The ‘No’ days of November

The ‘No’ days of November

I have never heard anyone refer to November as their favourite time of year. It is not a month that has obvious appeal. There is something transitional about this penultimate month. Maybe that is why we mark it primarily with rituals that remind us of the transience of life. It is too early to be thinking of Christmas and too late to attend to the tasks that are proper to autumn. There is little to do outside in the garden or in the fields other than wait for longer days in the New Year and dream of the joys of holiday-time. November is an in-between time; a ‘liminal’ or threshold time. This was expressed by the ancients in their belief that the membrane between this world and that of the spirits was especially thin around the seasonal marker that was known as Samhain.

The atmosphere evoked by a November landscape is one of melancholy. The fall of darkness in mid-afternoon presages the premature end that often blights the bright promises of daylight or of life itself. The greyness of November clouds as they hurry wind-blown across the sky suggests little in the way of silver lining. The thin, rising mists of morning and the dense fogs that refuse, for some time, to go away, throw blankets on our vision, turning our thoughts ever more inward, dampening our spirits and smothering our joy.

The landscape of November is one of rapid change. The stage-hands of nature busy themselves removing the props of autumn. A night of high wind and the back-drop of autumn leaf-art is swept into sheltered corners and piled up in compost heaps, leaving skeletal branches to face the winter unprotected. Those leaves that survive longest, fall like the last illusions of youth, inevitably, softly and for ever. Apple trees, burdened by their crop, brooding and bending like a woman in the last stages of pregnancy, give up their harvest to the fall and stand erect again as their wind-fallen fruit carpets the ground around to await the scavengers of winter.

The acoustics of November are muffled sounds on the ground and clear parting songs in the skies. The crunch of dry leaves underfoot or the snap of fallen twigs soon gives way to the squelch of mulched debris and dulled, mud-logged footsteps. If you are lucky or observant, you may see one of the defining images and hear one of the distinctive sounds of November; a formation of wild geese, honking their carefully choreographed way southward in perfect ‘V’ shape. As children we were told that if the geese happened to fly over a household, it forecast bad news. One member of the family would die that winter; the released spirit joining the migrating geese on the long journey to promised lands. Whatever about the folk-belief, the crisp sound of fallen leaves and the traffic of hurrying geese are warnings of cold days and nights ahead; of top-coat weather and of impending winter.

The sights and sounds of November combine as the bird-world congregates, on wires or in trees, in preparation for migration, or in bird-talk session, as they discuss season past and season present. The collective names given to these avian gatherings reflect the observations of centuries. A ‘parliament’ of rooks competes with a ‘murder’ of crows to caw and croak their complaints about bird-life and the ‘unkindness’ of raucous ravens that has gathered nearby.

The smell of rich autumn woodland in November carries within it the pregnant promise of continuity. Autumn-conceived mammals means spring-born cubs and calves with an optimum chance of survival as they face into next winter having grown strong through the summer. The rutting season has its own logic; the unchanging ways of life and of continuity. The smell of dampness is a November smell too. A freshly-flooded meadow gives off its cloying perfume in trapped droplets carried home on the back of unhurried cows as they head methodically to their parlour-stalls. In school cloakrooms, the rising steam from absorbent overcoats and caps seeps into the corridors and up the nostrils of vigilant teachers.

The thirty days of November are ‘no’ days. There is no warmth; no comfort; no sunshine or shade. There is no cheerfulness; no long days of abandon; no relaxation in the garden. There are no flowers; no delicate butterflies or buzzing, busy bees. There is no swelling fruit; no leaves unfolding; no messy births or hatching eggs. There is no shine – just sleety rain and flitting cloud and mushy snow. It is truly No-vember.