Looking at a late October sky brightened by a Hunter’s Moon, Aaron Coopersmith asked: How do you know the difference between a planet and a star?

“Stars twinkle,” he said.

Wearing a Viking helmet and hefting his sword, he soon led hikers along a moonlit path crossing a dark field at Holcombe Hill Preserve Tuesday, October 27, just after 7 pm. Gathering hikers beneath a tree as wind disturbed its leaves, he told guests about the Newtown Forest Association (NFA) property and its former owner, Josephine Holcombe, whom he described as an “eccentric” woman.

Dr Coopersmith, an NFA board member, then asked, “Are you afraid of the dark?” He said, “You grow up and say you aren’t, but you are.” He noted lunar cycles and lunatics coinciding with a full moon, and that the dark “brings out crazies.”

Some cultures spoke of werewolves, and their manuscripts detail “frightenings” that took place as the moon grew full.

Stepping through a break in an old stone wall and past dried long grass, Dr Coopersmith looked back at the group following him, a line of flashlights bobbing. With pale light spilling on the hillside, objects otherwise hidden at night taunted hikers’ eyes. Was that shape a coyote sitting, watching them pass, or a person crouched and silent?

With flashlights pushing shadows away, guests looked again, and the object was just a piece of farm equipment left in the field.

Again gazing at the sky, Dr Coopersmith said the Hunter’s Moon is “traditionally the brightest moon of the year.” Faint clouds drifted by, adding a milky halo to its light. Dried leaves crunched as hikers traced a path circling the Holcombe property.

By 8 pm the group had marched up a rise to again glimpse a brightened horizon below the house on Holcombe Hill. Several people had broken off to walk alone, finding their own solitary spots to watch the night. Sharing the landscape briefly was a fox chasing after its dinner.

With just 100 members and a small board of directors, the

NFA is the state’s oldest private land trust. The nonprofit organization protects more than 1,100 acres of open space, forest, farmland, wildlife, nature preserves, and watersheds in Newtown future generations.

Dr Coopersmith leads hikes regularly. The next date is set for November 7 and will include kites. Visit newtownforestassociation.org for details.