The November Darkening
An ode to a different kind of beauty
My favorite time of the year to go for a walk is in November. This month, scorned by many, is unique in so many ways. There is no winter frolicking in the snow, with Jack Frost on the windows as in winter. There are no children sliding down a nearby hill, and no one ice skating at the local rink. Nor are there people swimming and splashing, as we might find in summer. No one is attempting to catch a tan this time of year.
Instead, we find a very different landscape. We find what Robert Frost in his poem “My November Guest,” describes as “the faded Earth” and the “heavy sky.” If you live in the country, you might walk down a “sodden pasture lane” and see the trees whose “simple, worsted gray is silver now with clinging mist.”
For me, November has always been a time for introspection. It comes on the heels of Halloween and Samhain, the time when the veil between the living and dead is said to be at its thinnest. The Earth’s axis tilts those of us in the northern hemisphere further and further from the sun with each passing day until the Winter Solstice when we begin our journey back toward the light.
The sun, now in the southern sky, appears further south each day until December 21 when the solstice takes place. Long shadows run to the north at a very different angle…
