? Not a little of which was probably part of Her.
I imagine that the Folk are as like humans as stars are to black-flies. Yet, if a tree has a spirit, it is an experienced and wily being. It has lived, seen things, learned things. And the ancestral wisdom of such a being is older than the entirety of humanity. I imagine that being might have learned a trick or two in all its many centuries. Perhaps how to meddle with human perceptions?
Still, there is the question of why they would want to. Why they would make effort, take the time out of their lives to learn anything related to us. Better to ignore us, enduring the annoyance that is humanity for the brief season that we exist, swatting us when we get too close. For all the sting, the black-fly’s days are short.
But Maple and Dog and Strawberry, they all seem to love humans, giving gifts well beyond reciprocity. And Crow finds us absolutely adorable. Cat is a bit more ambivalent, though She does enjoy the adulation. So perhaps there are reasons to cloak their being in human skin. Though, it does seem like the goat-heads and poison ivies and ticks are the Folk that feature in fairy tales. Not a lot of love lost in that lore.
I guess they might have their reasons also. Not good ones. Not good ones for humans, anyway. But who knows what makes a tick tick…
As I said, those stories are more about humans than Folk. I doubt there is a Faerie Queen. Hierarchy is a human convention. How does one establish privilege and rank when all is interconnected and interbeing? And who has use for ordering others about when there is so much living to be done. Nature doesn’t command. She just is. The great communal unfolding.
We slather our labels on the world, clouding what we can see of it. Kings and alpha males and competition, red in tooth and claw… And queens. I imagine the Folk laugh at that. Sardonically, of course. Of the queens we know, who rules? The queen bee spends her entire life bound to the hive, producing one new daughter after another, exhausting herself in the service of perpetuity. Which is all life really is about.
A fairy tale is a mirror for our desires and our fears. It is not about life. Though you can learn quite a lot about humans from them. The Seelie and Unseelie Courts are what we want to be. Coldly beautiful, irresponsive and irresponsible as marble, ancient and venerable, cut free of time and mortality. Sylphs and undines and dryads were made to capture, to hold our youth hostage, to make beauty submit to our control. The Witch of the Wood is our insecurity, born of the utter indifference we perceive in the world. She cares not one whit about our notions of specialness.
Except She does. Or we would not be. We certainly would not be thriving. And that is why I believe.
When the Midsummer fires are burning, look for the spirit in that flame. Know Her for the change and renewal that she is. But look deeper. She is also the warmth in your veins, the breath in your lungs, the life in every cell of you. She is your home. This is the Folk as they truly are. They are Themselves, but they are also us. Because we are all one entangled Being.
Though… I’d still steer clear of Baba Yaga…
©Elizabeth Anker 2025
By My Solitary Hearth 
I like the idea of being rooted to a place.
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It’s been rain and smoke here too and cooler than “normal.” I did pick the first strawberry from the garden last night though, so that was exciting!
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