Penibagos: the Leaf Falling Moon

The full moon walks across the night sky this weekend, attaining full glory on October 9, 2022 when marked by the Gregorian calendar. This is the height of the lunar cycle that began with the new moon on September 25th and which will renew on October 25th. The lunar month comes near to alignment with the calendrical month on this cycle, as we progress through Tagwôgw, the Finishing (Autumn) Season.

The tenth moon of the Abenaki solar year is known as the Leaf Falling Moon, Penibagos, following the preceding ninth month of Skamonkas, the Corn Maker Moon. The harvests have been gathered in, the last of the berries, nuts, and herbs are being gathered and put away, and the frosts are bringing the tree’s summer cloaks down to wrap the Earth in a rustling blanket. Nahômoak, the eels (“they go with the current’), are traveling down the cooling rivers with the fall rains, passing through the weirs on their way to spawn in the Sargasso Sea.

The name of the moon is a combination of two separate root words: the first is “pen-” which signifies “down” or “downward’ combined with “-bag[w]” which denotes a “leaf.” At the end we have “-os” as a shortened form of “kizos,” the moon itself. These  morphemes combined with the connector “-i-” creates the sequence “pen-i-bag-os,” pronounced pen-EE-bahg-oos, the Leaf Falling Moon.

And so, we ready ourselves for the approaching dark and cold of Pebon, the Winter, and the last two moons of the year, yet to come.

This post is updated from the original at Sokoki Sojourn.