Novemberness

On what November and trees teach me about life and light.

A fern ready to let go and sacrifice itself to next year’s plants.

The music teacher whirled across the schoolyard like a force of nature with her scarf billowing in the wind. "November is the loveliest month, don't you think? A time to allow yourself to be ugly and not have to carpe diem all the time!", she shouted to me as our paths crossed at the corner of the basket court. I swear I saw a muted sparkle in the puddle I had stopped in as she flew by in the direction of the music building.

This was ten years ago and I had just walked my children to school. Her words have stayed in my mind ever since and emerge with that same sparkle every November. Sometimes I feel bad for November, worried that she doesn’t get the same attention as the other months, that she is treated like a transition between autumn leaves and Christmas lights rather than as a space of her own. She does come in beauty, though. A soft and muted one in shades of grey and a taste of tea. She comes with time to stop and wonder at decaying flowers, soaked moss and moist leaves plastered between asphalt and wellies. I lift my head skyward to receive the rain on my face, smell the decaying leaves and the murky soil. In all its darkness, November can be a space to explore as something more than just an absence of light. There is beauty in the wonky, the imperfect and the flawed, in watching it take up space in the world. Bare branches against darkening skies, garden furniture wrapped in tarp for the winter and muffled streetlights behind sideways running raindrops on the bus window. November allows us to wash away the expectations that have poked and provoked through the warmer months.

When the dark season comes, we go inside, physically as well as mentally, we get time to reflect, contemplate and tend to our own souls instead of worrying about our exteriors and how they may offend the world.

During the pandemic I looked for a replacement for my treasured bike rides to work and found it in cold bathing. Every day of the year in every weather I walked down to the lake to take a dip. I met other cold bathers and formed a group that is still growing. During the dark months we adapt our bathing time to the sun – the later in the year the later in the morning we meet to give the sun a chance to reach the dock. For over ten years I used to have seasonal depressions between late November and early February. At the same time I felt bad for winter since I didn't have anything against the cold and the snow. But the darkness, oh the darkness. My body and mind ached for light. Since I started cold bathing I have not had a day of seasonal depression. Nowadays I find myself looking forward to every seasonal change, how the trees I pass every day on my way to the lake change, how the air feels against my skin. Come wind, rain, snow or cold, I always go to the lake and I always look forward to the bath. I may never get used to snowflakes on my bare back, but I still giggle at the notion that I subject myself to it. No matter how ridiculously it pours or whirls, I bathe. I will get wet anyway, won’t I?

This morning when I walked down to the dock I noticed a fern next to the path. It had started to curl its brown fronds, as if it had given up all expectations of life above ground and sacrificed its superficial parts as mulch for next year’s sprouting. A few minutes later I went into the 10 °C water and looked up at the willow above me. Almost all the leaves were gone, a few fluttered in the wind, some floated on the surface. The bare branches, freed of their foliage to avoid dehydration, had readied themselves to rest through the winter and pulled their nutrients down to the roots for safekeeping.

I looked down at my body, just as bare in my bikini as the leafless tree, ready for the elements to have their way with me.

My blood had rushed from hands and feet to my torso to protect my heart, just as the nutrients in the tree and the fern had rushed to the roots. And just as the trees go into hibernation in the cold and dark season, so do we. We go indoors, turn the gaze inwards to tend to our souls. The darkness may feel heavy, but while there are shadows on a bright summer day, there is light in the winter. Muted, yes, and harder to find, but there if we look for it – in the puddles on the schoolyard, in the raindrops on the bus window and sparkling in our hearts.

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Read more about fern in The Fern Inkwell and about autumn in Autumn Stitches.