Sigh. It's November. The late John N. Cole, who wrote so beautifully about nature and found wonder in the seasons, didn't like November much. He tells why in this excerpt from his classic, In Maine.
"There are, I’m certain, places where November sparkles, but I have never found them. In reviewing my Novembers, I find they have always found me well north of the 40th parallel where their seasonal somberness is consistent and unmistakable. There must be, somewhere on the other side of the equator, a land where Novembers are bright blue instead of gray; where they mark the start of a beginning, not the beginning of the end. I will go there, some day, if I can find the place, because I would like November to somehow be redeemed; otherwise I shall put it down as the one month of the year that is more to be suffered than enjoyed.
The first day of this November in Maine was a classic sample of timeless November memories. It was especially so because it was so different from October’s last day—a collection of sun, singing sky, bright leaves and laughter. Yet no sooner had November scrawled its name across the calendar and moved in as the season’s new tenant, but the October colors were smeared and the bright mood covered over with gray.
At the house, the frost-browned marigolds slumped to their death in a brittle garden; the grass of the lawn, cut only a few days before, lay limp, drained of all enthusiasm. The wildly climbing vine that had softened the barn’s hard edges had been stripped by kids and the wind; there was no disguise for the realities of the place. The first edge of November’s cutting cold had lacerated every autumnal illusion and left me standing outdoors totaling the discrepancies of the buildings, instead of marveling at the magnificence of the setting, as I did so often during the summer.
Perhaps it is the reality of November that makes it unredeemable. Shorn of the hope that spring brings, without the riches of summer or the curving cover of winter snows, November reveals too much. Like an acquaintance who tells nothing but the blunt truth, no matter how crass and how often, November allows for too little romance to ever be loved.
As I stood acknowledging the gray realities of November 1, I could see for the first time just how many panes were missing from the upper barn window. The blackness of the openings was jagged, crude and an insult to me as a caretaker. If I turned away from the barn, I faced the meadow. There the hay I had never gotten cut had become a browning mess of lumps and tangles that will reproach me until it snows. The pony wandered in a corral fast being scraped of any feed; soon it will have to come to the barn and be added to the list of daily chores. Under the shadowless gray sky, the house itself became an aging lady caught in an unflattering light. Every flaking scale of old paint was noted, every shoddy clapboard seemed to pop from its summer hiding place.
I stared out the window, not looking at anything except the marching of November’s gray legions across my dreams. Beyond the meadow, the bay lay still, unrippled by any breeze—a banner of gray silk fallen from the low gray clouds. The sea will be flat, I thought, remembering my friends who are still fishing, and suddenly seeing them setting their nets in a gray, still Atlantic on this November day.
“Wait for ‘Lection Day,” the old ones used to say whenever the striped bass had not flashed past the beach in their final, surging migration; for Election Day was the traditional November time when most of the schools of fish that had been feeding in the tides of October gathered their millions and began the trip south. And it is true that November is the time when the striped bass makes his way along Long Island’s surf, moving south toward the beaches of New Jersey and the eventual winter sanctuary of Chesapeake Bay. But it is also true that November brings the storms that kept us ashore as spectators while the striper schools flashed foamy white in the water. Waves too huge for boats to conquer rose between us and the fish, and we could only stand and watch the season’s big haul go by.
Yet there was one Election Day dawn I can remember when the air was caught cold and motionless between gray clouds and a dark sea. There was no sun that early morning when I ran up over the dune to see if a prior storm had been gone long enough for us to fish. The swells were still tall, sharp and strong, but a good boat could crest them. They looked large from the dune, and as I measured their risk, I saw the fish that made every risk necessary.It was the total bass migration. The countless fish were moving in a river of splashes and swirls along the surf’s very edge. I ran back to the house to telephone the four other men of the sleeping crew, and none of us could move as fast as we wanted in that November dawn. We could not get boots on quickly enough, nor could we load the net, start the motors, pull all together. But when we did, the fish were still there, and in spite of the crashing seas, we filled the net with the biggest haul of the year.
Some of those men are still fishing this November 1—a day of still waters—and I wish them well. They, and the fish they seek, are my only November redeemers."
