Songs of November

Yesterday was a gray day with occasional snowfall adding a white mist to the air. In the afternoon I took a hike at French Regional Park hoping to see migrating trumpeter swans on the lake. I found no swans but I did hear

Songs of November —

songs of cold winds, gray skies, and empty space in nature’s late November days. The only wildlife I saw on my hike was gulls at the edge of the lake, four mallard ducks swimming in a marshy area near the lake, a group of Canada geese honking and flying high overhead, and a bald eagle soaring over the treetops.

Fall Song

Another year gone, leaving everywhere
its rich spiced residues: vines, leaves,the uneaten fruits crumbling damply
in the shadows, unmattering backfrom the particular island
of this summer, this NOW, that now is nowhere

except underfoot, moldering
in that black subterranean castle

of unobservable mysteries – roots and sealed seeds
and the wanderings of water. This

I try to remember when time’s measure
painfully chafes, for instance when autumn

flares out at the last, boisterous and like us longing
to stay – how everything lives, shifting

from one bright vision to another, forever
in these momentary pastures.

   — Mary Oliver

I wore my winter coat and a hat for the first time this fall. And I was glad that I had when I walked into the cold November wind. Still, it felt good to be striding out on the path near the lake. I met no one on the path and felt for a time as if I was the only person in the world. It’s rare to have that experience in this park that has so many visitors most times of the year.

When I first began to walk I didn’t make any photographs. It was as if my eyes were blind to the hidden beauty all around me. After a time I picked up my camera, gazing at the twisting branches and tiny patches of snow on a tree’s bark. Slowly I began to see more and more beauty, even in the day’s gray desolation.

I think this is the way of beauty. Sometimes it quietly waits to see if I’m paying attention, if I can see beyond my personal desires and expectations to what is hiding in plain sight. Perhaps you cannot see the beauty in such a day. There was a time when I couldn’t either. But choosing to see beauty has changed me and made me pay attention in a deeper way. It’s here, waiting to greet me whenever I let go of preconceived notions and embrace what is. Are you ready to go out for a hike a listen to the songs of November?

May you walk in beauty.